Snohomish County speeds training with Azure Speech, cutting production time by 87.5%

Snohomish County is a forward-thinking local government in Washington State, focused on creating opportunity and meeting the needs of residents in effective, creative ways. As AI and emerging technologies accelerated, the county saw a powerful opportunity to unlock more, starting by empowering its own workforce and removing friction from everyday work.

“For us, it’s about how technology can simplify lives, streamlining work for our employees and making engagement with government easier,” explains Viggo Forde, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Snohomish County.

Creating more content, with less cost and complexity

Snohomish County’s Human Resources team relied on a hands-on, manual process to create training content. Two full-time staff supported production, which involved multiple steps and significant coordination. Producing a 10-minute training video could take around four hours or more.

“Before, it took a lot of stages,” says Kristin Meyer, HR Business Partner, Learning & Development at Snohomish County. “We’d either have to hire someone to do the voiceover or ask an employee do it, lock the script, set up a sound booth, record multiple takes, and spend hours editing.”

Looking to move faster, the team turned to Azure Speech to automate content creation and reduce complexity across the process. 

With Azure Speech in place, the HR team can now produce high-quality, voice-narrated training videos in just 30 minutes, reducing production time by 87.5% per video and freeing up approximately 840 hours annually for higher-value work. Teams move faster without losing quality and can iterate instantly, without coordinating costly re-recordings.

“It’s much easier now,” adds Kristin Meyer. “We generate narration in minutes. If feedback comes in, we just update the text. We don’t have to re-record or re-edit anything.”

The shift also delivers clear cost savings. By bringing narration in-house and consolidating tools on Azure, the county eliminates external vendor spend and reduces the need for additional point solutions.

José Matthews, Enterprise Data Manager at Snohomish County, explains, “Having one central platform means we’re not dealing with multiple vendors, contracts, and data agreements. We’re leveraging what we already own, without adding cost, risk, or complexity, and we can expand the same platform to support other departments over time.”

Learning that works for everyone

Beyond time and cost savings, Snohomish County uses Azure Speech to expand the reach of learning, improving accessibility, engagement, and collaboration across teams.

“Azure Speech has been a real game changer. It expands what our team can do and helps us work more efficiently. We can better forecast timelines, reduce variables, and deliver a more polished final product—learning experiences teams are proud to share,” enthuses Kristin Meyer.

Accessibility was a core requirement from day one. “We don’t want to create anything that isn’t accessible to everyone,” adds Kristin. “Inclusion is one of our core values, and this helps us deliver learning experiences that work for people with different needs and assistive technologies.”

With Azure Speech, the county can meet learners on their own terms, supporting different learning styles, languages, and preferences.

“People learn differently. Some want slides, some want audio, some want a visual of someone teaching the content. Azure Speech supports all of that, including subtitles and transcription. That accessibility is where the real power comes in. We’re able to easily reach learners that were previously harder to engage,” notes José Matthews.

Secure, scalable, and people-first

Snohomish County approached AI adoption deliberately, focusing first on use cases with clear value and building trust through responsible implementation. “AI brings enormous opportunity for our workforce and our residents,” says Viggo Forde. “Our aspiration is to be early—responsibly early—adopters.”

Choosing the right partner was central to that approach. “Microsoft is our biggest technology partner,” adds Viggo. “It was important for us to work with a partner that aligns with our values around safe and responsible AI.”

Just as critical was ensuring that new AI capabilities fit seamlessly into the county’s existing Microsoft environment, without adding complexity or fragmentation. Azure delivered both scale and simplicity. 

“Azure is a huge playground. The breadth of capabilities makes it clear this is where we can modernize skills and continue to grow,” explains Viggo Forde.

With Azure Speech, Snohomish County gained enterprise-ready capabilities that balance power with ease of use. HR and learning teams can select from natural, multilingual voices, fine-tune tone and pronunciation, and enhance content with speech avatars—all through a no-code, self-service experience delivered via Azure Foundry.

“The customization tools are great,” shares Kristin Meyer. “We can preview audio, adjust pronunciation or intonation, and make changes quickly. That level of control makes a real difference in the final product.”

For the technology team, usability and governance go hand in hand. José Matthews says, “The Azure-based platform meets people where they are. It’s intuitive for non-technical users, but it also gives us the control we need. That balance is key.”

Building the next chapter

With a proven model in place, Snohomish County is already expanding its use of AI across departments. One immediate focus is creating multiple versions of content to support multilingual and more inclusive learning experiences.

“We’re working with another department to create variations in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese,” explains José Matthews. “That helps us better serve different demographic groups and offer a consistent experience across departments.”

Beyond training content, the County’s broader AI roadmap is accelerating. The team has begun rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot to a limited group, helping employees understand where it adds the most value and how it fits into daily work.

“We’ve just turned on Copilot Chat for enterprise and are focused on helping our workforce understand what it means and how to benefit from it,” says Viggo Forde. “We’re starting M365 Copilot with a smaller user group to identify where it makes the most sense, and then we’ll grow from there.”

The team is also closely watching new capabilities coming to the government cloud, including Copilot Studio, to expand agent-based scenarios and build deeper, role-specific solutions.

On the learning side, the HR team is nearing completion of countywide e-learning experiences, including a revamped new employee orientation designed to be one of a new hire’s first introductions to county culture, values, and expectations.

Looking ahead, Snohomish County is exploring external-facing use cases such as public outreach and education, extending the same principles of accessibility, engagement, and responsible AI beyond the workforce.

Three practical lessons for public sector leaders

1. Put policy before scale
Create shared guardrails early, educate teams, and make responsible AI use the default. Clear policy builds trust, reduces risk, and gives employees confidence to innovate within defined boundaries.

2. Start small, prove value, then grow
Focus on use cases with impact. Pilot thoughtfully, learn fast, and expand only after value is clear. Momentum follows results.

3. Work with trusted partners
Choose partners who understand public sector needs, share your values, and can scale with you over time. Strong partnerships turn experimentation into sustainable progress.

“AI is here to stay, and it’s going to change a lot of what we do,” concludes Viggo Forde. “Finding the right technology partners is critical.  We want to go after the use cases where it truly makes sense, start small and demonstrate value before we grow from there.  More importantly, the skilled and dedicated people who work in the county government are—and always will be—our most important resource. AI and emerging technology will be implemented thoughtfully, and we look at this as an opportunity to help our team members with their work.”

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