Aldebol questions Milstein on OAA hiring delays

We have Councilmember Alderball, followed by Maloney, followed by Juan.

Thank you, Chair and Speaker Mannion.

So you said the hiring process for the six new positions that were created in the adopted budget are actively underway.

Like specifically, where are you in the process?

How many people have already been hired?

how many people are left to be hired, and what have been the challenges in being able to hire people quickly?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Councilmember.

So we hope to be announcing a director for the office quite soon, in the next week or two.

And we are in the process of defining the additional roles so that they can be brought on quite quickly.

We certainly are challenged to find people who have the right combination of AI expertise and understanding of city systems to be able to hit the ground running.

That has been a little bit of a challenge.

But we do have, I think, bringing in a strong leader is going to help us draw good people who are going to want to do this work with us.

If I may, Chair.

Part of the role is to analyze algorithmic tools submitted by the agencies to determine whether there's risk that the proposal could result in discriminatory decision making.

What is your office doing or thinking about in terms of protecting the city's workforce as AI develops and evolves and

you're kind of like the gatekeeper?

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

for the question.

So in parallel with some of the risk assessment that we can do with the software, we are doing the

research associated with Local Law 25, which has us researching how algorithmic tools are impacting algorithmic tools and

automated employment decision tools might be impacting city workers.

And I believe that we should have results from that in 2027, and we'll have a much better sense of the landscape of how workers in the city are impacted.

Thank you.