The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Government Industry in McKinney in 2025

McKinney's 2025 AI moment sits at the intersection of urgent capacity-building and fast-moving local demand: national research warns the US government is falling behind the private sector on AI adoption and urges procurement, testing, and talent investments to avoid dangerous gaps (Forethought research on the AI adoption gap), while Texas is already accelerating - state surveys show AI use leapt from 20% to 36% and regional analysis projects Collin County adding massive economic output as policy like HB 149 (the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act) encourages responsible, business-friendly adoption (Analysis of Texas AI adoption and HB 149 impact).

For McKinney officials that means pairing local pilot projects (chatbots to cut citizen-request resolution times) with practical workforce training; courses such as Nucamp's Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp (15-week program teaching prompt-writing and applied AI skills) teach prompt-writing and applied AI skills city teams can use immediately to boost service delivery and manage risk.

House Bill 149 - the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act (TRAIGA), signed June 22, 2025 and effective January 1, 2026 - establishes a statewide AI rulebook that applies to developers and deployers doing business in Texas and to government entities that use AI; core duties include mandatory disclosure when consumers interact with government AI, a ban on government

social scoring

, prohibitions on AI intentionally designed to discriminate or to manipulate self‑harm or criminal behavior, and tightened biometric rules on identification from public sources (Baker Botts TRAIGA summary and implications for companies, Enrolled Texas House Bill 149 full text).

TRAIGA also creates a 36‑month regulatory sandbox and multiple safe harbors (including alignment with NIST's AI RMF and red‑team testing) but vests exclusive enforcement with the Texas Attorney General, who must provide a 60‑day cure period and can seek civil penalties that reach six figures per violation and thousands per day for continued breaches - so what: municipal IT and procurement teams in McKinney should treat city AI systems as regulated infrastructure now, because disclosure, documentation, and risk controls are not optional under the new law.

House Bill 150 creates the Texas Cyber Command (TCC) as a centralized cybersecurity authority inside the University of Texas System - administratively attached to UTSA in San Antonio - and it pulls many operational duties from the Department of Information Resources so the state can run a 24/7 incident hotline, a cyber threat intelligence center and a digital forensics lab to coordinate incident response and statewide standards; for McKinney that means vendors and contracts will likely carry new cybersecurity terms, critical‑infrastructure operators and municipal systems can opt into TCC services (which may include fee‑for‑service support), and local IT teams should audit vendor SLAs, document incident‑reporting pathways, and name a TCC liaison now to avoid procurement and compliance gaps (see the bill signing details and goals at the Governor's office and an advisory summary on procurement and vendor impacts).

“Our state is under constant attack by cyber criminals, attacks that occur thousands of times every single second of every single day. Attacks often come from foreign actors from hostile countries like China, Russia, and Iran. They successfully attacked cities, counties, and government agencies in Texas, from Mission to Muleshoe. That changes today. I'm signing a law that creates the Texas Cyber Command. Its ultimate mission is to prevent and protect against cyber breaches. Working together with the Texas Cyber Command, Texas will be on the path to be a national leader in cybersecurity.”

Governor Abbott signs Texas Cyber Command into law - official press release | Pillsbury advisory on Texas Cyber Command procurement and vendor impacts

SB 1964 now requires Texas state agencies - and pushes local governments like McKinney - to inventory AI systems, flag “heightened‑scrutiny” tools that affect benefits or licensing, and document purposes, risk‑mitigation strategies, and alignment with a forthcoming state AI Code of Ethics, so procurement teams must treat any city AI purchase as reportable infrastructure rather than a black‑box add‑on; agencies will turn to the Department of Information Resources (DIR) to publish minimum governance standards and training, and DIR's implementation is projected to need 10 new full‑time staff and roughly $7.28 million in the 2026–27 biennium (with recurring costs thereafter), which means contract language should require vendor model documentation, testing/results for bias mitigation, and timely notice clauses even though the committee substitute scaled back public enforcement and some disclosure tools - in short, McKinney's RFPs, vendor SLAs, and evaluation checklists should be updated before SB 1964 takes effect to avoid procurement delays (Texas SB 1964 AI inventory and DIR duties, SB 1964 legislative timeline and enactment details).

The App Store Accountability Act (SB 2420), signed in May 2025 and effective January 1, 2026, requires app stores to verify user ages into four categories, affiliate minor accounts with a verified parent or guardian, and obtain parental consent for each download or in‑app purchase - measures that will change how McKinney's libraries, schools, and city‑issued devices permit software installs and purchases.

The law also forces developers to publish age ratings and content‑justifications, to accept consent signals from stores, and to delete verification data after use, while enforcement treats violations as deceptive trade practices that can trigger state action or private suits; importantly, the statute's broad definition of “app store” means local game platforms, launcher ecosystems, and even some educational kiosks may need new age‑gating workflows.

For McKinney procurement and IT teams, the takeaway is concrete: update RFP language, require vendor age‑verification and consent chaining documentation, and budget for per‑transaction consent systems now to avoid compliance gaps when the law takes effect - see the Pillsbury overview of the Texas App Store Accountability Act for practice guidance and the Texas Legislature C.S.S.B. 2420 committee report for implementation specifics and exemptions for emergency or nonprofit educational apps (Pillsbury overview of the Texas App Store Accountability Act, Texas Legislature C.S.S.B. 2420 committee report).

“Educators and researchers have raised concerns about the impact that smartphones have on student learning and student engagement.”

Texas has become the focal point for sprawling AI campuses: the Stargate I build in Abilene is already partially operational and expanding with Oracle and OpenAI adding roughly 4.5 GW of capacity to a national Stargate program that aims to deliver multi‑gigawatt campuses (Stargate I Abilene expansion coverage - CNBC), operators plan to rack tens of thousands of Nvidia GB200 GPUs at the site (reports cite ~64,000 GB200s by 2026) which creates intense, around‑the‑clock power demand (Nvidia GB200 GPU deployment plans - DataCenterDynamics); to meet that demand, Crusoe and partners have acquired gas turbines and pursued permits (permitted for 10 turbines to start, with dozens more discussed), a move that highlights real tradeoffs between rapid AI growth and grid reliability as well as local emissions and permitting debates (Gas turbine deployment and grid implications - Tom's Hardware).

So what for McKinney: these Central Texas buildouts show that municipal leaders must treat regional grid strain, procurement language for backup power and demand‑response, and workforce pipeline planning as immediate priorities rather than distant contingencies.

“Easy to throw around numbers, but this is a gigantic infrastructure project.” - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

For McKinney government leaders planning AI governance, CableLabs' Winter Conference (March 10–13, 2025) is a concentrated source of vendor and technical signals about secure, operational AI: the conference agenda (Hyatt Regency Orlando) features AI futurist Zack Kass (former head of go‑to‑market at OpenAI) as keynote and dedicated sessions such as “The Rise of AI Automation: A Catalyst for Network Innovation,” “Shaping the Security Evolution: Strategies From Industry CISOs,” adversarial machine‑learning demos, and a neXus startup spotlight that includes agentic‑AI network use cases - materials city IT and procurement teams can use to tighten RFP language, evaluate vendor bias/security documentation, and anticipate network‑automation tradeoffs; full event details and speaker lists are on the CableLabs Winter Conference page and exhibitor highlights (Aispire and others) show practical demos McKinney can ask vendors to replicate during pilots to validate claims before procurement.

Texas's 2025 AI industry outlook blends fast adoption, hard legal guardrails, and urgent infrastructure needs that directly affect McKinney: statewide AI use jumped from 20% to 36% between April 2024 and May 2025, underscoring that municipal services - from chatbots to permit‑processing agents - are already on the front lines of automation and productivity gains (Texas AI adoption and regional economic projections (2025)); at the same time the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA) and related enforcement give the Attorney General exclusive authority and six‑figure penalty exposure, meaning city procurement teams must bake disclosure, bias testing, and model documentation into RFPs now to avoid fines or cure‑period triggers (Texas Responsible AI Governance Act enforcement overview and legal risks).

Infrastructure is the third pillar: scaling data centers, grid capacity, and resilient supply chains is a known bottleneck for sustained AI operations, so McKinney should pair workforce reskilling and vendor SLAs with contingency planning for power and network demand to keep citizen services reliable (Deloitte analysis of AI infrastructure scaling for data centers and power grids).

So what: the combined trend means immediate, tangible actions - update procurement templates, require model logs and bias reports, and budget for training plus infrastructure contingencies - because legal exposure, service disruptions, or missed workforce readiness could turn a short-term pilot into a costly lapse.

McKinney teams should treat AI readiness as procurement, security, and legal workstreams running on parallel tracks: immediately build an annual AI use‑case inventory and tier systems by risk (purpose, data types, impact) to meet transparency norms and give the city a defensible audit trail (CDT best practices for public-sector AI use-case inventories); update RFP templates and SLAs to require vendor model documentation, bias‑testing results, red‑team reports, timely breach/incident notice clauses, and explicit cure‑period procedures so deployments align with TRAIGA's documentation duties and avoid six‑figure civil penalties when the law takes effect on Jan 1, 2026 (Baker Botts summary of the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act and preparation steps).

Assign a named TCC liaison, revise vendor cybersecurity SLAs to reflect Texas Cyber Command opt‑in services, and complete mandated official training (HB 3512) on the city timeline so procurement, IT, and legal teams can verify compliance during vendor evaluations and pilots (Texas AI policy roundup: required training and practical next steps).

The concrete payoff: a short, searchable inventory plus updated RFP clauses and one trained point person reduces legal exposure, speeds vendor onboarding, and keeps citizen services running if a model or vendor triggers a regulatory review.

Next steps for McKinney leaders are practical and urgent: treat municipal AI as regulated infrastructure by completing a citywide AI inventory and triage within 90 days, update all RFPs/SLAs to require model documentation, bias‑testing results, red‑team reports and timely cure/incident notice clauses to avoid the six‑figure exposure signaled by Texas enforcement, and name a single Texas Cyber Command liaison to streamline incident response and vendor coordination; monitor evolving federal and state guidance (track national overviews and timelines at the Software Improvement Group US AI legislation overview and the National Conference of State Legislatures state AI legislation tracker) and train staff with short, applied programs - such as Nucamp's 15‑week AI Essentials for Work - to get prompt‑writing, governance, and practical oversight skills into operations fast.

So what: a searchable inventory plus updated contract clauses and one trained point person turns regulatory risk (civil penalties, procurement delays) into manageable operational tasks that speed safe pilots into reliable public services while keeping McKinney aligned with Texas and federal trajectories (Software Improvement Group US AI legislation overview (Aug 2025), NCSL State AI legislation tracker (2025), Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp (15‑week) - Registration).