Special series: Inside NACo - covering what county leaders should know about AI, cybersecurity, and more

On this episode of Connected Nation, we conclude our coverage from the National Association of Counties' (NACo) Conference and Exposition. 

We sit down with NACo's  Legislative Director of Telecommunications and Technology and cover everything from county broadband needs to developing a toolkit on AI for county leaders. 

Related links:
NACo website
The County Compass - an AI toolkit for county leaders

Transcript

Jessica Denson, Host (00:02):

This is Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband from closing the Digital Divide to improving your internet speeds. We talk technology topics that impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods.

(00:16):

On this episode of Connected Nation, we talk technology, broadband and ai, and specifically how it affects governing at the county level. We sit down with NACo's, legislative Director of telecommunications and technology to talk about a toolkit they're now offering to everyone. I'm Jessica Denson, and this is Connected Nation.

(00:41):

I'm at the National Association of Counties Conference and Exposition, which is taking place in Tampa, Florida, July 12th through the 15th. It's in Hillsborough County. I should mention that because it is a national association of counties. I'm standing with Seamus Dowdall Say your last name correctly. Good. He is the legislative Director for NACo, which is short for National Association of Counties. Thank you for joining me. Of

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (01:06):

Course. Happy to be here. Thank you. Jessica,

Jessica Denson, Host (01:08):

How has NACO been for you so far?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (01:10):

It's been going really well. We're on day three of the conference at this point, and it's been full of exciting and thoughtful discussions on everything related to county government. It's a great opportunity to see our county elected officials and senior staff get together and have a good time, but also get work done. It's really fun to see that in action.

Jessica Denson, Host (01:30):

Explain for the layman out there exactly what the conference is about. I know that I've been here, so I've seen that there's exhibit hall. There are some typical things to a conference, but it's set up a little differently, isn't it?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (01:45):

Of course. So, this is our biggest conference of the year. We bring almost 3000 county elected officials and staff from across the country here to convene for our annual business meeting where the membership will elect their new second vice president who will eventually lead NACO as president, but we also engage in policy discussions. 

This is where we'll pass our federal advocacy platform for what counties are advocating for in Washington DC on their key priorities. And it's also an opportunity to engage in thoughtful conversations and discussions for what's going on back home and what are the key priorities that they're hearing from constituents. So, we really are pleased and honored every day to offer that forum for our members

Jessica Denson, Host (02:28):

And the topics. They range from childcare to housing to healthy communities, and it's both urban, rural, black communities, Hispanic, native American. Right. Expand a little bit about that, why do you have different caucuses and what's that about?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Dir., Tech, NACo (02:48):

Yeah, of course. We really represent the broad spectrum of county government. So, from your biggest counties, the LA County and Cook Counties of the world, all the way down to the most rural public lands focused counties in the nation. We really represent a broad spectrum, and we are touching on every single issue. So, insights and findings from everything from our artificial intelligence exploratory committee, which has debuted,

Jessica Denson, Host (03:12):

Which we're going to talk about in a minute. We'll talk a

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (03:14):

Bit about just a moment to our mental health commission who is continuing to provide resources for counties that are on the front line of offering mental health diversion and resources and focus for our residents in crisis. There are so many different priorities that come at an intersection for this conference, and it's really key opportunity to get a lot of takeaways.

Jessica Denson, Host (03:32):

Yeah. One question, and if you feel like I'm maybe not the person to answer that, that's totally fine, but I know that a lot of native organizations or tribal nations, they are sovereign. How does NACO work in with that type of government?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (03:49):

Yeah, it's a great question. We have various committees, including our intergovernmental committee that's always talking about county tribal relations and best practices relationship building. I may not be the best person to talk about it, although I will say that we are very inclusive of a lot of different representations here at this

Jessica Denson, Host (04:05):

Conference. Yeah, I've really seen that firsthand. Just even just walking around, you can see that by the signage and the different things that are going on. Of course. Okay. So let's talk about some of your expertise. I know that you are part of the AI exploratory committee, I guess is what you're calling it, or what do you call it? Share a little bit about that, what you're doing, of course.

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo(04:24):

So yeah, so more of my background. So I handle telecommunications and technology issues for the association for our government affairs teams, so everything from broadband access and expansion to our new artificial intelligence exploratory committee. These are some of the key issues that I follow. Our artificial intelligence exploratory committee, we formed this in May of 2023. I think as many folks recall chat, GPT was the talk of the country and of the world. There was really this renewed focus on generative ai. 

So we formed a committee to really explore what the role of this new technology will ultimately be, not only in the broader society and economy, but also county operations and services. So thinking about how counties may even begin to adapt this technology and what should they be keeping in mind from everything from data governance to robust cybersecurity practices, but also examining the benefits of the technology that may be coming along. So improvements in efficiencies for county governments and helping to augment the county workforce. So many benefits and yet also challenges which ultimately produce opportunities ahead.

Jessica Denson, Host (05:30):

So I saw that there was a toolkit on this now. Well, what would be included in something, a county AI toolkit?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (05:38):

So the committee has intentionally called this their AI county compass. The reason why it's a compass as each county may move in their own direction or speed or intention for having

Jessica Denson, Host (05:48):

Clever, clever would like

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (05:50):

To use, of course a very clever on behalf of the committee, but the committee wanted to design a toolkit where any county matter their level of understanding could sit down with this report, get an understanding of what artificial intelligence is, as well as generative artificial intelligence, and learn about how their county, their staff, their teams, can approach this technology thoughtfully and responsibly and not with fear or any sort of apprehension of the technology because we hear about it so much. I think that's oftentimes an instinctual reaction. I don't know what this is going to do to my data systems or I dunno how I'll be able to translate a chat bot into direct resident facing programs, but with time and exploration, we're hopeful that this toolkit will be laying down the foundation for county governments to really take a leadership role in this space.

Jessica Denson, Host (06:41):

I've been talking to people this whole time, this last couple days, but a representative from Esri, Richard led beater, and he said that one of the mistakes that people are making is they're putting all AI in the same box, which you did say generative ai. They're different things. There's different kinds of things with that. Do you address that in your toolkit? We

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo(07:04):

Do. So when we lay out in the toolkit early on the definitions, we kind of clearly make the distinction between just ai, which may be automation. This may be what is heating and cooling your home through automated systems, or when you walk into a room and the lights turn on because there's a motion detector. 

hat's what we think of as automation or ai, but it's this generative piece that's really the latest technology to come out where there are novel content ideas and creation being generated by these really sophisticated large language models. That is really the new frontier technology that the committee ISS directly addressing. But things like AI have been around for quite some time. It's only now that it's really entered into the public lexicon and folks are kind of talking about it and hearing about it. So they really want to

Jessica Denson, Host (07:50):

Learn more where the average person could get their hands on it or know that they have their hands on it, they might already have, but just being more aware of it. Exactly. Are there different things with that or different challenges with that depending on the community, or are you seeing something similar all over across the board as in seeing the same fears, same challenges, same opportunities, or is it different depending? Yeah,

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (08:14):

I think some of the key things we hear, of course, and we actually call them myths in our toolkit, but the idea that if any particular person kind of ignores this technology that it'll go away or that it won't be a part of our future. The reality is, and it became kind of a slogan of the committee, was that the genie's out of the model. So generative AI is out, it's in the public. 

There are tools that are available that utilize the technology. So counties really shouldn't approach it from a stance of fear apprehension or try and block it systematically or do any sort of stepping away from the technology, but really be thoughtful in your approach and set the guardrails. I think one of the biggest challenges has been how do we do that? And again, we're really hopeful that this toolkit will offer some key roadmap guidelines to get folks.

Jessica Denson, Host (09:08):

And if somebody wasn't at NACO or the conference or was and didn't see the toolkit, is there a way they can get it?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (09:16):

Absolutely. So we put this imprint as well as online. So we have a whole online customized compass where you can actually filter out different parts of the report depending on if you're a county elected official or chief information officer. Are you an election official or a county staff member, or you just the general public looking to get a better understanding? We've put this all onto our website that you can find on naco.org.

Jessica Denson, Host (09:40):

Okay. Well, we'll include a link in the description of this podcast. Now let's move on to a different topic. You don't get to go yet, Seamus, you're still with me. Fair enough. Let's talk about broadband and technology in general. I mean, there's no secret there's billions of dollars out there right now with bead. There's also the digital equity money that's coming, and NTIA and the federal government has asked for plans for digital equity. Talk a little bit about what you're hearing from your representatives and what NACO is doing in response to help counties big and small figure out how to navigate this space.

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (10:14):

Absolutely. Well, we know like many do that this is truly a historic moment for broadband. Federal broadband funding and programs like the BEAD Program are going to deliver last mile connectivity to every single unserved and underserved location. So counties are really approaching that challenge with a lot of enthusiasm and energy and capacity to really be in touch with their state broadband offices to make sure that we have the most accurate map and picture of precisely where this funding needs to go.

 And a lot of county officials are really serving on the front lines right now to make sure that the residents that they know are unconnected are going to be able to receive federal funding to receive build out of this infrastructure. And that expands to the digital equity programs that are on the way as well. We know that infrastructure is only one side of the coin when it comes to the Digital 
Divide. And counties, even throughout the Covid pandemic played an early role in deploying hotspots to school children that needed to connect for classrooms and provide device support for those who didn't have that connectivity device in the home. We really saw some of those non infrastructure related uses of funding or of resources to ensure that folks are actually able to fully benefit from what high-speed internet offers.

Jessica Denson, Host (11:33):

Did that really provide some learning that was needed? Because when we had conversations with Connect Nation with others before the pandemic, there wasn't an understanding of the idea that broadband was a necessity. It was more or thought of as a luxury, and there wasn't necessarily a lot of understanding of how to do it. It can be a complicated thing as you know. So is there a little more understanding among leaders and stuff since we've gone through that, some good that came out of that and kind of where are they now with that?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (12:06):

Of course. And it's a great example to kind of focus on COVID for a moment, because in the wake of the pandemic, we actually organized a broadband task force, and one of our key goals was to really define what that county role is when it comes to broadband deployment and activities. So we landed on a variety of different roles that counties can play. So everything from being key partners with providers who are looking to deploy or offer other resources to the community to actually being data aggregators. 

So we have a lot of kind of insights on maybe residents who are already in need through other social service or human service programs where we may want to target additional resources to being community conveners. So the county is kind of a great example of a single entity that can really convene a community around a particular infrastructure project and kind of help navigate it through the construction and the permitting processes. 

So we really found a variety of different ways that counties can play key roles in this process, and that was a learning effort, but this community here at NACA was able to learn together, and since our broadband task force came out with their report back in July of 2021, we've done a lot of work to help share some of those findings, particularly as the bipartisan infrastructure law brought in additional federal

Jessica Denson, Host (13:22):

Funds. Yeah, 65 billion. Yeah, a lot. Yeah. What do you think, and I know I can't keep you too much longer because you're busy, apparently I had to track you down. No worries. What do you think is next in this space in the broadband technology space, whichever anything you're excited about for counties? Yeah,

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo(13:42):

So I think starting with the AI and then on broadband, but with generative ai, the committee, which has debuted its report, it's at the end of its official term, but we're really seeing this as the beginning of a journey. So we know that this technology, again, is not going away. We want to help counties double down on their cybersecurity standards to make sure that they're able to learn about this technology and to responsibly adopt it or develop guidance around the use of it. And that's an ongoing journey that make us excited to embark on with our members to help educate them. And we plan to do that in a variety of ways in the coming months and across the next year. And with respect to broadband, it's continuing to mobilize our counties to get involved on that front line with their state broadband offices and other partners that are really scoping out how to help continue to get more residents connected to high-speed internet. And again, that goes beyond infrastructure and

Jessica Denson, Host (14:38):

Thinking holistically it

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (14:40):

About affordability, accessibility, device and digital literacy. There's so many different angles that county officials can really focus on. And so we're continuing to double down on

Jessica Denson, Host (14:50):

That as well. Heather Gate, our executive vice President of Digital Inclusion, just applauded, I'm sure from wherever she is at the moment. Exactly. Did you say that digitally? That's fantastic that all the different buckets. Yes. We had

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Dir., Tech, NACo (15:01):

Her on Friday too before our committee, and they heard a great presentation. So it's great to have,

Jessica Denson, Host (15:06):

She's very passionate about digital literacy and digital inclusion. So yeah, it was very good keeping those buckets. So tell me a little bit about you, Seamus. What's your background and how'd you end up at naco? So

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Dir., Tech, NACo (15:18):

Before naco, I worked for a few years on the media and on a business role. So I worked for Politico and I helped manage some of their state bureau of businesses. And before that I was an undergrad, so I was getting my political science degree and I always loved the county angle. I was an intern my senior year at Union County through the Historical Society at the college I went to. So I've always had an appreciation for local government. And after a few years of getting into the workforce, I saw an opportunity at naco and I knew I had to take it and was ready for a new challenge in the government affairs space. And it's been a great three years with Don

Jessica Denson, Host (15:57):

Ever since. Did you grow up in the DC area?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (16:00):

I did. I actually grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, so just north of DC. So it's kind of a familiar area for me, kind of like home.

Jessica Denson, Host (16:07):

Do you have a favorite crab cake spot?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo(16:10):

That's a great question. You might have to go to Annapolis to get your best crabs, but a lot of small mom and pop shops that do a great job,

Jessica Denson, Host (16:17):

best crab cakes?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Director, Telecommunications & Technology, NACo (16:19):

Yeah.

Jessica Denson, Host (16:20):

Is it fun talking to people from all over the country? I've enjoyed it, but I'm sure since you have a background in journalism and are political politico, right? You said? Yes. And just in general working in government, you have to like people, right? You do. Absolutely.

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Dir., Tech, NACo (16:35):

There's nothing better than a place naco where you meet everyone from a commissioner from Hawaii to a judge from Texas to a variety of other states and locations. So it's great to see a lot of different perspectives come in

Jessica Denson, Host (16:47):

This country. So when's the next big conference? Our next big event for naco?

Seamus Dowdall, Legislative Dir., Tech, NACo (16:51):

So we do two major conferences a year. This is our big annual, we do our winter meeting in Washington, DC every year. So we'll be back again at that in very early March. But before then, we probably have our three main caucuses, so our large urban counties, our rural counties, and then our western counties will all convene together in California and Sonoma County, California for a few days of a symposium there for some more thought leadership, best

Jessica Denson, Host (17:18):

Practices. So coming together. And just so you know, I've talked to a lot of people from counties, exhibitors, everything, and their favorite thing is the fact that they get to learn from each other. And so good job. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much, Seamus. I appreciate your time. It was nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

That concludes our special coverage from the National Association of Counties Conference and Exposition, taking place in Tampa, Florida. Until next time, I'm Jessica Denson and this is Connected Nation. You'd like to know more about us head to connect nation.org.