Vermont’s “power tool” approach puts AI in the hands of trained state employees as an aid within human-designed work processes—not as a substitute for staff making decisions. The state says its current effort combines employee training and agency-led experiments with guidance on impact assessment, risk management, mitigation and monitoring. Examples reported in 2026 include application-security work and ballot proofing, where employees checked every ballot after AI flagged possible errors.
What Vermont means by AI as a “power tool”
Vermont Chief Data and AI Officer Josiah Raiche uses the metaphor to describe technology operated by a trained person within a process designed by people. The point is to let employees spend less effort on mechanics while keeping human judgment in the work. As Raiche put it, “The operator is well trained, and then a good power tool lets you zoom out from mechanics and think about outcomes.” (StateScoop, October 2, 2026)
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That framing is deliberately bounded: the tool can assist a task, but the human operator remains responsible for understanding what it can and cannot do and for reviewing its output. It also ties adoption to work employees and agencies identify, rather than treating AI deployment as an end in itself.
How Vermont is leveraging AI across government, one “power tool” at a time
Application security and maintenance
StateScoop reported that Vermont was training developers to use AI to examine source-code segments, model possible attack paths, generate Python checks, identify vulnerabilities and support remediation across a state application estate of about 1,100 applications. That is the approximate size of the estate discussed, not a claim that all those applications were analyzed or fixed.
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Raiche told StateScoop that about 100 developers had completed training, with another 50 expected, and that several dozen applications had been patched. He described grouping similar vulnerabilities and generating fixes, which developers then checked to make sure changes did not disrupt front-end behavior. These figures and outcomes are Raiche’s account to StateScoop, not independently audited results.
Agency pathfinders and locally built tools
Vermont’s agency pathfinder model gives selected employees an early training opportunity and roughly a three-month head start to develop practical tools before broader team training. Agencies choose people trusted by colleagues and leadership, with the aim of surfacing useful applications from within the work itself. StateScoop describes the model but does not report a statewide evaluation of its results.
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In a half-day cross-agency workshop, participants used ChatGPT-style tools, an internal chatbot, prompt frameworks and custom GPT skills. Raiche described a Corrections commissioner and a Department of Financial Regulation participant building a tool to evaluate securities offered in Vermont. The account does not establish that this prototype was deployed or used to make final decisions.
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Ballot proofing with staff review
Raiche described a Secretary of State’s office task involving hundreds of ballots and a spreadsheet listing roughly 3,000 candidates. An AI skill flagged likely errors and cases that needed attention; staff then reviewed every ballot, checked the flags and looked for errors the tool might have missed. Raiche said the work took roughly three hours and avoided expected overtime. That is a state-reported example, not an independently validated finding about accuracy or savings.
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What guidance and oversight support the effort
Vermont’s governance work predates the current examples. The state established an AI task force in 2018; StateScoop reports that the task force recommended a statewide AI code of ethics in a 2020 report. The Vermont AI Council’s September 30, 2025 update lists a Code of Ethics (2023), Guidelines for AI Implementation and Data Management (2024), and Employee Use of Generative AI (2024). The Council update says the implementation guidelines established impact assessment, risk management, mitigation, monitoring and a standard usage notice for decision-making AI systems; employee-use guidance establishes acceptable use for state employees.
The Council’s human-centered principle says, “AI Systems should be used in a human-centered way that recognizes the dignity and value of all persons and their contributions to society.” (Vermont AI Council update, September 30, 2025)
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The Agency of Digital Services’ 2024 annual report describes the goal as “responsible AI being used as a power tool for information workers.” It recommends training in standard AI patterns and job-specific tools, and says workers should understand system capabilities and limitations. (AI Division and Council 2024 Report, February 1, 2024)
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In its September 2025 update, the Vermont Agency of Digital Services and AI Council reported more than 300 employees trained as AI Change Agents and more than 500 weekly active users of ChatVT. Those are adoption figures reported by the state, not measures of accuracy, service quality or productivity.
The 2026 examples offer specific accounts of how employees used AI, but the sources cited do not provide independent pilot evaluations, error rates or a formal measure of return on investment. The reported time and patching outcomes should therefore be read as attributed examples, not proof that AI will produce the same results across agencies or tasks.
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