Artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise to enhance digital service government delivery. It offers opportunities to better design policy and expands analysis capabilities to improve decision-making. However, the rapidly evolving technology presents numerous challenges without adequate guardrails to ensure that AI use is human-centered, safe, trustworthy, transparent, ethical, and accountable. 

Minnesota’s awareness of the potential for adverse impact resulting from the unregulated use of AI in government programs and processes led Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) to convene a group called the Transparent Artificial Intelligence Governance Alliance (TAIGA) to work on issues related to AI policy, governance, and usage and to help develop processes and structures for safe deployment of the technology to improve lives. TAIGA is committed to balancing confidence and skepticism about the new technology by embracing transparency, security, and equity with human oversight and focusing on accuracy, accountability, and safety to deliver value and benefits to Minnesotans. 

New standard

TAIGA developed a /mnit/government/policies/security/ai-standard/index.jspPublic Artificial Intelligence Tool Security Standard for the responsible use of AI tools in personal tasks by Minnesota state employees and to reduce the risk of sharing private, sensitive, or protected data. The standard demonstrates with sample cases the permitted and prohibited uses of publicly available AI tools such as ChatGPT (OpenAI), Bing (Microsoft), and Bard (Google) within Minnesota’s legal and regulatory ambit. 

What's next

TAIGA is in the early development stages, partnering with cross-functional teams across the executive branch, including legal, human resources, procurement, subject experts, security, architecture, application development, accessibility, and communications, to explore and examine AI in all possible dimensions. The team is focused on developing processes to help catalog, evaluate, and implement technologies that incorporate artificial intelligence. 

TAIGA’s vision is to understand holistically the evolution of AI tools as it seeks to help develop a policy for governance collaboratively and identify future opportunities to align AI capabilities with state priorities to rapidly drive innovation and elevate the quality and timeliness of services. That vision comes to life when AI usage becomes responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable with minimal risks and maximum value, helping Minnesotans access state services faster and improve their lives. 

Stay tuned for more updates from TAIGA as the policy, processes, and governance are formalized.