Guidance for the Future: How NACo Supports County Leaders
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Show Notes:
In this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast, Rita Reynolds, CIO at the National Association of Counties (NACo), returns to share forward-looking insights on the evolving technology landscape in county government.
Recorded live at the Tyler Connect conference in San Antonio, this conversation explores NACo’s 2025 technology priorities — from the rising significance of AI and IT modernization to the continued dominance of cybersecurity and the growing need to support smaller, rural counties.
Rita walks us through the development and impact of the AI County Compass, a resource guiding local governments on how to responsibly integrate generative AI into their operations. She also details new hands-on programs like the CIO Reserves pilot, helping counties without dedicated IT leadership, and a national challenge aimed at modernizing legacy systems.
Throughout the episode, Rita shares practical strategies for workforce development, cross-county collaboration, and making technology investments that strengthen infrastructure while keeping residents at the center.
Tune in to hear how counties are turning emerging tech into actionable outcomes — and why partnership, planning, and policy are key to sustainable digital transformation.
This episode also highlights “Resilient by Design: How Technology Supports Government,” our free e-book that explores how public sector agencies can strengthen their resilience in the face of disruption. From cloud infrastructure and automation to secure payment systems and crisis response tools, the e-book features real-world examples of how technology helps governments maintain continuity and serve their communities more effectively.
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Transcript:
Rita Reynolds: Two years ago, we embarked on this journey by forming an AI exploratory committee made up of elected officials and several CIOs. Everyone recognized that generative AI, especially, was taking the world by firestorm, and they were feeling a little like we’ve got to be better in providing education and direction for our counties.
Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, this is the Tyler Tech Podcast where we explore the trends, technologies, and people shaping the public sector. I’m your host, Josh Henderson. Thanks for joining us.
In this episode, we’re joined once again by Rita Reynolds, chief information officer at the National Association of Counties.
As a longtime advocate for secure, sustainable, and resident-centered digital infrastructure, Rita shares key insights into where counties are headed next. We caught up at our annual Tyler Connect conference in San Antonio to talk through NACo’s 2025 tech priorities, spotlighting AI, IT modernization, and workforce retention.
We also explore the AI County Compass and several hands-on initiatives helping counties turn strategy into action.
Rita’s got a lot to share, so let’s get into it.
Rita, it’s great to see you again. Thanks so much for joining me.
Rita Reynolds: Absolutely. It’s a pleasure to be here today and share what’s happening with the counties and technology.
Josh Henderson: Always love chatting with you. So, let’s get started, Rita, with talking about the technology priorities published for 2025. Can you share a few of the key areas of focus and what they reflect and where counties are headed?
Rita Reynolds: Sure. First of all, this particular effort has been going now for six years.
Each year, we will meet with our county technology advisory council and identify the top ten priorities.
We then share those out on our NACo Tech Xchange, which consists of over twelve hundred county IT leaders. We also share the survey with the IT standing and several other policy steering committees. Purpose in that is to see if we’ve missed anything, from the technology priority perspective upcoming for that next year, but also to validate, yes, these are the top ten priorities. And by the responses, we’re able to prioritize them top down.
What we found is that over the past couple years, the priorities have been pretty much the same, but they’ve shifted or moved in either up or down in the priority list. I will say that the cyber priorities are number one and have been number one for at least three years, four years running. And, of course, that’s, given in our, environment that we live in now. The couple that has moved up, are the talent, recruitment and retention, for example, did move up, and we know that that’s a result of the developments and the around the emerging technologies with artificial intelligence and generative AI. While AI is not new, the generative part is.
And the counties are seeing opportunities, as well as challenges with implementing solutions, that they’re they actually may not even have a choice on because the corporate partners are automatically adding those components in. And so that circles back to cyber.
Artificial intelligence did not come out as a stand-alone priority because it affects almost all of the ten priorities. So, as I mentioned, cybersecurity as well as IT, talent recruitment and retention, but also modernization.
And there’s ten of them. I’m just going to cover this last one on IT modernization. That has moved up in the priorities, one, because of security issues. But also because of AI, it’s now a lot more feasible and less expensive to start modernizing some of their legacy systems.
So, it there’s a lot of other information there. And if you go to NACo, you know, if you do a search for NACo Tech Xchange, you’ll get to that list of ten priorities.
Josh Henderson: There was an area of focus that stood out to me as this emphasis on support for rural and smaller counties as well. Why is that so important right now? What can you tell us about that?
Rita Reynolds: That’s a great question, and that is a priority given that 80% of our counties out of the 3069 counties are small to midsize, and many are rural. So, the access to a full time IT person may be limited for them.
They also, you know, are running into concerns around being able to secure their environment, whether they’re small or medium size and having access to that talent. So that’s why it’s a priority. And I’ll share a program a little bit later that is helping, address that with our rural and smaller sized counties.
But, again, it’s access to expertise and then having limited budget to implement some of the necessary, technology security, and monitoring tools that they need to implement, among other things.
Josh Henderson: Let’s sort of transition now into the AI County Compass.
You mentioned AI already in the priorities list. It’s a, you know, it’s a very hot topic of conversation, has been for a little bit now, but it’s a great resource for local governments trying to understand how and when to bring an AI into their operations.
What was the goal in creating this document, and how are counties using it so far that you’ve that you’ve heard?
Rita Reynolds: Well, thank you for asking. Let me give a little bit of history.
Two years ago, we embarked on this journey by forming an AI exploratory committee made up of elected officials and on several CIOs. And the goal was to better educate those on the exploratory committee, but then to also look at a path forward. Everyone recognized that generative AI, especially, was taking the world by firestorm, and they were feeling a little like we’ve got to be better in providing education and direction for our counties.
Everyone recognized that generative AI, especially, was taking the world by firestorm, and they were feeling a little like we’ve got to be better in providing education and direction for our counties.
Rita Reynolds
CIO, National Association of Counties (NACo)
The exploratory committee also then formed four work groups. They were work groups around policy and ethics and applications or use cases and workforce.
And so, we brought in expertise in those work groups. The goal was to produce some sort of publication that would cover a bit of the history and the definitions as well as what at that time, we were identifying as benefits to using AI and GenAI as well as the challenges.
And then go into those four key areas and list out recommendations for moving forward. For example, with policy, a county should at least have some guidelines in place, and maybe that’s through forming an AI committee. Maybe it’s through using an existing technology committee within the county, but you definitely need guidelines because I can assure you staff are using generative AI for personal and for work even if it’s, maybe not allowed, quote, unquote. So, the goal was to produce the Compass, and it’s served us really well. We’ve distributed it to all three thousand sixty nine counties. It’s available on our website.
If you put in NACo AI Compass, you’ll go to that web page.
And then what we wanted to do was to continue the educational efforts. You know, you asked how our county’s utilizing the Compass.
We have, for this year in 2025, scheduled four AI regional forums. We’ve had two of them, one in the northeast and one in the south. And it’s been great to cover AI, but then to actually have hands on interaction, you know, exercises with the attendees, and then go into the discussion around how can I use this back in my county, how can I take the compass and develop the policy and or guidelines that we need to have in place? And we’re hearing good feedback from counties that this has been a valuable tool for them. It’s a journey, so we’re not done.
Josh Henderson: And it’s wild. I think the, you know, the last time we spoke was about a year ago, maybe a little bit over a year ago, and it was kind of the early stages of all of this. And now things, you know, things have been rapidly progressing.
Now with this Compass, people are getting real insights into use cases.
Rita Reynolds: We didn’t have the book the publication at that point. We were knee deep in developing it for sure.
Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with more of the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Jade Champion: You can’t always prevent disruption, but you can prepare for it.
Josh Henderson: That’s right. And in our latest e-book, we explore how government agencies are building resilience into their operations from cloud-based systems and automation to tools that improve response and coordination.
Jade Champion: You’ll discover real world examples like how an emergency app helped residents in Louisiana stay informed and how secure payment technology supports service continuity during a crisis.
Josh Henderson: It also walks through six practical steps to help you assess risks, modernize infrastructure, and strengthen your ability to adapt.
Jade Champion: Download your free copy of “Resilient by Design: How Technology Supports Government” at the link in the show notes.
Josh Henderson: Because every government needs a road map to resilience, and it starts with the right technology.
Now let’s get back to the Tyler Tech Podcast.
And now you mentioned those four touch points. So, workforce policy, there’s some ethical concerns as well when it comes to, this type of thing. What are you seeing counties ask about most right now in terms of those areas?
Rita Reynolds: We’re hearing, where do I start if they haven’t already, from a fair number, and we’re we have some guidelines, some checklist.
One of the key areas that we’re encouraging counties to do is to assess your staff in terms of are they using any type of generative AI tool. That’s really important and not meant to, from a negative perspective, but from a positive, we want to understand, so we need to know where we should be providing education and guardrails as well.
The other area that we are hearing from those counties who have started working and developing generative AI solutions is that chatbots are a very big thing.
We know we’ve had the ability to do chatbots for counties for a long time, but the reality is now they can be AI-driven.
And so, a number of counties have started embarking on that and have some publicly facing chatbots that are AI driven, and some have internal.
The important piece in that is that the underlying data that the chatbot is referencing is accurate and up to date. And so, some counties are just taking it slow and only doing it from an internal perspective.
Others are allowing for the public access to a chatbot, but they’re curating the content.
And so, it’s not just go to my website and search. I won’t use technical terms, but this is the underlying data that we know is accurate, and it’s pulling information, and it’s helping residents, and constituents in the county get to the information faster, in a more judicious way than what we’ve had in the past. So, it’s two areas.
Josh Henderson: It’s certainly a helpful resource by the sounds of things. So, that’s great for counties.
Another thing our program I know you’re equally excited about, is the CIO Reserves pilot.
Can you explain what this is and how it’s helping counties that might not have in-house IT leadership?
Rita Reynolds: Thank you for asking that. This came out of a conversation about a year ago with our county technology advisory council, and the concern that was raised and has been raised is that rural small counties need assistance of some sort, and they can’t afford necessarily the IT full time person or the consultant even. And at the same time, we were made aware that there were a number of CIOs that were had retired or were retiring, and they wanted to continue to give back. And so, we did research and figured out the best way to do a pilot. And so, we have the opportunity for a county to fill out a form to say they’re interested in, connecting with the CIO reservist.
We set up a meeting. We have the CIO Reserves individuals who are interested in that county. Could be two. Could be three. We have a pocket of about six right now. They go into a breakout room. They interview them, and they select the CIO reservist that they want.
And so that’s going well. We have two just started. So, we have two engagements active right now. You may want to know, well, what are they looking for? And so, we have heard repeatedly that we need assistance with implementation of dot gov. That’s a very important cyber defense, and there’s a lot of counties that still don’t have the dot gov domain.
We’ve also heard that I need some sort of IT assessment of where I’m at. Like, I I’m an elected official. We don’t have an IT person. I don’t know what I don’t know.
And so, some work with, developing a strategic plan, for example. And then they may have a managed service provider, and they just want to know, is this the best use of my dollars right now, or could I be looking at a different way to fulfill the technology needs?
The sky’s the limit. We know there’s a lot of other needs out there, but that’s what we’re focused on with the pilot.
Josh Henderson: It’s a really unique resource, it sounds like. And I love the idea of allowing people to kind of have the have the agency to pick. Right? It’s like, what would work best for me?
Yeah, NACo is not making the choice, and I think that’s important to know because it really is between matching the CIO reservist with the county. But the county is doing that, not NACo. We want them to explain what they need. We may have to help clarify some things, but that’s where the CIO reservist expertise comes in.
Josh Henderson: It’s fantastic. Alright, Rita. So, another exciting initiative at NACo is this modernizing legacy systems challenge.
And I love the idea of gamifying what can be a pretty daunting process for counties. What’s the challenge all about, and what are you hoping counties get out of it?
Rita Reynolds: Well, first of all, we have lots of conversations with county IT leaders and elected officials that say, I’ve got this old COBOL system that’s still running, or I have this AS/400. It still works. Why do I need to modernize?
And then the IT folks in the room are going, is it secure? Do you know how vulnerable that system could be?
The other comment that comes up a lot is efficiencies. How can we be more efficient? And so, having this conversation with county IT leaders, and it was one of those, moments where you had this thought, wouldn’t it be cool to know what the oldest legacy system is in county government in the United States?
And, one county raised their hand and said, I have it.
And so, we talked about a contest but ended up calling it a challenge. And by the time this podcast airs, we will have kicked off the challenge.
And the goal is to encourage counties to submit what they consider their oldest legacy system, describe it, why they need to, modernize it, and then, add some additional if they can do a video or green screen you know, screenshots, things like that, just to help make their case. And we are working with, our technology advisory council as judges along with some of our corporate partners.
We will be selecting, I’m not going to say more than one, but definitely one county where they will be identified as the oldest legacy system that was submitted. And then there’ll be some additional resources and, services provided to that county to help start the strategy if they haven’t already. And one of the strategies that we’re seeing, throughout this process is that artificial intelligence, generative AIs, a combination there can actually be used to help modernize the systems.
So really important to do because in the long run, the efficiencies are definitely not being realized with legacy systems, and then, budget will be more, optimized.
But then, also, the county will have a more secure system that they’re interacting with.
Josh Henderson: That’s great. I love the interactivity of all of these initiatives at NACo. I think counties are going to be thrilled about this newest one as well.
And now I want to kind of wrap things up with a pretty loaded question for you. But what are you most hopeful or excited about as you look at the year ahead for county technology?
Rita Reynolds: Oh, that is a great question. Most excited about just seeing the growth of both county IT leaders as well as elected officials in working together and understanding the role of technology in maintaining the county infrastructure, but also the reality that there is a balance between budget and priorities.
And I’m most hopeful to see increased partnerships, not just with county to a county, but I’m hearing more and more with counties and cities and between the county and the state. And so that’s exciting to watch because with our environment we’re in, the partnerships are key.
Josh Henderson: That’s great. I think it’s a great place to wrap up, Rita. Thank you so much again for joining us on the show, and for all the work that you and your team at NACo are doing to support counties on their tech journey.
Rita Reynolds: Absolutely. Thank you again for having me today.
Josh Henderson: As we heard today, counties across the country are taking meaningful steps to modernize their technology, strengthen cybersecurity, and explore the promise of AI, all while staying grounded in resident needs and strategic priorities.
Rita shared how NACo is supporting these efforts through tools like the AI County Compass, workforce-focused initiatives, and programs designed to help counties of all sizes turn ideas into action.
If you’d like to learn more about the topics discussed in this episode, check out the show notes for additional resources.
And we’d love to hear your feedback. Fill out the listener survey linked in the notes or reach out anytime at podcast@tylertech.com. And be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the show so you never miss an episode.
For Tyler Technologies, I’m Josh Henderson. Thanks for listening to the Tyler Tech Podcast.