Despite the frequent call for better and more data use in state and local government Human Resources, having solid data systems is still a distant dream for many governments, particularly smaller ones.

In its “Top 5 Public Sector Trend” report for 2025, NEOGOV noted that “nearly half of agencies” were currently leveraging data and analytics “to improve decision-making, influence leadership decisions, and secure additional budget”

But that recent survey also shows that only 21% of the 1,000 plus HR director respondents always used data and analytics to improve decision-making, that 19% are “just starting” and that 11% never do.

This leaves many city, county and state governments at a disadvantage, given the benefits of data and analytics in HR to drive down turnover, speed-up hiring processes, track absenteeism, analyze overtime and reduce workforce health costs. In NEOGOV’s mid-May “Making Informed Decisions” webinar, Stefanie Tracey-Calash, the company’s Director of Product Marketing, talked about the benefit of predictive models to anticipate future staffing needs, “spot recruitment bottlenecks” and “workload imbalances.”

Several years ago, we wrote a white paper about the “Use of Data in Public Sector Human Resources and Workforce Management”. We interviewed top of the line HR professionals noting that “a growing number of cities, counties and states” were utilizing data across agencies “to improve management and make decisions.” But though the numbers are improving, writers and technology companies often focus on innovators and leaders in the field, leaving aside the difficulties of organizations that are still a distance away from making solid use of the tremendous amounts of data that are available to them.

There are plenty of challenges, particularly for under-resourced HR departments and they include outdated technology systems; difficulties in sharing data; privacy and cybersecurity concerns, and unreliable internal data.  

Data shortcomings also affect the implementation of artificial intelligence and its potential benefits for streamlining hiring and recruiting processes, another theme of the recent NEOGOV webinar. The internal use of AI for a city, county or state is very dependent on their own data knowledge, data governance structures and data quality.

About a year ago, we wrote about an instructional webinar that discussed the ways that artificial intelligence could be helpful to public sector HR offices. Similarly, the NEOGOV trend report has expansive commentary on AI’s ability to automate routine tasks; optimize onboarding; improve employee communication; improve employee engagement and automate performance management.

The NEOGOV trend report and webinar may generate excitement about the time-saving use of artificial intelligence in public sector HR offices. But as with the use of data for decision-making, AI potential in HR tends to greatly outweigh current uses. “Despite the growing prevalence of generative AI and its cemented presence in everyday life, our survey indicated that only 7% of agencies are prioritizing AI adoption in 2025,” NEOGOV reports in its trend survey. “65% indicate they have not started using AI to help with recruitment processes, 58% do not have documented policies or procedures around the use of AI, and 70% have not provided any training (about) AI to employees.”

It's likely that at least some of the use of AI that HR departments talk about involves the use of generative AI to search for information external to their own entity and in simplifying email and report writing. The use of AI for more internal government processes is rarer. For example, the most recent 2024 survey of state and local government HR officials by the MissionSquare Research Institute noted that it found that just 2% of its respondents “identified AI as being used to help review initial applications, with correspondingly limited data on the percentage indicating that they were training their HR staff on its use or had a policy to assess risks.”

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