Virginia’s information technology office is not up to speed on artificial intelligence, and the agency that helps draft laws does not have the AI expertise needed to address the quickly evolving technology, according to a state-directed report.
Expect legislative action in the 2027 session to deal with it, General Assembly members from Southwest Virginia said after a Tuesday presentation to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.
The commission directed its staff last year to review AI use, governance, regulation and oversight in the commonwealth. The report, published during the meeting on Tuesday, focused most of its recommendations on the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, which provides IT services, infrastructure and cybersecurity to state agencies.
State government and individual employees are using AI, but the IT agency is “currently falling short in the support, guidance and oversight it is providing state government in the area of artificial intelligence and needs to substantially up its game,” the commission’s staff director, Hal Greer, said during the meeting.
Virginia’s new chief information officer, Mike Watson, understands the issues “and is already making progress to improve things,” Greer said.
AI legislation can be “extraordinarily complex and challenging,” Greer said, adding that it “is imperative” that the state’s Division of Legislative Services, which helps Virginia lawmakers with tasks that include drafting bills, acquire the needed tech expertise to provide such counsel.
The 79-page report includes 14 recommendations, among them legislative action that would require AI literacy training for state employees, funding for ongoing specialized technology law expertise and an annual legislator’s guide on the technology.
Three Southwest Virginia legislators, Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockbridge County, and Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, are on the commission and received the report. Rasoul and Deeds, responding to text messages Tuesday, said that General Assembly action via bills or budget items is a certainty.
“We need AI and technology experts in the Legislative Information System and further, at the agency level,” Rasoul texted.
Deeds said “a lot more thought” is required, but he would expect bills in the next session to generally follow the staff report’s recommendations.
“We want to be nimble enough to deal with the rapidly changing landscape,” he texted.
Obenshain did not reply to a request for comments on the meeting and report.
While the report lists potential pitfalls of using artificial intelligence, including security risks and the unauthorized sharing of confidential information by AI agents, it mentions multiple potential boons. Those include reducing payment error rates in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; states with error rates above 6% will have to begin paying a portion of SNAP benefit costs next year, which could cost Virginia $270 million.
The report’s recommendations to the IT agency noted the need for risk assessments for executive branch agencies’ AI use; clear standards and policies about emerging risks, reviewed and updated annually; a list of approved tools; and a process to review and approve proposals to use AI coding tools for system modernization, with technical and risk-mitigation requirements to implement them.
This is a breaking news post that will be updated.
