Municipal Leadership and AI Adoption

• In Event: AI Adoption in Public Management and Leadership

Abstract

U.S. local governments, as frontline actors in public administration, play a critical role in delivering a wide array of public services and have long pursued strategies to improve service quality. With recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, many city governments have begun adopting AI tools across various policy domains—including chatbots, transportation systems, public safety, environmental monitoring, and social services—to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery, particularly under constrained local budgets. Despite increasing interest in AI and the rise of smart city initiatives, the adoption and implementation of AI by local governments remain understudied, largely due to data limitations.

This paper examines how city leadership, specifically the political ideology of mayors and the professionalism of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), influences municipal AI policy implementation. We compile an original dataset on AI use across 100 large U.S. cities from 2018 to 2024 and explore how mayoral partisanship and CIO professionalism, measured through educational background and prior work experience, influence the design, adoption, and implementation of different types of AI policies and uses. Additionally, we assess the impact of these institutional characteristics on city-level spending related to AI initiatives. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting how political and administrative leadership shapes the adoption of emerging technologies at the local level by providing new insights into the governance of AI in public service delivery.

Authors

• Heonuk Ha, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Ogadinma Enwereazu, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Yunzhe Liu, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author