Software

NASCIO 2025 Midyear: California Puts GenAI Solutions in Action

State technology officials explained how generative artificial intelligence helps emergency response, traffic management and call center operations.

Mickey McCarter

Mickey McCarter is the senior editor of StateTech Magazine.

Speaking Wednesday at a panel of the NASCIO 2025 Midyear Conference, California technology officials shared how the state began its successful generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) pilots through a private sandbox, yielding demonstrable benefits for emergency services, traffic management and contact centers.

Addressing a National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ panel, California CIO Liana Bailey-Crimmins emphasized three quick takeaways: Expect the unexpected, put security first and invest in strong partnerships.

Bailey-Crimmins said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection was able to respond quickly to a wildfire in rural San Luis Obispo thanks to an AI alert. AI-enhanced cameras detected smoke and signaled Cal Fire before any person could make a 911 call, she said.

“They were able to put that out before any loss of life or natural resources,” Bailey-Crimmins said.

She added, “It just shows you the depth and breadth of the impact you make on people’s lives when it comes to benefits.”

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State Transportation Agency Assesses Traffic Safety With GenAI

After Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to guide AI adoption, the California Department of Technology established a secure sandbox and began testing 10 proofs of concept for GenAI solutions, said California CTO Jonathan Porat. Those proofs of concept were “deliberate and intentional” applications of GenAI.

“We’ve seen a lot of governments — state, national and international — take kind of extreme positions when it comes to GenAI as a new technology,” Porat said. Some decided to wait until industry agreed on the best applications; others went full steam ahead and see what they could do.

“It was really cool to see that our state took an approach in the middle, where we said, ‘What is it that we want to get out of this technology first, and what are those risks or negative policy outcomes that we want to try to prevent or mitigate if we can’t do anything else?’“ Porat said.

Built in the state’s private sandbox, the proofs of concept included initiatives such as analyzing large data sets, providing translation services, helping contact center employees, digitizing paper records, and combining and referencing different types of policies, among others. One particularly successful effort involved improving traffic management and highway safety.

“We worked with the California Department of Transportation to see how AI can help manage traffic and improve safety for the road users,” Porat said. “But one thing that was really exciting to see as we went through that project was we could keep adding more dimensions to the data. We care about how AI is going to affect our equity goals and our broader service delivery goals. And so, when you’re using an AI tool to manage traffic, there’s some important questions you need to ask around equity and say, ‘Who is the model optimizing traffic for? What are the implications going to be on different groups that are out there?’ And it was great to be able to bring those questions up and be able to add more data in so that we could have more sophisticated answers.”

In an April 29 press release, California touted the roadway safety progress made with GenAI. Caltrans sought “to process and interpret complex data to improve its traffic pattern analysis, address bottlenecks, and enhance overall traffic management,” according to the press release. Caltrans tamed with Microsoft to use Azure OpenAI to analyze transportation scenarios in support of reducing traffic congestion, improving incident response and boosting transit reliability. It plans to implement its AI-guided plan soon.

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State Tax Agency Strengthens Call Center Operations With GenAI

The press release also spotlighted how GenAI will support contact center response from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which will use AI to search volumes of reference data and assist staff responding to taxpayers.

Over the past 10 months, CDTFA used Claude, a GenAI assistant, to reduce the average time for response to customer assistance inquiries. In the past, CDTFA would reassign 280 staffers to assist with call center backup. But the agency was able to provide customer service and limit the need to reassign staff during the trial.

“California is demonstrating that GenAI can help us improve the way we do business for Californians. This project will serve as a proof point moving forward to see if we can scale this technology across state government call centers,” said CDTFA Director Trista Gonzalez in a statement.

During the NASCIO panel, Porat emphasized the use of GenAI as a force multiplier, not a substitute for human beings: “We don’t want to use GenAI to replace a state worker. We always want to use it to make their lives easier. So that meant that there was a lot of engagement with our workforce and there was a lot of engagement with our vendor partners to understand how this technology actually would be used.”

Dorat added that CDT was able to work with legacy employees to administer GenAI projects. The agency trained mainframe applications managers on overseeing the GenAI proofs of concept.

“Some of the individuals who were managing literally technology from the 1970s and ’80s are now managing our most cutting-edge technology,” Dorat said. “And it was really great to use this as an opportunity not just to learn about GenAI ... but also as an opportunity to really invest in and train our state workforce.”

Keep this page bookmarked for our coverage of the NASCIO 2025 Midyear Conference. Follow us on the social platform X at @StateTech and the official conference account, @NASCIO. Join the conversation using the hashtag #NASCIO25.

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