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What should a government employee check before using AI?
Use these checks to decide whether a particular tool and task are appropriate. Agencies may define information classes and approval conditions differently, so this is a practical decision framework—not a substitute for your agency’s rules.
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- Authorization: Is the tool approved by your agency for official work, and does that approval cover this purpose and configuration?
- Information class: Is the material public, internal or otherwise nonpublic, personally identifiable, sensitive, protected, or classified under your agency’s rules?
- Data treatment: Through the agency’s process, determine how prompts and outputs are retained, who can access them, whether they may be used for model training or other purposes, and how deletion works.
- Consequence: Is AI helping with routine drafting, or will it inform a decision affecting a person, such as hiring, eligibility, or enforcement?
- Oversight: What human review, risk assessment, documentation, and escalation steps does the agency require?
If authorization or data handling is unclear, pause and ask the appropriate agency privacy, security, legal, procurement, records, program, or AI governance official. Do not personally accept a service’s terms or create an official account unless agency rules permit it.
How should employees handle prompts, files, and agency data?
Assume that entering text or uploading a file discloses it to the AI service. Do not provide nonpublic agency material, personal information, confidential records, protected operational information, or classified information unless the agency has expressly authorized that system for the information and use. A tool’s public availability—or an account’s enterprise branding—does not by itself establish that it is cleared for official data.
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Federal acquisition guidance directs agencies to establish privacy processes for AI services handling personally identifiable information and to set appropriate contractual terms for government data. It says contracts must permanently prohibit using nonpublic agency inputs and outputs to further train publicly or commercially available AI algorithms without explicit agency consent, consistent with applicable law. These are acquisition requirements for agencies, not a complete personal-use policy for every employee; follow your agency’s implementation and approved-tool rules. See OMB Memorandum M-25-22.
How should employees review AI-generated work?
Check generated text, summaries, calculations, and recommendations against authoritative sources before using them in official work. In particular, verify dates, current law and policy, citations, and factual claims; remove fabricated references and unsupported assertions; and look for bias or inappropriate content. Confident wording is not evidence of accuracy. GAO identifies misinformation as a generative AI risk.
Edit and approve material yourself before it becomes official work. Keep records of material AI-assisted work or decisions when agency records rules require it. The responsibility for work submitted or action taken remains with the responsible employee, not the AI system.
What changes when AI may affect a person?
Pause before using AI to make or meaningfully inform decisions about individuals—for example, in hiring, eligibility, or enforcement. Route the proposed use through the agency’s required program, legal, privacy, security, and AI governance review before relying on it. The review may need to address authorization, risk, human oversight, documentation, and applicable law or program rules. Do not let a system make or effectively determine a consequential government decision unless the agency has authorized that use and required review is in place.
There is no single rule in the sources here that makes every consequential use subject to the same process across all agencies. The Office of Personnel Management’s August 27, 2026 memorandum on AI in federal hiring addresses that specific context; it should not be treated as a general policy for all government AI uses. GSA’s directive, by contrast, calls for assessment, evaluation, monitoring, and governance within GSA’s scope.
Why is agency-specific guidance essential?
Federal rules and implementations are not interchangeable. GSA’s directive, signed March 11, 2026 and updated June 12, 2026, sets standards for AI assessment, procurement, use, monitoring, and governance at GSA. Its stated scope covers GSA employees and contractors, relevant GSA systems and federal data, and AI systems acquired by or for GSA, subject to its exclusions. It is an example of agency implementation, not a directive that automatically governs every federal employee. Read GSA’s directive, Accelerating Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence at GSA, alongside your own agency’s current rules.
AI use is changing, and policy can lag behind new tools. In a July 29, 2025 report, GAO found that reported AI use cases across 11 selected agencies with inventories rose from 571 in 2023 to 1,110 in 2024; reported generative AI use cases rose from 32 to 282 over the same years. These are reported use cases in selected agencies, not a census of government use or a measure of employee adoption. GAO also reported that officials at 10 of 12 selected agencies said existing federal policy, including data privacy policy, could present obstacles to adoption; four said rapid technological change complicated policy and practice. See GAO-25-107653, Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI Use and Management at Federal Agencies.
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Canada offers a useful comparison, but its rules do not govern U.S. agencies. The Government of Canada’s guide says public servants must not enter personal information into publicly available online generative AI tools; personal information may be used in government-controlled or configured systems when appropriate privacy and security controls are in place. It also distinguishes routine support, such as brainstorming or drafting routine correspondence, from AI that makes or informs an administrative decision. For the latter, the Canadian guide points to its Directive on Automated Decision-Making, including an Algorithmic Impact Assessment and related transparency, quality assurance, and procedural-fairness requirements. Do not import those Canadian mechanisms into U.S. practice. See the Government of Canada Guide on the use of generative artificial intelligence.
Quick Recap
A short checklist before your next AI task
- Find the current policy, approved-tool list, and data-classification rules for your agency.
- Confirm the tool is approved for both the task and the information you plan to enter.
- Ask how prompts and outputs are retained, accessed, reused, and deleted if the agency’s guidance does not answer that.
- Verify generated material before relying on it and retain required records.
- Get the required review before AI informs a decision affecting a person.
- Recheck agency guidance when tools or your task change.
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