LO
DeploymentCognitive automation2026-04-13
Thirty-five of forty-five US federal agencies reported running a knowledge retrieval system over their own agency information
Data engineeroccupation page →
Event date / reported
2026-04-13 · reported 2026-04-14
Evidence stage
DeploymentAn employer has put it into production. Can move the baseline — weighted by scale and how similar the setting is.
Tasks this bears on
Feeding the systems that answer in sentences
Getting the right documents, the right freshness and the right access rules into whatever the AI feature reads from.
New task✓ Evidence-backed
Where this applies
The same census, fourth of the 20 questions: searching for agency information using a knowledge retrieval system is Y at 35 of 45. The product column names the systems themselves rather than a category — Microsoft 365 Copilot at most of them, ChatGPT Enterprise at Energy, Claude and Gemini through the GSA USAi platform, Palantir Foundry and Credal at Health and Human Services, Vertex AI and RelativityOne at Homeland Security, AWS Bedrock at Commerce and Transportation. This task is labelled emerging, meaning work that exists because of automation, and what the census establishes is its premise: at 35 of 45 agencies there is a retrieval system pointed at the documents of that agency, so there is a corpus somebody has to keep current and scope. What it does not establish is the work. The file has no column for who maintains what a system reads, no measure of effort, and nothing saying whether that job sits with a data team, a records office or the vendor. It is also one employer and an unusual one: an agency that must publish an inventory of its AI, and must answer for who may see which document, is not a fair stand-in for an employer under neither duty.
What this means
Retrieval over the documents an organisation already holds is now the normal case at this employer: 35 of 45. Every one of those systems has a corpus behind it, and somebody has to decide what goes into it, how current it is kept, and who is allowed to see which part.
What it does not yet show
The file has no column for that somebody. It establishes that the systems are there; it does not establish that a job has appeared beside them, how much of one, or whether it sits with a data team, a records office or the vendor. One employer, and one under a legal duty to publish and to answer for access, is also not a fair stand-in for one under neither.
What you can check
Find out whether your organisation already runs one of these. If it does, ask who decides what it is allowed to read. If no one can name that person, that is the work, and it is currently unassigned.
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. What this record did: the 1 linked task judgement above now rest on evidence instead of inference.
Source
OMB — 2025 Federal Agency AI Use Case Inventory, consolidated commercial off-the-shelf AI use cases (CSV, 45 agencies × 20 questions) · verified 2026-09-22 · VOLO agent · interpreted 2026-09-22 · VOLO agent
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.