The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Government Industry in Winston Salem in 2025

AI matters for Winston‑Salem government in 2025 because North Carolina is already proving the payoff - state pilots show generative tools cutting a 20‑minute task to 20 seconds and saving employees 30–60+ minutes a day - meaning city staff can spend more time on policy and constituents rather than paperwork (North Carolina State Treasurer OpenAI pilot report (2025)).

Yet adoption brings new risks: local firms and agencies must defend against AI‑powered attacks while deploying AI responsibly, so pairing faster services with stronger cyber hygiene and shared threat intelligence is essential (AI cybersecurity implications for Winston‑Salem).

Practical upskilling - such as a focused 15‑week AI Essentials for Work bootcamp that teaches prompts, workflows, and safe use - will be the difference between seizing benefits and inheriting liabilities for Winston‑Salem in 2025.

“Adding the power and speed of artificial intelligence to the talent, experience and judgment of our state employees is the key to unlocking greater workplace achievements.” - Treasurer Brad Briner

Understanding U.S. AI regulation in 2025 means reading two trends at once: an aggressive federal push to speed AI adoption and fund infrastructure, and a parallel reality of state‑level rules and agency enforcement that still bite.

The White House's “America's AI Action Plan” (July 23, 2025) centers on three pillars - accelerating innovation, building AI infrastructure (including expedited permitting for very large data centers), and international competitiveness - while directing agencies to change procurement and NIST guidance to align with federal priorities (White House America's AI Action Plan and Executive Orders - July 23, 2025).

At the same time, CIOs and CISOs face enforcement and compliance pressure today: the SEC and FTC are using existing authorities, and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework remains the practical roadmap even as agencies consider revisions - so local teams should adopt RMF‑style risk management, vendor due diligence, and incident planning now (CISO's guide to U.S. AI laws, governance, and risk management).

For Winston‑Salem, that double reality matters: OMB guidance may factor a state's AI regulatory posture into discretionary funding decisions, and a clear, auditable set of safeguards will be the city's ticket to federal grants or partnership; imagine federal funding decisions turning on a concise vendor-security packet and documented impact assessments rather than slogans - practical governance will win the day.

"common sense federal standard that supersedes all states"

North Carolina already offers a practical roadmap for Winston‑Salem to adopt AI responsibly: the N.C. Department of Information Technology's AI Framework is a

living document

that frames AI as a risk‑managed, auditable part of state IT policy, and the companion set of seven Principles for Responsible Use spells out concrete expectations - human oversight, transparency, security and resiliency, privacy‑first data governance, fairness, auditing and workforce empowerment - that local leaders can mirror (N.C. Department of Information Technology AI Framework for Responsible Use, N.C. Department of Information Technology Principles for Responsible Use of AI).

Practical alignment means three immediate actions for city managers: require vendor due diligence and data classification aligned to state rules, enforce approved‑tool and account controls (avoid personal/free accounts for government data), and build measurable controls - pre‑deployment testing, continuous monitoring and a clear

modify/replace/deactivate

pathway if a model fails audits - mirroring NC State's operational guidance on approved tools, prompt handling of sensitive data, and when to disclose AI assistance (North Carolina State University AI Guidance and Best Practices).

The payoff is tangible: a policy that's updated as fast as the tech, a trained workforce that treats AI outputs as drafts not facts, and simple records - tool name, vendor, date, and link - so every automated decision is traceable.

This approach turns the state's living framework into a local playbook that reduces legal and equity risk while keeping innovation moving forward.

Top AI choices for Winston‑Salem in 2025 are those already packaged for government use and proven for the tasks cities care about: the GSA's new Multiple Award Schedule now lists Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, and OpenAI's ChatGPT - making procurement simpler for public agencies that need vetted vendors and contract pathways (GSA Multiple Award Schedule listing for government AI procurement); the Pentagon's recent awards to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI underscore that these vendors are being deployed at scale for mission work.

For everyday municipal wins, prioritize automation-first tools - entity resolution, OCR/HTR, RPA and classification models - to clean property records, speed permitting workflows, and prefill caseworker forms, rather than rushing public chatbots (Code for America recommends piloting AI internally and using templates or classification for public interactions) (Code for America AI in government cheat sheet for piloting and governance).

The economics line up: the 2025 AI Index documents big performance gains and notes inference costs have fallen dramatically (over 280‑fold for some models), meaning smaller, purpose‑built models can now be affordable for city pilots - start with low‑risk, high‑ROI back‑office projects via GSA or state procurement, measure accuracy, and scale when governance and monitoring prove robust (2025 AI Index report on model performance and inference costs).

“America's global leadership in AI is paramount, and the Trump Administration is committed to advancing it. By making these cutting-edge AI solutions available to federal agencies, we're leveraging the private sector's innovation to transform every facet of government operations.” - Michael Rigas

High‑impact AI use cases for Winston‑Salem in 2025 start with the low‑risk, high‑ROI projects that already pay for themselves: automating permit customer service and inquiry handling saved the city 55 hours across five Development Services team members in the first week alone, freeing staff to focus on inspections, plan reviews, and constituent outreach rather than repetitive phone and email triage (Acta permitting efficiency case study in Winston‑Salem).

Pairing that kind of front‑office automation with back‑office tools - OCR/HTR for records, entity‑resolution and property data standardization scripts to reduce appraisal errors - creates immediate capacity and cleaner data for planners and assessors (Forsyth County property data standardization scripts for Winston‑Salem).

Equally important is designing pilots with bias controls and mitigation baked in so faster service doesn't produce unfair outcomes; research on algorithmic bias and mitigation offers practical checkpoints to include in every local AI pilot (Research on algorithmic bias mitigation for local government AI pilots).

The practical rule: start small (one‑day installs, minutes of training), measure accuracy and equity, then scale the wins.

“With Acta, we have a central place to store all of the information we need to deploy to assist customers with their development needs. Now, our staff are less distracted and have more capacity to do all of their tasks without added stress. And, as management, I am confident that no matter who's responding to a customer, the customer is getting all the information they need to submit a permit application smoothly.” - Yolanda Price, Permitting Supervisor

For Winston‑Salem, an effective organizational model blends compact Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) with a small, centralized AI resource that owns tooling, procurement checks, and a pilot‑to‑scale playbook; an IPT - defined as a multi‑disciplined, stakeholder‑rich team - keeps project work focused and fast, and the IPT playbook even breaks teams into Overarching, Working‑level, and Program‑level tiers depending on strategic versus execution needs (Integrated Product Team (IPT) best practices for government).

Best practices matter: keep IPTs as lean as possible, communicate roles up front, set clear goals, and stick to a meeting rhythm so pilots don't bog down in coordination overhead.

Pair those IPTs with a small central office that curates reusable assets - like Forsyth County property data standardization scripts - and a clear pilot‑to‑scale AI roadmap so successful automations migrate from prototype to citywide service without duplication or vendor sprawl (Forsyth County property data standardization scripts for local government, pilot-to-scale AI roadmap for municipal government).

Finally, design staffing to flex - small cross‑functional teams for pilots plus targeted reskilling for roles reshaped by automation - so the city turns early wins into sustained capacity rather than temporary experiments.

Solid data, security, and governance foundations turn AI pilots into reliable city services: start by treating a data inventory as the single source of truth - an actively maintained map that names owners, catalogs sensitive fields, and tracks lineage so compliance and audits are straightforward (see the practical steps in the DASCA guide to creating a data inventory DASCA guide to creating a data inventory).

Pair that living inventory with an operational inventory system and clear controls - Winston‑Salem's choice of MASS Group's Traceability Made Easy® (hosted on AWS) shows how cloud hosting, barcode/QR workflows, and integration with financial systems deliver 24/7 real‑time traceability and reduce reliance on scarce internal IT resources (MASS Group Traceability Made Easy inventory management for Winston‑Salem).

Lock governance into a repeatable program: appoint data owners, classify assets by sensitivity, require vendor due‑diligence and dashboarded monitoring, and use local partners and tooling for discovery and mapping - leveraging the Innovation Quarter's GIS and partnership model can speed cross‑agency data projects and make provenance visible to planners and auditors alike (Innovation Quarter GIS mapping and partnership programs).

The payoff is practical and vivid: a searchable inventory that surfaces a missing asset or risk in minutes instead of weeks, enabling fast, auditable decisions while AI automations scale safely across departments.

Winston‑Salem communicators need a short, practical rulebook: use only vetted, enterprise tools for city work, never paste resident or sensitive records into consumer chatbots, and treat every AI output as a draft that must be checked, sourced, and signed off before publishing - simple steps that prevent a single misused prompt from leaking citizen data to external servers, a risk documented in recent GenAI incident reports (and avoidable with DLP and Zero‑Trust controls) (Zscaler generative AI security guidance for state and local governments).

Keep a lightweight internal inventory of tools and prompt templates so every public‑facing use is auditable, and disclose AI's role when it substantially shapes content - record tool name/version and confirm a staff review, per leading municipal playbooks (San Francisco generative AI guidelines for city communications).

For everyday practice, establish prompt hygiene (strip PII before sending, use redaction patterns), require sources for any factual claims (verify and cite originals, not the model), and train teams on bias checks and retention policies so outputs serve equity and compliance goals; local guidance and security best practices for government communicators offer ready checklists to operationalize these steps (CivicPlus generative AI safety and best practices for local government communicators).

Whether created by AI or a human, you are accountable for anything you use or share.

Monitoring, measurement, procurement, and scaling in Winston‑Salem should be practical and metric‑driven: start pilots with clear SMART KPIs - time saved, resolution rate, user adoption, model‑drift detection time, human‑override rate, and audit‑readiness - and instrument those into dashboards so leaders can see impact and risk in real time (KPIs for AI governance best practices).

Use the NC Treasurer's pilot as a benchmark: a 12‑week project that reported roughly a 10% productivity lift, routine tasks shrinking from “20 minutes to 20 seconds,” and many employees saving about an hour a day - concrete outcomes that make ROI conversations straightforward (WRAL coverage of the NC Treasurer AI pilot).

Tie procurement to measurement: award short, testable pilot contracts with defined acceptance criteria and vendor‑due‑diligence checklists, then follow a documented pilot‑to‑scale roadmap so winning automations migrate from prototype to production without vendor sprawl (pilot‑to‑scale AI roadmap for government procurement).

Finally, pair quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback - user surveys and frontline reviews - to catch equity, usability, and accuracy issues early and ensure Winston‑Salem scales responsible, auditable AI rather than fragile point solutions.

“What we've learned first and perhaps unsurprisingly, is that this technology saves a material amount of time.” - State Treasurer Brad Briner

Conclusion: a practical next step for Winston‑Salem is to treat AI adoption like the NC Treasurer's 12‑week experiment - pick one clear, public‑data use case (financial reviews, records cleanup, or permit triage), draw a bright red line around private data, and run a time‑boxed pilot with partners and university reviewers so outcomes and risks are auditable; North Carolina's pilot with OpenAI showed the model: a 12‑week, low‑cost memorandum of understanding, staff guidance and university evaluation that produced roughly a 10% productivity lift and examples where 20‑minute tasks dropped to 20 seconds, freeing many employees up to an hour a day (North Carolina Department of State Treasurer AI pilot press release, WRAL coverage of the North Carolina 12‑week AI pilot).

A 12‑week pilot recipe for Winston‑Salem: define scope and SMART KPIs, enforce a privacy “bright red line,” supply short hands‑on training for frontline staff (or a deeper cohort via a 15‑week AI Essentials for Work upskill), instrument metrics and human‑in‑the‑loop checks, and document a pilot‑to‑scale procurement checklist so proven automations migrate into production without vendor sprawl (AI Essentials for Work - registration and syllabus).

This approach turns early efficiency wins into repeatable, auditable services that preserve public trust while unlocking staff time for higher‑value civic work.

“What we've learned first and perhaps unsurprisingly, is that this technology saves a material amount of time.” - State Treasurer Brad Briner