Fifty-one state tech chiefs answered NASCIO's newest survey this summer. Ninety-eight percent said their state already has a written AI policy, up from 76 percent a year before1. Seventy-eight percent said they built an oversight plan, up from 65 percent over the same stretch. AI rules, by that count, look done.
98% of State CIOs Claim an AI Policy, Up 22 Points in a Year
Share of 51 state and territory chief information officers reporting each AI governance step in place, 2025 versus 2026
Each pair of columns is one governance step; the gray column is last year's share and the magenta column is this year's, both from NASCIO's own survey of state CIOs.
Source: NASCIO [1]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| AI policy | 76% | 98% |
| Oversight plan | 65% | 78% |
Read that the easy way, and the fight over AI rules in state government already ended. Every agency wrote its policy. Each tech chief signed off. The fight moves from control to paperwork.
Paper is cheap.
A second survey asked the people who run the systems every day. It reached 810 workers, across state, local and federal government. Only 19 percent of state and local workers called their AI oversight plan active2. Forty-three percent of federal workers said the same about their own agencies.
Twelve percent of state and local leaders call their AI push fast2. Thirty-two percent of federal leaders say the same about their own push. Sixty-eight percent of state and local leaders call their pace steady instead. Steady and active mean different things.
State and Local AI Oversight Trails Federal by 24 Points on Enforcement
Share of 810 public sector IT workers reporting each AI governance trait, federal versus state and local, surveyed June 2026
Each row is one trait; the blue dot is the federal share, the magenta dot is the state and local share, and the rod is the gap between them.
Federal and state and local workers each answer about their own agencies, so the two columns sit on separate scales.
Source: MeriTalk [2]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Federal | State and local |
|---|---|---|
| Call AI push fast | 32% | 12% |
| Plan actively enforced | 43% | 19% |
| Security incidents rose | 58% | 37% |
Massachusetts shows that gap up close. Governor Maura Healey gave all 40,000 of her executive branch workers access to ChatGPT in February, under a three-year state contract with OpenAI5. Chris Smith runs legislative affairs at the state's Executive Office of Technology Services and Security. About 6,500 of those workers have used it, eight months in.
Beth Simone Noveck teaches at Northeastern University. She started InnovateUS and once served as New Jersey's chief innovation officer5. Her survey of about 100,000 government workers found fewer than a quarter use AI each week, about half the private sector's rate.
"We wouldn't give you a car without teaching you how to drive and giving you a license," Noveck said5. "We shouldn't be just giving people tools without an understanding not just of what it is, but how to use it in your job to serve the public."
Boston itself moved slower than the state. The city required training before any worker could open Google's Gemini assistant5. Shin-pei Tsay, Boston's tech chief, called that pace planned.
"We think AI is another tool we can use to make that happen," Tsay said. "But just like everything else, we want to be careful and we want to do the right things."
State tech chiefs defend the slower pace outright. Warren Sponholtz, Florida's tech chief, told NASCIO's 2026 conference why care matters to him3. "We've got to be careful that we don't produce solutions that aren't sustainable or aren't high quality," he said.
Texas requires every agency and local government to adopt an AI code of ethics3. Tony Sauerhoff, the state's tech chief, ties that rule to public trust. "The driver of that is public trust," he said. "We can't afford to lose that."
Travis Galloway reads the same record differently. He advises SolarWinds, the firm that paid for the 810-worker survey, on government affairs2. "Confidence in AI governance is running well ahead of the actual controls agencies have in place, and that gap is where risk quietly accumulates," Galloway said.
The moral question sits underneath every number here. Twenty-eight percent told InnovateUS they skip AI tools because training passed them by5. Another 19 percent skip the tools because they stayed unsure the rules allowed it. Honest workers pay that first cost.
Vendors profit either way. They sell agencies the tools whether oversight catches up or stays behind. Federal workers watched AI security incidents rise 58 percent of the time over the past year. State and local workers watched the same thing happen 37 percent of the time2.
Residents carry that risk. Surveys left it out of every count. Their tax records, benefit files and court data run through those same systems.
Policy on paper sits one step before real oversight. The next step is active use, and most states are still walking it. Ninety-eight percent wrote the rule. Nineteen percent, by workers' own count, enforce it daily.
That gap will close industry by industry, state by state, each at its own pace. Readers can watch the process as AI Lately covers it. The Signal, AI Lately's daily email, delivers exactly that: the people and decisions moving AI forward, each morning.
Sources
- Meredith Ward, "The 2026 NASCIO State CIO Survey: The State CIO in Motion: Priorities, Pressures and Progress," NASCIO, Sept. 28, 2026, https://www.nascio.org/resource/the-2026-nascio-state-cio-survey-the-state-cio-in-motion-priorities-pressures-and-progress/
- Gail Emery, "Survey Finds AI Governance Gaps Across Federal, State, and Local Governments," MeriTalk, Sept. 22, 2026, https://www.meritalk.com/articles/survey-finds-ai-governance-gaps-across-federal-state-and-local-governments/
- Ben Miller, "NASCIO 2026 State CIO Survey: Finding a Path to AI Maturity," Government Technology, Sept. 28, 2026, https://www.govtech.com/workforce/nascio-2026-state-cio-survey-finding-a-path-to-ai-maturity
- Sophia Fox-Sowell, "State CIOs rethink IT investment as AI, modernization reshape governance, report finds," StateScoop, Sept. 16, 2026, https://statescoop.com/state-cios-rethink-it-investment-as-ai-modernization-reshape-governance-report-finds/
- Aaron Pressman, "Are local governments, like Boston's, using AI enough?" The Boston Globe, Oct. 21, 2026, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/21/business/ai-adoption-productivity-public-sector/