Ocean City MD first municipal AI policy (2026)

Ocean City, Md. (Worcester County) — FIRST MUNICIPAL AI POLICY, 'setting rules for town workers, SENSITIVE DATA, APPROVED TOOLS and WEARABLE DEVICES as the technology spreads.' THREE COMPONENTS, of which two are standard and one is not. STANDARD: (1) SENSITIVE DATA handling — the core control in municipal AI policy, preventing staff pasting confidential, personnel, law-enforcement or resident data into third-party models where it may be retained or used for training; (2) APPROVED TOOLS — a vetted list, which is the procurement-side control that stops shadow adoption of consumer chatbots. Both appear across the indexed municipal cohort (Salem OR GenAI Policy, KCMO GenAI Policy, Tulsa GenAI Policy, Boston GenAI Guidelines, Columbus City Schools AI Policy (teacher discretion, plagiarism rules), columbus-oh-smart-city-ai-policy-2024). UNUSUAL: (3) WEARABLE DEVICES. Municipal AI policies overwhelmingly govern SOFTWARE; extending to WEARABLES reaches HARDWARE THAT CAPTURES CONTINUOUSLY AND OFTEN WITHOUT THE AWARENESS OF THOSE RECORDED — smart glasses, AI pins, body-worn recorders with on-device inference. FOR A RESORT MUNICIPALITY WHOSE WORKFORCE INCLUDES LIFEGUARDS, POLICE, INSPECTORS AND PUBLIC WORKS CREWS OPERATING CONTINUOUSLY AMONG THE PUBLIC, that is a practical rather than hypothetical concern, and it sits adjacent to the surveillance-technology material indexed here (Ordinance on Surveillance Oversight and Information Sharing, Sanibel FL ALPR data-sharing ban and search restrictions (2026)). NO REQUIREMENT IS ACTUALLY REPORTED — the source names the policy's subject areas but not its rules, so `strength` is limited and no provision may be cited. MARYLAND CONTEXT: this is an AI-governance measure and is NOT part of the state's data center cluster (Hurlock MD three-year data center moratorium (2026), Prince George's County MD 2-year data center moratorium, Cambridge, Federalsburg, Easton).