AI Bright Spot: Embracing a culture shift toward AI in Tampa, Florida

The Partnership for Public Service AI Center for Government® is publishing a series of blogs to celebrate how artificial intelligence and intelligent automation are being used by the government to serve the public.

We recently spoke with Eric Hayden, director of technology and innovation and chief information officer of the City of Tampa, Fla., to learn about Tampa’s recent AI successes and the city’s cross-department community of practice that’s driving a shift toward embracing new technology.

Responsible AI implementation

As chief information officer for Florida’s third most populous city, Eric Hayden balances several considerations when his team seeks opportunities to modernize city operations with AI. Hayden explained, “Over the last two years, our team has focused on how to modernize city operations with responsible AI use while also maintaining public trust, transparency and, of course, accessibility.”

Hayden sees AI tools as a pathway to more efficient government operations by reducing internal workloads, improving data analysis and automating repetitive tasks. The ultimate result? “[Enabling] employees to deliver faster, more accurate and more consistent service,” Hayden said. “[City residents] choose Tampa as their homes, whether to work, live or play. As public servants, it’s our responsibility to fulfill expectations and share with them where to go to apply for services, who to call and what we can do to help start, carry out and resolve any potential problems as quickly as possible.”

TAMI: An AI service milestone

Tampa’s Assistant for Municipal Information is an AI-powered, public-facing search bot on Tampa’s city website that supports this vision to improve all residents’ ability to effectively access services.

Importantly for a city where nearly 200 different languages are spoken, TAMI has been designed to answer questions 24 hours per day, in about 75 different languages. Hayden said the search bot “dramatically improves our accessibility. It’s very important for a diverse community like ours.”

As evidence of TAMI’s rapid success, Hayden shared: “After 30 days of use, we’re getting over 1,000 inquiries every week with about a 98% favorability rating from users.”

TAMI’s development wasn’t an overnight effort. Hayden’s team had to decide whether to build TAMI in-house or purchase components through external vendors and how to bring different city departments into TAMI’s development and implementation processes.

After evaluating time-to-value, compliance, security, cost, maintenance burden and scalability, Hayden’s team chose to externally purchase the tool and then train it on the city’s publicly accessible knowledge bases.

While TAMI represents one of Tampa’s most recent AI successes, Hayden said it is part of a process for continuous improvement and transformation of the city’s digital resources. “We run about 60 projects at any time throughout the year and we’re constantly modernizing and transforming our approach to the work that we’re doing,” Hayden said.

Amid these improvements, Hayden is also firm in his view that AI is not meant to be a replacement for humans. “TAMI did not replace any employees. We didn’t cut or reduce hours. What we did was enhance access to our city resources,” he explained.

Building an integrated AI training strategy

Hayden gives the city’s Stewards of Technology, Analytics and Responsible Solutions program credit as the “secret sauce” for Tampa’s AI achievements. The STARS program is a cross-departmental community of practice that works to build an integrated cybersecurity, data and AI learning strategy for the city.

The program regularly convenes two to three volunteer “champions” from each of Tampa’s city departments to determine where opportunities exist for new training or process improvements using AI or other tools.

Hayden said the goal of STARS is to build a sufficient level of AI literacy across all of Tampa’s city departments, which then will enable each department to lead AI training for external users and internal staff.

“What our office is doing now is training our users and customers on responsible AI use and better data handling,” he said. “As we do that, each department provides more specific, tailored internal training because they know their own business best.”

Beyond STARS’s role in building AI literacy, its greater purpose is to encourage a cultural shift in Tampa’s government toward embracing new technology. The long-term goal of this shift is for a “New Tampa” that delivers efficient government services and is an appealing locale for residents.

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Continuing the conversation

The AI Center for Government champions AI innovators across all levels of government. If your agency is taking steps to lead AI well, we would love to hear from you. Join us as we highlight real-world AI use cases and convene public sector leaders from across the country to share tools and insights to lead confidently in the age of AI.

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