The Technology Modernization Fund unveiled four new investments totalling about $83.4 million, according to website updates Wednesday.
Spanning the departments of State, Agriculture and Transportation, TMF’s investments will use commercial products to integrate AI into agencies’ systems and speed up environmental permitting — a response to TMF acting Director Jessie Posilkin’s call for AI and permitting proposals over the summer.
“It is great to have the TMF focused on products that matter, and I’m excited for more to come in the quarter ahead,” Posilkin wrote on LinkedIn.
TMF added four new members to its board last month, including Environmental Protection Agency Chief Information Officer Carter Farmer, the new pick for federal CIO. Posilkin previewed the new projects in late August, aiming to invest in new projects before government funding stops them on Dec. 11.
“We have been really excited both by the investments that the board is making decisions on right now, and what’s in our pipeline,” she said at the time. “And to me, that’s actually the piece that feels even more exciting.”
First, a $17.3 million investment at the State Department will implement agentic AI to streamline help-desk processes, aid with research and scenario planning, and allow employees to build their own automated agents, the site said. A person will review “every automated decision and minimum risk management practices will be followed,” it said.
TMF said it expects this investment to save help-desk staff and policy teams more than 100,000 hours a year once fully operational, and deliver about $15 million in time savings in the first year, rising to about $20 million the year after. Project funds are already over halfway transferred, as it started in July, the site said.
“A prior $18.2 million TMF investment brought generative AI tools to State’s networks, but employees still lack a way to connect the systems that stand between them and their work,” the site said.
One $10 million project at the Department of Agriculture will consolidate 10 review systems from different departmental agencies into one platform and use AI to identify applications eligible for the fastest review path, the site says.
It is expected to save 1.8 million labor hours per year and process about 78% of fast-track applications in “near real time, down from the weeks or months these reviews used to take, so communities see the jobs and economic benefits of these projects sooner,” it said.
Justin Fanelli, the Navy’s Chief Technology Officer and TMF Board member, told FedScoop that USDA’s components came together for the project, which “represents the increasing nature of whole-of-government teaming and solving common problems commonly, which ultimately I think is just exactly what we want to be doing on a regular basis.”
“I think we’re getting better at identifying common problems and putting a common solution out there for multiple people, as opposed to working them sequentially or in stovepipes,” he said.
Another $52.3 million investment at USDA’s National Finance Center would replace its “high risk” legacy payroll system with “a cloud-based platform built around artificial intelligence and automation,” the site said. The project will save taxpayers millions, it said.
“Without immediate action, the risk of system failure or cyber threats will escalate, potentially jeopardizing the delivery of paychecks and benefits to hundreds of thousands of federal employees,” it said. “Rising maintenance costs and a shrinking pool of programmers with knowledge of the aging code compound that threat.”
The system’s “foundation” will be built on “HR 2.0,” the Office of Personnel Management’s “plan to rebuild federal HR systems government-wide,” it said.
“OPM has reviewed and endorsed the plan, confirming it aligns with HR 2.0, and both agencies have committed to coordinating milestones as implementation moves forward,” the site said.
Posilkin said on LinkedIn that investing in the NFC — which she called “a true shared service” — is a “(niche/nerdy) dream come true.”
Lastly, a $3.8 million project at the Transportation Department will integrate AI into the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection’s Aviation Complaint, Enforcement, and Reporting System — a 2023 TMF investment, the site said. The AI will automate complaint categorization, detect duplicates and extract public records faster from the system, it said, but a person will still review each automated decision.
TMF expects this project to identify complaint trends up to 80% faster, “freeing staff to focus on holding airlines accountable,” and decrease records request response time by up to 75%, it said.
Overall, the Government Accountability Office reported in July that TMF investments will save more than $1 billion in the coming years.
GSA officials pointed to a LinkedIn post about the new investments as their comment.
