State Department looks to AI for streamlined FOIA workloads

By Jory Heckman, Fed. News Network, June 21, 2023 9:24 am

The State Department is looking at artificial intelligence and automation tools to process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests more quickly and improve its level of service to requesters.

Eric Stein, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for Office of Global Information Services and co-chairman of the Chief FOIA Officers Council’s Technology Committee, said he’s also looking at ways to use these emerging tools to improve FOIA processing governmentwide.

“I think people are afraid of AI, and maybe they should be. Maybe they shouldn’t be, but my take is, we’d like to get people comfortable with the concepts of AI and machine learning,” Stein said.

Read more here.