OCIO supports the Department of Education with adhering to Federal regulations pertaining to AI and its developing safeguards, ensuring responsible and secure usage of AI while embracing its innovative technologies and capabilities. Related Federal guidance and the Department's response on how it's complying with requirements can be found below.
Inventory of U.S. Department of Education AI Use - Cases
In arrangement with EO 13960, the Department of Education has assembled an inventory of AI use-cases.
| Program Office | Use Case | Description |
| Federal Student Aid | Aidan Chat-bot | Federal Student Aid's (FSA) virtual assistant uses natural language processing to answer common financial aid questions and help customers get information about their federal aid on StudentAid.gov. In just over two years, Aidan has interacted with over 2.6 million unique customers, resulting in more than 11 million user messages. |
| Office of Finance and Operations | IPAC | The IPAC Workflow bot downloads a date range csv file from the Treasury's IPAC system, adjusts the entries to fit the ED system, and uploads them to the ED SharePoint sites and the Financial system. |
| Office of Elementary and Secondary Education - Impact Aid Program | Create Job Aid to help grantees | The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), Impact Aid Program is using AI to create written materials designed to generate enthusiasm with grantees, in alignment with their objective to promote academic excellence, enhancing educational opportunities and equity for all of America's children and families, and improve the quality of teaching and learning by providing leadership, technical assistance and financial support. |
| Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development - Office of Educational Technology | Research and explore project ideas for educators | The Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development (OPEPD), Office of Educational Technology is using AI to brainstorm project ideas, explore potential use cases for educators, assisting their work in educational technology policy and strategies for encouraging the use of educational technology, and supporting research to improve learning outcomes. |
| Office of Postsecondary Education | Create Public Remarks to promote improvement in education | The Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) is using AI to generate written materials, augmenting the creation of public remarks and documents. These materials are used to assist in their work of strengthening the capacity of colleges and universities, to expand access, and promote reform, innovation, and improvement in postsecondary education. |
| Office of the Under Secretary | Create written materials aiding policy, program, and activity coordination | The Office of the Under Secretary (OUS) uses AI to suggest written materials for document first drafts and to summarize public information, aiding in the coordination of policies, programs, and activities related to Postsecondary Education (OPE), Career, Technical Education, Adult Education (OCTAE), The Office of the Chief Economist, and Federal Student Aid (FSA). |
| Office of the Chief Data Officer - Analytics & Infrastructure Team | Generate trainings and code to leverage data | The Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO) - Analytics & Infrastructure Team are using and evaluating AI to create generalized code snippets, train employees on prompt engineering, and summarize general research data in order to manage and improve the Department's ability to leverage data as a strategic asset. |
| Office of the General Counsel | Research AI civil rights impacts and generate text to aid legal services | The Office of the General Counsel (OGC) is using AI to generate written paragraphs intended to augment written documents, research legal and civil rights issues related to Artificial Intelligence, and evaluate AI's ability to assist in providing legal service to the Secretary and all other officers and employees of the Department, as they serve in carrying out the duties of the Department. |
| Federal Student Aid | Generate standardized materials and summarize content, improving tools and resources for students and parents | Federal Student Aid (FSA) is using AI to generate drafts of documents, emails, and presentation materials, and summarize public content on StudentAid.gov and documents to ensure that students, parents, and borrowers are aware of the information, tools, and resources available to help them pursue a college education, and to improve the tolls and resources available to customers based on feedback and research. |
| Office of the Chief Information Officer | Generate written materials to promote technology advancement | The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) is using AI to prepare first drafts of required documents, summarize publicly available documents, and research additional potential uses of AI to provide the technological solutions that enable the Department of Education to deliver world-class service to schools, students, and their families. |
| Office of Finance and Operations | Evaluate the potential of AI in grants related work | The Office of Finance and Operations (OFO) is using AI to evaluate the potential uses of AI in grants work, and what portions of the grant lifecycle can be augmented with AI to aid in their mission of transforming the Department of Education into a high-performance, customer-focused organization. |
| Office of Elementary and Secondary Education - Impact Aid Program | Star Employee Recognition Program | The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), Impact Aid Program is using Generative AI to aid establishment of their Star Employee non-monetary Employee Recognition Program. This program helps to foster a positive work culture by acknowledging and celebrating the outstanding contributions, efforts, and achievements of employees within the organization. |
You can also download the Use Cases in Excel format below.