Inside Tennessee’s deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise

Source Domain: statescoop.com

Under a new chief information officer, Tennessee has moved beyond experimenting with ChatGPT Enterprise and has now deployed the technology into day-to-day operations — more than 5,000 state government employees are licensed to access the generative AI tool from OpenAI.

State Chief Information Officer Kristin Darby officially took over from Stephanie Dedmon, the state’s CIO since 2018, last July. But Darby started in the role almost exactly a year ago, last March, and worked alongside Dedmon for a transitional period of a few months. Over the course of this past year, the Volunteer State’s new top tech official said her office, the states’ Strategic Technology Solutions, has made “tremendous progress” in carving out an AI governance framework, which she said is the foundation to expanding the state’s use of technology.

And now, many staff are reporting that ChatGPT is helping them to save nearly a week’s worth of work each month.

Starting with governance, not tech

Darby said the state’s AI push is part of a broader strategy to reposition STS as a “strategic partner” to agencies, while also improving services for residents. This effort, she said, includes a formal AI strategy, a workforce initiative called Focus Forward aimed at upskilling both IT staff and the broader state workforce, and a cultural push to emphasize performance and value.

“It always starts with governance, not technology, and so I think that’s important for any type of technology, but for especially for an area of emerging use,” she said. “And the question across Tennessee that we’re really trying to instill in all of our employees is not, Can we use AI? We have progressed far past that. The questions we’re educating everyone in the workforce to ask is, Should we use AI for this purpose? And I think that goes for any technology, right? Is technology really appropriate to be applied to the opportunity or the problem you’re trying to…

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