1st Chesterfield County, Va.
Chesterfield County, Va., took a creative approach to making services safer and more accessible to residents, and it helped it earn first place in this year’s Digital Counties Survey. For example, many of the county’s most notable accomplishments leverage AI technology.
With its redesigned website, the county introduced an AI-powered search, made navigation more intuitive and added tools to improve accessibility. By using generative AI, the new search offers instant and concise answers to common questions. The conversational ease of the new feature allows users to get accurate information at their fingertips. The county also enhanced its mobile compatibility, delivering a smoother user experience on smartphones and tablets.
Chesterfield County bolstered its cybersecurity posture over the past year too with the help of AI. County employees participated in Microsoft Copilot’s FastTrack for AI security assessment and explored adversarial machine learning, which supported workforce training, strengthened risk management and reinforced security measures. The county IT team meets regularly to evaluate emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing, examining potential impacts on operations, data protection and service delivery.
To serve its increasingly diverse population, the county also recently added translation services to its Emergency Communications Center (ECC). By offering video sign language interpretation via computer and translation services in over 300 languages, ECC ensures its emergency response services are inclusive to all. The ECC launched a real-time multimedia platform that allows first responders to receive live video streams, images and location information data from callers. Lastly, the center’s Text-to-911 services offer alternatives for residents who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Other key achievements include equipping public safety vehicles with 5G technology, expanding Wi-Fi and launching a new Enterprise Health Records platform for the Mental Health Support Services Department. These accomplishments underscore the county’s dedication to providing impactful services that meet the evolving needs of residents.
2nd Prince William County, Va.
Prince William County has a comprehensive security strategy that focuses on identity and access management, and it employs zero-trust architecture. In 2024, DoIT performed a risk assessment for all 32 county agencies and developed a risk assessment process to score county vendors’ environments for security, and also “right-sized” its cyber insurance, reducing cost.
In 2024, the county awarded $1.4 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to Verizon to run fiber Internet to 474 neighborhoods. As of March 2025, 470 of those were ready for service, and the county reports that 99 percent of its residents now have access to broadband. The Digital Prince William initiative focuses on broadband and affordability, helping residents who struggle to afford a high-speed connection and also providing free digital literacy training to communities that need it.
3rd Cumberland County, N.C.
Cumberland County lands in third place this year, aligning its tech investment with executive goals, which include expanding its digital communications engagement, bringing automation to bear on cybersecurity and deploying an on-prem large language model in support of modernization.
The county, home to nearly 340,000 residents, is working to transform digital government via CumberlandONE (Our Neighbor Experience), with user-friendly platforms including C-FORT, the Cumberland-Fayetteville Opioid Response Team Partner Portal, which inventories opioid intervention materials in real time to ensure resources are properly distributed. Innovation and Technology Services (ITS) worked with county Social Services to transform a call center after Medicaid expansion — facilitating more than 14,000 related calls and driving increased enrollment while enabling total remote work for 50 staff.
An AI-powered chatbot has handled more than 2,300 resident calls, slashing call volumes, and the MyCCNCGov mobile app — downloaded more than 3,000 times since July 2024 — makes it easier to reach and report issues. A new digital wallet, MyCCNCPay, has processed more than $50 million in more than 39,000 transactions.
Late last year, the county stood up a solution to manage cyber risk with AI, machine learning, encryption, analytics and data loss prevention, in accordance with its 2024 Strategic Plan. That has saved nearly 300 staff hours, classified hundreds of thousands of files and removed more than 1,000 considered to be overexposed.
Leaders reclassified two essential IT roles to align more closely with modern tech needs — doing a pay study, a minimum requirements review, and benchmarking against other local governments. A tech day event drove employee engagement, and an internship program delivered hands-on IT experience and onboarded one full-time staffer.
4th Dutchess County, N.Y.
In the past year, Dutchess County, N.Y., has been working both to improve service to county employees as well as to the residents and businesses within its borders. On the front end are several projects of note, such as the Agricultural Districts Viewer, which allows farmers to forgo manual searches and office visits to county staff in favor of easily searching to see whether their land is within areas eligible for tax incentives, protections and other benefits — as well as providing land use information to landowners, developers and policymakers. Similarly, a Natural Resource Inventory is helping to guide land use decisions and conservation efforts. The Drinking Water Regulation Information Portal is facilitating information exchange between the county and water supply operators, and an online health permitting system is easing the process of obtaining permits for food service businesses.
On the back end, the county established a Real-Time Crime Center pulling in various camera feeds and data streams to allow for better public safety visibility. That includes an analytics platform that indexes footage and allows users to search for colors, objects, clothing, vehicles or even facial attributes. A new CAD Internet reporting application has hooked up county fire departments with call information from the 911 dispatch center, while drones are helping the emergency response department better track and manage wildfires. Dutchess County has also toughened up its IT infrastructure, expanding disaster recovery at two sites while bringing down recovery time from days to hours. Upgrades to networks and firewall equipment have improved the cyber stance, and a new attack surface management system is providing real-time visibility and continuous monitoring.
5th Sonoma County, Calif.
Sonoma County secured a fifth-place spot in this year’s Digital Counties Survey for its measured but innovative approach to IT implementation. The Information Systems Department, led by Director Dan Fruchey, focuses on deploying technologies that address real-world needs and streamline operations, while also being responsible with county funds. These sorts of projects include things like the replacement of a 40-plus-year-old justice system, replacement of a legacy phone data center dating back to 1965, and an independent analysis of public record processes and systems.
In 2024, the county also completed its Property GIS Hub project, which includes assessment values, tax rolls, aerial images and the ability to pay property tax bills online. The county’s commitment to citizen access is further showcased in efforts to boost digital accessibility across its 26 websites. The sites all comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA standards.
When it comes to machine learning and AI, the department is integrating the technology into its Enterprise Justice Exchange and Hub to link data and identify sources, as well as to sort through variations in data entries. The undertaking is improving accuracy and efficiency. The county has also developed a new policy and risk framework for the adoption of new AI tools within the departments. GIS tools — bolstered with data from local state and other county agencies — are helping the county to identify on-site wastewater treatment systems for an improved understanding of not only their locations but of potential negative impacts, like pollution.
6th Hamilton County, Ind.
In the face of a fast-growing population and headwinds from federal and state efforts to cut government spending, IT leaders of Hamilton County, Ind., made strides in digital governance and services over the past year. To meet the moment with emerging technologies, they established an AI working group and created several new positions, including chief information security officer, chief compliance officer and procurement director.
The implementation of Workday’s Adaptive Planning tool improved their ability to make strategic technology investments, and they completed a number of major public-facing projects: revamping and reorganizing the county’s website with the help of web traffic data, and meeting the Department of Justice’s new accessibility standards for web and mobile applications, which entailed forming a working group, conducting internal trainings and hiring auditors.
Finally, the county also upgraded the network hardware in a dozen county departments and offices, invested in doubling the resolution of its aerial GIS maps for future use in planning and design projects, and deployed Copilot to automatically summarize meetings, which translated to both faster decision-making and greater transparency.
7th Placer County, Calif.
Placer County is a geographically large and varied county that spans from the Sacramento, Calif., metropolitan area up through the Sierra Nevada and all the way to the Nevada border. That’s a lot of space, but the central IT shop in the county has acquitted itself well, landing at seventh for its population category in this year’s survey. One of the areas where Placer’s tech work really stood out is workforce development. The county invested in leadership development programs, upskilling in AI and cybersecurity, and partnerships with local universities aimed at attracting new talent. Placer is also establishing an Innovation Center of Excellence, where emerging tech can be both piloted and scaled. Leadership training programs around digital transformation and AI governance will also give staff the skills to tackle evolving challenges in perpetuity.
In other AI work, planned initiatives include AI-driven document processing for contract review and compliance, automated cyber threat detection and AI-assisted business intelligence dashboards that support data-driven decision-making. Meanwhile, in terms of cybersecurity, Placer expanded identity and access management, implemented multifactor authentication, and conducted penetration testing for both election security and HIPAA compliance. Perhaps most impressive, however, was that Placer reduced its phish-prone rate below industry standards.
Finally, Placer also did some great public-facing work, including addressing homelessness and immigration through enhanced use of data-driven decision-making, GIS mapping, analytics dashboards and automatic reporting tools. The IT shop there also launched Engage Placer, an interactive platform for residents that features multilingual access and real-time updates.
7th Union County, N.C.
Needing to do less with more is part of the reality for Union County’s IT department. The county, which is within the Charlotte metro area, is experiencing growth of almost 3 percent annually. Even so, the department is facing a 1.5 percent budget cut, challenging tech leaders to meet the needs of residents without spending too much of their tax dollars. The county’s Sprout web chat assistant plays a part, guiding online visitors to information and collecting feedback, with enhancements that allow the county to handle requests in 71 languages.
A customer portal enables residents to monitor water use and set alerts for high levels of use, as well as to pay bills. Developers in that fast-growing area also can gain permit approvals online and make their own payments, adding efficiency to one of the main economic drivers of the region. Accessibility hasn’t been forgotten even as the budget seems ready to shrink, with Level Access providing compliance-related services and training for the county’s public-facing websites. A new library app helps constituents search for books and otherwise access library resources.
No agency can ignore AI, no matter the budget situation, and for Union County that means deploying an invoice-processing tool for the finance department. The generative AI tool is pushing manual invoice entry into the past, which promises to reduce errors and add speed to the approval process via data extraction — perhaps leading to long-term cost savings.
8th Lane County, Ore.
Addressing social issues is a pressing challenge for Lane County, Ore., and the city is using data and technology to do so while improving residents’ lives.
Data is a key part of the county’s plan to address disparities and improve equity for residents. The county’s IT team expanded data and analytics tools and training in 2024, and it partnered with the state for data sharing related to its behavioral health deflection program, an alternative to jail for drug possession crimes that has demonstrably reduced recidivism. The use of Power BI has helped make county data more accessible across departments. And the county has also used data to increase election transparency with public dashboards — in addition to live video feeds. To secure sensitive data, the county has implemented data loss prevention strategies.
Residents’ digital experience is also a county priority. Importantly, to meet the federal government’s mandate that all digital services and products must be accessible by April 2026, the county has launched a three-point program for accessible operations. The county is offering stakeholders accessibility training and standardizing language in purchasing processes to ensure accessibility of future software acquisitions. On the employee side, the county is investing in its staff experience with a comprehensive benefits program along with AI training for employees to support their skills development.
The county is also assessing spending and cutting costs where applicable. A new dashboard provides county departments with real-time insights into projects and their budgets as part of an effort to help the county better communicate value. Also, the development of a software inventory tracking system will document all software license purchases, aiming to reduce technical debt.
8th Leon County, Fla.
The Office of Information and Technology (OIT) in Leon County worked this year on many projects, including the deployment of a new streamlined county website, an online permitting portal and even a website dedicated to the county’s bicentennial activities, which includes maps, photos and other information. OIT also created three standalone kiosks for the county courthouse, Florida state Capitol and a local public library, all offering similar historical information about Leon County.
Residents can now also receive emergency alerts sent to their mobile devices via the Leon County Emergency Operations Center. More than 56,000 residents have signed up to receive the alerts, while the Citizens Connect app received more than 4,700 downloads in 2024. OIT’s GIS program developed a machine learning and AI tool that uses flyover imagery to evaluate tree canopy loss as a result of storms, including tornados and hurricanes. Using the tool, the county was able to determine a 2024 tornado event removed some 238 of the trees in the county.
Finally, the county is boosting its cybersecurity ramparts with next-generation antivirus technologies that use AI to detect and prevent threats like malware and ransomware. The project received some $1.1 million in grant funding. The county was also able to conduct a cyber risk assessment.
9th Durham County, N.C.
Durham County, N.C., is looking this year toward automation, AI and self-service web tools to create efficiency, enhance public-facing services and save time for staff. The county's redesigned website launched this spring, aiming to transform the way residents interact with the county. It also includes an AI-powered chatbot that is always available, enhancing self-service and saving customer service staff time.
Information Services and Technology launched several other tools as well, adding a cloud-based social services case management system, modern tax management platform and its ServiceNow Integrated Management Project, which strengthens risk management and compliance. All of these help to streamline services for internal and external users, and the social services project allows field agents to access documentation more quickly and file paperwork from mobile devices. Durham County lists social services as a top priority.
With modern additions to its tech portfolio, leadership expects to reduce IT service resolution time by 40 percent and strengthen its security stance. They have added cybersecurity measures, clarified data governance policies, refined the knowledge base powering its AI chatbot, and expanded broadband and fiber, a continued focus. These investments reflect Durham County’s broader push to modernize government operations and position IT as a strategic enabler.
10th Clayton County, Ga.
Clayton County has taken several steps in the past year to improve its digital services, cybersecurity and IT infrastructure. One notable improvement includes the launch of a new online permitting platform designed to streamline the application process and improve interdepartmental coordination.
In cybersecurity, the county implemented advanced endpoint detection and response solutions. It also worked to enhance its network monitoring capabilities, along with strengthening its cybersecurity training initiatives to promote awareness and preparedness against cyber threats. Additionally, Clayton County’s GIS team continued to improve public access to spatial data and mapping tools to support internal departments and provide updated information to the public.
For digital services, the county also introduced a chatbot to help manage high-volume inquiries and improve customer service by providing quick access to frequently requested information. Clayton County also upgraded servers and network equipment to improve system reliability and set the foundation for future modernization efforts, including a potential move to cloud services.
Click here to see all winners in this year's survey.
