Supercharging Data With AI

Revolutionizing parks and recreation

By Jason Peters

Like many industries, parks and recreation departments are benefiting from using AI and data to optimize operations. Based on insights from industry leaders with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints, there are some key takeaways that can help agencies of all sizes.

Economic-Impact Calculators

In collaborations between GovTech Innovators and Erika Devore, Executive Director of the Kansas Recreation and Park Association (KRPA), she highlights how the agency uses data to provide economic-impact calculators for members. This showcases a powerful use case for data analytics in parks and recreation, demonstrating the economic value departments bring to their communities.

KRPA’s impact calculators help departments showcase their value to decision-makers, avoiding budget cuts or helping to secure funding. They achieve this by categorizing and grouping the economic impact that departments have on their communities:

• Property values
• Healthcare
• Savings
• Tourism
• Job creation
• Arts
• Environment: Forest and tree carbon sequestration, stormwater savings, annual value of trails, and pollination.

KRPA’s economic-impact calculators are impressive. Now let’s imagine how integrating artificial intelligence into this process can optimize these calculators even more!

Optimizing Economic-Impact Calculators With Artificial Intelligence

With GovTech Innovators, Devore discusses the potential of developing a custom GPT tailored to aggregate and analyze data from various economic-impact calculators. Currently, KRPA may use several impact calculators, each offering valuable insights into specific metrics, like visitor spending, regional economic benefits, or operational efficiencies. However, the challenge lies in connecting the dots between these datasets to uncover overarching trends and additional, actionable insights.

A custom GPT will act as a powerful data interpreter, pulling together disparate results into a single, cohesive analysis. With a user-friendly interface, staff can simply upload calculator outputs or raw data, and the GPT will process it all, identifying patterns, anomalies, and hidden opportunities that might otherwise go unnoticed. For example, it may reveal that visitor spending spikes during specific events or seasons, or it can highlight an underutilized facility that could become a revenue driver with targeted marketing.

Chris Drum, Superintendent of Recreation with the Derby Recreation Commission, says his department would like to learn more about its visitors to better measure economic impact. Insights into where visitors come from and where they go afterward can enhance traditional economic-impact calculators, offering deeper analysis. Advanced tools leveraging AI and connected technologies can track and interpret visitor flow, providing actionable data. Combining visitor-flow analysis with economic-impact calculations empowers departments to gain more comprehensive insights into the community's economic contributions.

Using AI For Maintenance

Drum and his team have had great success using ChatGPT to troubleshoot and resolve issues ranging from maintenance equipment repairs to server and network issues. He stresses the importance of writing a great prompt and iterating until achieving the best output. It’s critical that leaders view AI-generated content as a starting point and then revise and perfect from there, understanding that the chosen AI tool will sometimes hallucinate and provide inaccurate information.   

Additional use cases include using AI for various functions:

• Predictive maintenance for facilities and equipment
• Smart irrigation and water management
• Automated inspections and reporting
• Energy management
• Waste-management optimization.

Data Analysis with AI

In collaboration with Sam Lunt, Assistant Recreation Director for Rochester Avon Recreation Authority and Lead Parks and AI Consultant for GovTech Innovators, he shares how he leverages AI for various data analysis tasks that streamline processes, uncover insights, and enhance decision-making. These tasks can be grouped into several main categories:

Customer Insights And Program Metrics

AI plays a crucial role in building customer life-cycle analyses, participation trends, and purchase habits. These analyses help leaders understand customer behavior and engagement over time. For example, they can identify which programs are most popular during different times of the year and adjust offerings accordingly to better meet customer needs. Lunt has used AI with customer data like participation, program time of year, cost, and more to recommend when and where to schedule programs to maximize participation.

Financial/Data Analysis And Workforce Management

Lunt also uses AI to review budgets and provide actionable recommendations. One of his favorite applications involves creating scripts that help automate certain data collection and transformation tasks. He has used this technique to automate several data-focused duties like daily journal entries. See how below. This allows him to balance financial statements accurately and efficiently in minutes, rather than hours. AI is also an expert at generating financial reports that offer clear and comprehensive summaries of an agency’s financial health.

AI assists in analyzing payroll and labor metrics, optimizing workforce management, and helping to ensure operations run smoothly. Lunt has used AI to assist in analyzing large volumes of raw facility data to analyze usage trends. This analysis allows him to assign a revenue marker to each area, providing valuable insights for resource allocation.

Data Visualization And Simplification

Lunt uses AI to create dynamic visuals and interactive dashboards that make complex data more accessible. With AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude, he writes scripts that convert large datasets, such as revenue/expense reports, financial health for each business unit, and employee-performance data, into more digestible segments. For example, summarizing financial health by highlighting key metrics allows stakeholders to quickly understand performance trends, making the data-analysis process more approachable and actionable. These tools help transform raw data into actionable insights, enhancing overall communication and decision-making.

Future AI Use Cases

Looking ahead, Lunt plans to scale his current AI applications to larger and more complex datasets and scenarios. He is planning to build a comprehensive database of organizational knowledge and utilize AI as a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) tool. This AI-driven data scientist will empower staff by providing them with accessible insights and enabling them to master the use of data in their roles.

This is an excellent use case for AI in parks and rec—using existing policies and procedures, departments can set up a GPT to mine its data. This offers value both to internal and external stakeholders. GovTech Innovators recently implemented a similar tool as a proof of concept for another project. (For an example of how departments can utilize the tool, head to https://chatgpt.com/g/g-673e03080ea08191a5cfffb843787058-govtech-innovators-assistant.)

Lunt is also interested in experimenting with AI agents to fully automate smaller, repetitive data-analysis tasks, freeing up more time for higher-level strategic work. He hopes to integrate AI tools with the department’s existing software, such as its website and registration systems, to gather real-time insights more efficiently.

Implementing AI In A Department

Drum stresses the importance of defining the department’s mission and evaluating the use of AI in alignment with the organization’s priorities. By taking a mission-centric approach, he has successfully guided his department’s implementation of AI to focus only on implementing tools that support the mission, focusing on the highest-impact opportunities first.

Drum and Lunt agree that complete and accurate processes and procedures enable a smoother and faster implementation of AI. Many of the example use cases that Drum shared were enabled and/or simplified because of a robust collection of existing documentation.

In addition to the above insights, GovTech Innovators has prepared a quick start guide to help parks and rec departments implement AI. See the full resource below.

Jason Peters is the Founder & CEO of GovTech Innovators, dedicated to helping parks and recreation agencies leverage AI for smarter, more efficient services. With over two decades of public-sector experience, he guides municipal leaders in using data-driven insights, process automation, and forward-thinking strategies to enhance community engagement, optimize resources, and drive sustainable growth. Learn more at https://www.govtechinnovators.com/.

Quick Start Guide For AI In Parks And Recreation

Step 1: Assess Your Department's AI Readiness

• Review Policies And Procedures: Update existing policies to align with AI integration, focusing on data governance and privacy.
• Identify Early Adoption Areas: Pinpoint functions where AI can have an immediate impact, such as automating routine tasks or enhancing customer interactions.
• Assess Staff Capabilities: Determine your team's technical skills to identify training needs. 

Step 2: Explore With Small, Impactful Projects

• Marketing Content Creation: Use AI to generate engaging marketing materials and social media posts. As an example, check out the GovTech Innovators marketing AI case study.
• Program Planning Augmentation: Use AI to analyze past program performance and predict new programs that will perform well. Use AI to generate program plans and budgets.
• Customer Service Responses: Implement AI chatbots to handle common inquiries and reduce response times. Use AI to generate and revise email responses.
• Data Analysis And Reporting: Leverage AI for data collection and insights to inform decision-making. 

Step 3: Establish Fundamental AI Guidelines

• Create An AI Use Policy: Define acceptable AI use and ethical considerations.
• Set Approval Processes: Establish procedures for approving AI initiatives.
• Implement Data Handling Protocols: Ensure compliance with privacy laws and protect user data.

Step 4: Select The Right AI Tools

There is a plethora of AI tools available in the marketplace, with more being added every day. The following list is only a sample. It’s important to research the market or consult with AI experts at GovTech Innovators to assess the available solutions and select the best technology for your department. Examples include the following:

• ChatGPT by OpenAI: AI-powered conversational assistant designed for generating human-like text responses.
  • Multimodal Abilities: GPT-4 can handle various inputs, including text and images, making it versatile for content creation, customer service, and ideation.
  • Customization: With the "Custom GPTs" feature, users can create tailored AI applications for specific needs.
  • Content Generation And Analysis: Great for drafting emails, articles, summaries, and data analysis, plus it has live internet access in the latest versions.
• Claude by Anthropic: AI tool focused on safe, ethical, and high-quality responses, particularly suited for document summarization, complex interactions, and scenarios requiring responsible AI use.
  • Document Processing: Known for summarizing lengthy documents and offering concise insights, making it ideal for research or administrative tasks.
  • Safe And Ethical Responses: Focuses on maintaining balanced, non-biased, and safe responses, making it suitable for sensitive contexts.
  • Extended Interaction Capability: Handles complex, lengthy conversations better than some competitors.
• Google Gemini: Multimodal AI integrated across the Google ecosystem, with capabilities in text, image, and audio processing.
  • Multimodal Integration: Gemini handles text, images, and audio, making it suitable for applications in customer support, real-time translation, and media creation.
  • Google Ecosystem Integration: Embedded within Gmail, Google Docs, and other apps, enhancing collaborative and customer-service applications.
  • Perplexity: Research-focused AI assistant known for its real-time information retrieval and well-sourced responses.
  • Real-Time Information Retrieval: Offers reliable, citation-supported answers from live web data, valuable for research and detailed queries.
  • Concise And Well-Sourced Responses: Links to sources, which is a useful function for verifying and extending research insights.
• Grammarly: Writing assistant that provides grammar, spelling, and style corrections, along with tone adjustment and clarity suggestions.
  • Real-Time Grammar And Style Assistance: Offers excellent grammar and style corrections across browsers and writing platforms.
  • Tone Adjustment And Clarity Suggestions: Tailors language to audience, improving professional and polished writing.
  • Cross-Platform Integration: Functions across web browsers, word processors, and email clients for accessibility.
• Canva: Canva's AI-powered design tools help create visually appealing graphics, flyers, and social media content with ease. Utilize features like Magic Resize and AI-generated templates to streamline your design process.
• Adobe Express: Offers AI-driven tools for creating stunning visuals, videos, and web pages. Features like content-aware fill and AI-enhanced image-editing can save time and improve the quality of marketing materials.
• InVideo: Provides robust video creation and editing tools, with a library of customizable templates suited for promotional videos, social media content, and educational materials.
• Synthesia: Allows for creation of AI-generated videos with virtual presenters. Ideal for instructional content, program overviews, or virtual tours of facilities.
• Google NotebookLM: Innovative AI-powered research tool that leverages Google’s Gemini model, designed to simplify complex content by offering an interactive and audio-driven learning experience.
  • Deep Dive Audio Overview: NotebookLM’s standout feature is its two-way AI conversation, where two virtual hosts discuss the content in uploaded documents, summarizing, connecting ideas, and adding conversational "banter." This turns research papers, slides, and documents into podcast-like discussions, making complex information easy to absorb on the go.
  • Enhanced Content Understanding: The AI hosts provide an overview that connects themes and insights across multiple documents, helping users see patterns and gain a comprehensive understanding of their sources.

Step 5: Train And Empower Your Team

• Provide AI Training: Educate staff on AI basics to build confidence.
• Teach Prompt Engineering: Train team members to interact effectively with AI tools.
• Establish Best Practices: Develop guidelines for consistent AI use.
• Create Usage Guidelines: Outline protocols for responsible AI usage, including ethics and data handling. 

Conclusion And Next Steps

Embarking on your AI journey can significantly enhance your department's operations and services. Begin by assessing your readiness, starting with small projects that offer high impact. Establish clear guidelines and invest in training to ensure a smooth transition.

GovTech Innovators is here to support you with expert training, strategic planning, policy development, and implementation assistance: https://www.govtechinnovators.com.

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