Raleigh IT pilots AI help-desk agent and web search assistant, adds Spanish support

Beth Stagner of City of Raleigh IT described limited, deliberate use of AI inside municipal operations and on the city website. She said the city is testing an AI agent for its internal help desk (four help-desk staff supporting roughly 5,000 employees and about 16,000 devices) and has deployed an AI search assistant on raleighnc.gov that summarizes top pages for users.

Stagner said the search assistant has been live about six to eight months and that the city recently enabled Spanish responses after seeing high non-English requests. She also noted a limitation: the assistant does not yet know a user’s address, which makes many common requests ("When is my trash?") difficult; city staff are working to integrate geography-aware services.

Panelists stressed that pilots are a way to learn and that the city is not racing to adopt every new technology before validating benefits or addressing equity and privacy concerns.