Turning Pilots Into Progress With the City of Atlanta’s Jason Sankey

Fred Schonenberg
Hello everyone and welcome to the VentureFuel Visionaries. I'm your host Fred Schonenberg. I'm so excited today to be joined by Jason Sankey. Jason is the Chief Information Officer for the City of Atlanta, where he leads the city's Department of Information Management, and he has served as Atlanta CIO since 2021, overseeing tech strategy, cybersecurity, and digital services for one of the country's fastest growing metro hubs.

In fact, in 2025, Atlanta was named the smartest city in the United States, and his path to the City Hall has run through both the private and public sectors. Thirteen years in technology and treasury roles at Citigroup, followed by CIO positions at Franklin County's Clerk of Courts in Ohio, and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, where he led technology through the pandemic and was named Ohio's CIO of the Year in 2020. In 2023, StateScoop named him Local IT Leader of the Year.

So today, Jason sits atop of Atlanta's newly formed Artificial Intelligence Commission, helping shape how the city adopts AI responsibility across public services, while continuing the modernization and cybersecurity work that has defined his tenure in the years since the city's high-profile 2018 ransomware attack, which kind of reshaped how municipal governments think about resilience. 

Today, we're going to explore how a major city approaches technology innovation at scale, what it takes to build public trust in AI-powered government services, and how Atlanta partners with the private sector and startups to modernize legacy systems, and what other cities and enterprises can learn from Atlanta's approach to building a smarter and more resilient future. Please join me in welcoming Jason Sankey to the VentureFuel Visionaries. Jason, it's so good to have you.

Jason Sankey
It's good to be here, Fred.

Fred Schonenberg
So you've spent time across the private sector, government, more than a decade at Citigroup, to state and county government in Ohio, and now obviously the role leading technology in the city of Atlanta. What drew you into public service? And maybe talk a little bit about what it's like to be the Atlanta CIO on a day-to-day basis.

Jason Sankey
Sure. What drew me into public service is the actual service part of it. So I tell people this all the time. If I could go back and start my career over, I would have started in the public sector. I may not have finished in the public sector, but I would have started because what we do truly impacts the well-being of communities, the ability for businesses to thrive. And just being able to offer safe cities, safe communities, and opportunities. You really don't get that as much in the private sector, at least what I've seen. So that's what drew me to it.

Being the CIO for the city of Atlanta, it is a job that just does not slow down. As you can imagine, we're a 24-7 shop. We just hosted eight World Cup games, and I would say we did a phenomenal job as a city. It is a very busy, demanding job, and I love it most of the time, but sometimes I don't. 

Fred Schonenberg
It seems like there's so many pieces to the job, everything from the World Cup to cybersecurity. One of the things I read off in the beginning there was that Atlanta was recognized as one of the smartest cities in the United States. I always think that phrase is interesting, smart city. I'm curious what you think a smart city is and maybe what's driving that recognition for Atlanta and the residents that you service.

Jason Sankey
When I first heard about that, people said, congratulations, Atlanta's smartest city. So I actually did a little bit of research as to what were the drivers in making that determination, and part of it is technology. But also we have a lot of colleges and universities here in Atlanta, in the metro as well. So that was a driver in that designation. But when I think about smart cities, I think about more forward-thinking cities. 

So it is easy, I think, to sit in operations and just go with the day-to-day course of business or course of action, because what do we expect from technology? We expect it to work, and it takes a lot for technology to work all the time. We talked about cyber. We have to keep our data secure, but we also have to keep the systems running. We have to keep our data centers running. We have to keep our water secure, all of these different moving pieces.

But I think what we do a little differently here in Atlanta is we build a city that's made for the future. So as we look forward to, let's say, this fiscal year, we just started fiscal year 27, we already have our operational agenda. Well, we are already starting these conversations about how we potentially offer free broadband or reduced broadband to our residents, because our mayor says he wants the city of Atlanta to be the best place to raise a child.

Well, you can't do that without the technology at your fingertips, and that's something that we tend to take for granted. I know I do. If I want a gig of fiber, I just make a call, and it's done. That's not everyone's life. I think when you think about a smart city, it's really that forward-thinking, and not only the forward-thinking for what you would consider the traditional city, but also those traditionally underserved within the city.

Fred Schonenberg
Super interesting. And of course, I've got to bring up artificial intelligence. You sit on Atlanta's new AI commission, which I believe started in 2025. Curious about that, thinking about maybe what the commission's mandate is, how you all are thinking about how AI can integrate into this future-forward Atlanta.

Jason Sankey
So recently, we put the commission to rest. It was a year that we had this commission. And basically, it was an opportunity for us to think both internally and externally. So we brought in private sector entities. We brought in higher education. We brought in leaders throughout the city to really build this thought leadership cohort to talk about AI beyond our scope and beyond what we think people are looking for. And it was a very diverse and good, rich conversation. 

And as a result of that, we're now starting an AI board. So with the AI board, we're still going to have different areas. So we're going to have a legal area. We're going to have an education area. We're going to have operational. We're going to have cyber. But what's kind of cool about the board is we're going to have subcommittees that can do a deeper dive into these different disciplines. So the commission was more from a thought leadership perspective. What are we doing? How are we doing it? What can we improve on? But I think this board now takes that, and we're going to legislate it through the city council to put the parameters around it. But how do we take that knowledge and now make action out of it? 

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. I mean, I think it leads very nicely into my next question. Before I get there, though, one of the things we've seen is, like, everyone's very quick to, okay, let's understand AI. But that second step, which is, like, how do you now implement it? How do you take advantage of that technology in a way that is responsible and good for the entire city? That step often is much slower. So I think it's really interesting that you all kind of use the commission to understand what's there, the thought leadership piece. And now using the board and the subcommittees to go, hey, let's put this into action. Let's find ways to take advantage of this.

Jason Sankey
Yes. And I'll say here with the city, we're forward thinking. So we were one of the early adopters of Microsoft Copilot. We rolled it out to a few hundred users just to see how more productive our employees could be. And the excitement just started to build. But I think what's very important for us is to ensure that we're educating both internally and externally. 

So we did a proof of concept with the avatar kiosk that we had in the lobby of City Hall. And we thought it was a great idea. But when you have citizens come in, they really don't want to interact with the avatar. They want to interact with the person. So learning what would make sense and we find useful versus what would be just cool and exciting from a technology perspective.

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. I mean, we've been in the innovation sector for over a dozen years at this point. And there are these moments of chasing the shiny toy, right? Oh, that's cool. We should do it. It's like, hold on. Is there a problem to be solved here? Do people actually want to use this? So I love this sort of pilot and then scale based on what you learn and approach. 

I'm curious from your side. I know we've talked a little bit in the past about innovation within the city. How do you drive new technologies, whether it's AI or others within the constraints, the very necessary constraints of the public sector?

Jason Sankey
So we actually have this process where we move forward with smaller businesses. So if we can prove it through a proof of concept or through a pilot, then we can work to build it at scale. So what we tend to do is we will open up opportunities to improve our current environment through technology. And those are typically less expensive than a more, I would say, large scale. We're going to implement or replace this system. 

And I think that is the procurement challenge around time. But with these smaller proof of concepts, especially with where technology is now, if we can prove it in a smaller, I would say, controlled environment, it's quicker. We can see the investment up front. Then we have opportunities where we can move that procurement through quicker because now we have qualified solutions that we've already taken through a procurement process.

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. And this is what you and I were chatting about when we first met. This idea of like partnership between the public sector and startups is such an interesting way for governments to innovate because you don't have to replace the full system. 

And if you can create a safe sandbox for a new technology or startup to showcase what they can do, it changes the conversation with procurement because you have that data point of like, hey, we actually tried this in this space over here. This is what we saw in the result. We think if this scales, it can either amplify that result or maintain it. And it gives everyone a little bit of skin in the game, too, of saying, hey, this is real. There's something here. This isn't just a shiny toy.

Jason Sankey
Yes. And I would say we're fortunate here in the city of Atlanta because we have a technology mayor. So he's a Georgia Tech grad. He understands technology, understands the importance of utilizing tools in order to become more of an effective government. So he really challenges the departments to look towards these partnerships with technology and with small businesses, with larger corporations to prove out how we become more effective. So if it starts from the top, we have the support right off the bat.

Fred Schonenberg
Are there any examples that you'd want to share about maybe some of these successful collaborations that have come to fruition in Atlanta?

Jason Sankey
Yes. So it was maybe two years ago we had made national news. We had multiple water main breaks and I learned that a major water main break happens every 2 minutes across the United States. So we had a number of different entities come in to help the city. And what we were able to do was we have various pilots that are part of our infrastructure for water now that detect any type of abnormalities in the system. So we can predict whether or not there's a strain on certain parts of the infrastructure before something happens. 

We can also figure out whether or not the pressure through the lines is adequate. So these are the types of opportunities through partnerships that can advance the city quickly. Unfortunately, some of those happen when there's some type of major infrastructure challenge, but it still is a catalyst to get things moving. 

Another example that I'll use is we now have free Wi-Fi here within the city of Atlanta. And we wanted to get it done before the World Cup because one of the challenges that you would have if you come in from another country is where do I connect? How do I connect my phone? All the charges for cellular. So we wanted to offer this. And again, it was small. It was in various areas that we knew we would have large visitors, large crowds of people. And now we're going to start to expand that. We're looking at expanding it to our fire stations and then we're going to expand it to school. So taking these smaller opportunities and slowly introducing them into the community has worked well for us. 

Fred Schonenberg
I think it's interesting, too, like what's the catalyst? Sometimes it can be that the water main breaks. Now this is a big problem to attempt. Other times it's an opportunity of, hey, the World Cup is coming. We know we're going to have this sort of influx. Why don't we use that as an opportunity to then prove this out where we can take it to the rest of the city? But it's often like trying to find those catalysts to spark the urgency to take some of those steps.

Jason Sankey
Yes. And you also have to weed out partnerships that are thinking, oh, this could be a really good payday for us.

Fred Schonenberg
Oh, yeah.

Jason Sankey
And we have resources that are unlimited because it's the World Cup. Well, what people don't know or may not know, I would say, is we don't get money to host the World Cup. We're going to be hosting the Super Bowl here soon. We're not getting money to host the Super Bowl. But you have to prepare and you have to spend budget dollars to make sure that things go very smoothly. They're secure, safe, all these various areas that you really don't think about. That was a process of weeding through opportunity versus true partnership.

Fred Schonenberg
Can you speak on that a little bit? I know there's a little bit of a broad question. But from the city's point of view, when you're looking at a technology or startup, are there any things that you look for specifically that helps you determine what this is a good partner versus someone maybe who's opportunistically trying to cash in on a major event?

Jason Sankey
Yeah. So we have partners throughout our ecosystem and they're true partners and they're trusted partners. I think it starts with that. We start with our known entities, but then we expand it beyond. And one of the easiest ways to weed out is to prove it. So I'll give you an example. 

We wanted to enhance our generative AI capabilities on our chatbot. So when we rolled out our ATL 311 chatbot, it was right before ChatGPT rolled out. So ours became obsolete and we've been going through these iterations to catch up. And so we really wanted what we were calling this concierge experience for Atlanta. So you would go through the concierge and you would be curated for the city. And we went back and forth with some partners and we had one partner that said, we'll build it for free. 

And then found out on the back end, well, you'll have to pay 17 million dollars because we believe it's going to be used at X-Factor and to pay for all of the infrastructure on the back end. It would be. So those are the types of things that we had to weed through. I wish there was a crystal ball where I could just say, OK, someone enters my office. This is going to be a good partnership and this is going to be opportunistic. But there's not. But we weed out based on conversation. My whole thing is to prove it to me. Let me see. Where have you done it with other cities?

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah. How does this scale? And I think one of the things is often the early adopter versus the fast follower. And oftentimes with cities like you, you don't necessarily need to see it. These are all the other cities I've done it with. But where is that comparable to have you done this? Maybe it's a big corporation. Maybe it's somewhere else. But they've got to be able to connect those two dots because the risk reward tolerances are different. 

And I think that leads into my next question, which is about cyber. Obviously, it's one of the top concerns for any city. And I'm curious how you balance the drive to adopt new technologies and have a future forward in Atlanta. But also you have to first protect critical infrastructure. How did those two things maybe conflict and how do you navigate that?

Jason Sankey
Sometimes they're in conflict. Obviously, all technology that we bring on board has to go through our architecture review board. And part of that is with our cyber team and they will scrutinize. They will slow things down. And I'd rather have more scrutiny and elongated timelines if it is protecting the city from any type of cyber disruption. 

We just had a bad actor claim that they stole over three million critical, sensitive information from the City of Atlanta. And it's noise. So people create these narratives to try and get, in my opinion, just more visibility, too. And that also is a factor because now perception slows things down. So you have the truth. We're working through this to see whether or not it makes sense for the city in our environment. You have perception. You have procurement. So all of these factors impede on our progress. 

But what we try to do is make sure that as we move forward, we're in a controlled environment. Our CSO is up to speed and comfortable. The team is fully vetted. We mentioned sandbox earlier. We use a lot of our proof of concepts in our controlled environments, in our sandbox before we deploy them. But then there's that third party risk, too. So we can't control what we can’t control. So we also have partnerships with vendors who scan our third party environments to make sure that they're sound. But one thing that is pretty clear when it comes to cybersecurity, it's not going to get any easier.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, it was very funny. I had a gentleman on the podcast a couple of years back who specialized in cybersecurity. And I said what's the solution to AI? And he's like, AI. And I was like, OK, great. So we're going to have AI looking over AI. And the truth is, like, it's all moving really quickly. And what you just described is the way to do it is you need multiple layers, viewing things from different angles. And so it's not an uncomplicated map. 

I am curious for you, where do you see cities moving towards? You know, I kind of love-hate the question of five years out, what's going to be different about Atlanta? But I'm curious, from your vantage point, how do you see things evolving? Is there anything that you think maybe regular citizens will be surprised about when they wake up in 2031? 

Jason Sankey
I would say even sooner. I think people are going to be surprised when the air taxis are literally in the air. We talk about them. It is so close. We have a factory that's not too far from downtown that is very close. I'm in technology. I've been in technology most of my career. I'm going to react a certain way as well. So I don't think that there's anything now that we have this new expectation of how quickly things happen.

So I don't know if you remember back when generative AI first came out, you actually had to wait a little while. It was thinking it was doing all these things. And now if you have to wait more than five, 10 seconds, you're like, what's going on? 

Fred Schonenberg
Is it broken? 

Jason Sankey
Is my prompt not working? So I think that will help with expectations. And unfortunately, it will probably numb our reaction to certain things that would have been more heightened before. Like I was driving down the street and I saw one of the robotic dogs and they were just walking. It was walking down the street, protecting a construction site. And that was very off putting. But those are the things that are out there now.

Fred Schonenberg
I always remember this is pre-COVID days, so it might be eight years ago now. We were working with one of our clients and we had an autonomous delivery robot. And I essentially had like the C-suite with me. We were walking behind our delivery robot. It was just a test and it went down the street of San Francisco and we just did a loop. And a lady was walking her dog towards us and she did not blink at the robot moving by itself, but basically yelled at all of us to get off the sidewalk because she needed to walk by.

And I was like, there you go. The technology didn't have any impact. And I think your point, like once you see a lot of this, we are becoming there. There's a moment of shock and then it's sort of we're getting used to it. The autonomous driving cars. I think the taxis, air taxis are going to be very interesting. And the story out there is that in the next 10 years, we're going to advance equal to the last hundred years. And so just imagine all that condensing and going so quickly. I think part of us is just going to have to get used to some of these changes, too.

Jason Sankey
Agreed. Completely agree.

Fred Schonenberg
All right. I'm going to get you out of here on this. We end the show with what we call rapid fire. So just sort of quick answers to a few different questions. Try and pull as much information from you as I can in a quick amount of time. So the first is what's one piece of technology you think every city should be adopting?

Jason Sankey
Connectivity.

Fred Schonenberg
What AI use case are you most excited about for city government?

Jason Sankey
True agentic AI.

Fred Schonenberg
What's one misconception people have about technology in government?

Jason Sankey
That we don't use it. 

Fred Schonenberg
Where do you think innovation is happening the fastest, public or private sector?

Jason Sankey
I think it depends. I don't think the public sector is lagging behind. I think the private sector has more resources, but we move just as quickly.

Fred Schonenberg
Last one. Twenty years from now, what do you hope Atlanta's legacy in technology will be?

Jason Sankey
So, our mayor has four pillars, one safe city, a city built for the future, a city of opportunity for all and an effective and ethical government. And I truly, truly, truly believe that technology is the nucleus of realizing those pillars. I want those pillars realized.

Fred Schonenberg
I love it. Jason, thank you for taking the time to talk with us and for everything you're doing to spark change throughout Atlanta and beyond. I really appreciate it.

Jason Sankey
Thank you, Fred. It's a pleasure.

Fred Schonenberg
Is there anywhere people should go to learn more about the work y'all are doing in Atlanta?

Jason Sankey
ATL Direct. So, if you go to ATL Direct, that is our true website where we put out all of the information that we're doing, but ATL Direct.

Fred Schonenberg
All right. Sounds good. Thank you again.

Jason Sankey
All right, Fred. Thank you.