 Prompt Local
Issue No. 14 · Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · By Scott Olsen | |||
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PULL UP A CHAIR Welcome to the first November edition of Prompt Local. We have survived another Halloween and another clock rollback. Daylight Saving Time ended at 2 a.m. this past Sunday, November 1. Here in Florida, we can't seem to get this one right. Back in 2018, the Florida Legislature voted to stay on daylight time all year. Eight years later, we're still falling back every November. A 1966 federal law lets a state stay on standard time year-round, but not on daylight time, at least not without Congress signing off. Congress keeps almost getting there. The Senate passed a permanent daylight time bill by unanimous consent in 2022, and the House never voted on it. This July, the House passed its own version 308 to 117, and the Senate hasn't scheduled a vote. Both chambers have said yes, just never in the same session. November 1 marked something else for me: it has been one year since I left my role in local government. I wish I could tell you I don't miss it, but I do. I miss the people. I miss my team. I miss serving the public and feeling like I was part of something bigger than myself. I really miss having somewhere to go every day. Murphy, my Bernedoodle, would like it on the record that having me home all day is working out just fine. Even with all the things I miss about local government, I can honestly say I'm in a far better place now than I've been in a long time, and for that I'm thankful. I'm not going to turn this into an inspirational post, because that's not my kind of content. If you're unhappy working for somebody and you need a sign to move on, here's your sign. Do it. You won't regret it. I started Prompt Local to stay engaged with people in my community, across Florida, and around the country. Almost everyone I've met through it is someone brand new, people who didn't know me before and still took the time to read it and write back. That's been the surprise of the whole thing. If nothing else, I can now say I wrote a newsletter for longer than three months. One last thing: today is Election Day. Don't forget to get out there and vote. To everyone working the polls and running elections offices today, thank you. Long day ahead, and it matters. THIS WEEK'S PICK The before-you-buy checklist for any AI toolThirteen issues in, the same problem keeps showing up: what a vendor's AI page says and what your office actually gets are often two different things. Features described in future tense. Security claims that turn out to be the vendor vouching for itself. AI quietly appearing inside software you already pay for. So this week, one checklist to run before you sign or renew anything with AI in it. A few questions you have seen here before get a single line at the end. The rest are new.
QUESTION 1 "Will you use our data to train your AI?"This one can be sitting in a standard contract without anyone noticing. Idaho Falls, Idaho is a good example: this summer its city council unanimously amended its license plate camera contracts so the vendor can no longer use the city's data to train or improve AI models, after residents raised concerns online. The clause was there in the original contract, and it was removable once someone asked. Ask for a plain "no training on our data, prompts, or outputs" in writing. QUESTION 2 "Do you keep our prompts and outputs, and can we export them?"Issue 6 covered why AI prompts and answers can be public records. This is the contract side of that. If a records request comes in, you need to be able to pull those conversations out, and the vendor's retention settings need to fit your records schedule. The Florida League of Cities' June guidance puts it in a line that applies in any state: your logging obligations "don't disappear just because a vendor's platform makes them hard to meet." Its example is a vendor that auto-deletes chat logs after 30 days. The League also suggests asking for a clause that makes the vendor keep logs at least as long as your records schedule requires. It admits that clause is not standard, which is exactly why you have to ask. QUESTION 3 "Is that a certification, or your own word?"I owe you one here. In Issue 10 I described one records platform as "CJIS compliant" as if that settled it. It was the vendor's own claim. In a 2019 statement a vendor published on its own site, an analyst in the FBI's CJIS program said there is no CJIS certification process, and that the FBI does not certify or endorse any product. So "CJIS certified" is the vendor's description, not an FBI stamp of approval. Some programs, like FedRAMP, do involve an outside authorization. Ask which kind you are looking at, who did the review, when, and whether you can see the report. QUESTION 4 "Will you tell us before adding AI to something we already pay for, and can we turn it off?"Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon who interviewed city staff found offices struggling to switch off AI that vendors had built into software the city already used. I could not find a standard contract clause for this, which is exactly why it is worth asking for: advance notice before new AI features go live, and a way to turn them off. QUESTION 5 "When we leave, what happens to our data and our AI history?"With AI tools, "your data" is more than your files. It includes the prompt logs, any custom setup trained on your documents, and the outputs it produced. Ask how all of it comes back to you, in what format, and how the vendor proves it was deleted on their end. QUESTION 6 "If the AI gets it wrong and someone sues, who pays?"In that same Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon study, one city procurement officer described negotiating indemnification, meaning the vendor agrees to cover certain costs if its product causes harm. His version of the question: will the vendor cover the city if it gets sued for bias? It is a normal ask. Whether the vendor will agree tells you how much it trusts its own product. Already covered here, still on the list: is the feature live today or still rolling out (Issue 12), a reference customer your own size (Issues 10 and 12), and real numbers in writing, first year and renewal separately (Issue 12).
HOW TO ACTUALLY USE IT 1. Email the questions to the vendor before the demo, not during it. Written answers beat a confident salesperson in a conference room. 2. File the answers with the contract. If the product changes two years from now, that email is your evidence of what you were promised. 3. Ask your attorney to look over the GovAI vendor addendum once, before your next AI contract, even if you only borrow a few clauses from it. 4. Practice on a renewal you already have coming up. It is easier to ask these questions of a vendor you know than a brand new one. The honest catch: none of these questions guarantee a good product. A vendor can answer all six smoothly and still disappoint you. The point is getting answers in writing that you can hold them to later, which is more than most small offices have when something goes wrong. THE RULEBOOK · ONE RULE WORTH A GLANCE What changed that affects how your office can use AI. Short, plain, and sourced. The part that keeps you out of the newspaper. Tagged Local for a city or county action, State for a change at the state level, Federal for a change at the federal level that reaches your desk. Just one this week. I could not find a second new state or local rule that cleared my sourcing bar, and I would rather run one solid item than pad the list.
ONE MORE QUICK WIN Read one real AI contract before you write yoursThe GovAI Coalition's AI Contract Hub, free when it launched, lets you look at contracts other governments actually signed. Find one from an office close to your size and see which of this week's six questions it answered. Fifteen minutes, and you will know what "normal" looks like before a vendor tells you. | |||
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Know someone at another city or county who could use this? Forward it over.
Until next week, Scott Olsen, CGCIO Former CIO with eleven years in Florida local government Practical guidance for local government, not legal or procurement advice. |