DC Compass, a new tool in Washington DC, leverages generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to help you gain broader data insights in low-risk situations.
The public beta was officially released on March 19th and can be tested at opendata.dc.gov. The goal is to get feedback that improves speed and accuracy.
DC Compass was created in partnership with Esri, a GIS technology company whose tools are powered by the ArcGIS Online platform. This iteration follows a six-month private beta that allowed data systems analysts to test the tool before making it available to the public, interim chief technology officer Stephen Miller said recently.
With the rise of generative AI, he said, the district wanted to implement something that leveraged it without creating additional risks related to fairness or misinformation. Using a school district’s existing data in a tool like this enables just this kind of low-risk use case.
Miller said the D.C. Compass project gave district officials an opportunity to see how AI tools work and what value they can bring to D.C. government and the people it serves. said it helped inform their AI values. “This is a historic opportunity to create something that makes data more accessible to the public,” Miller said in an interview.
DC Compass tools also allow users to ask data questions and create dashboards on demand, making it easy for individuals and teams without data experts to publish Be able to understand and use data. Miller said users can also ask a wide range of questions about district data, from the number of trees in a district to district contract information.
Additionally, in the past, other government agencies relied on the DC office of the chief technology officer team to glean data insights when the team did not have a data expert. You can now ask questions about data availability and gather insights on your own. . This tool also allows users to create data visualizations.
“This opens up the opportunity for any district government employee to be able to analyze these datasets,” Miller said. This tool has the potential to impact many functional areas of government, from transportation and utility operations to procurement. In the long term, he said he hopes it will bring about changes in disaster response.
Miller said the district used 2,000 datasets to inform the tool. Andrew Turner, CTO of ArcGIS Hub and director of research and development at Esri in Washington, DC, said in an email that when DC adds or updates data, the tool automatically provides an updated response.
Turner also noted that governments and departments within governments can configure and launch their own versions of the tool to meet their specific needs. “For example, DC is already testing some additional configurations for specific departments that can be answered by both general visitors and internal staff.” Structured questions. ”
This is just the latest foray into AI in Washington, DC. In December, he launched an AI-powered career platform that incorporates AI into the hiring process to reduce bias. In February, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced several steps to advance government adoption of AI.
Miller said working with Esri on this tool is the latest collaboration in a long-standing partnership between the school district and the company. On the DC side, it builds on open data efforts developed over a decade. He credited his predecessors’ long-standing open data efforts for laying the foundation for this tool, saying, “They used open data to create what we have today, which is DC Compass. I’m glad they took action.”
