The State Department is one of the early adopters of artificial intelligence in the workplace, with use cases involving translations, media summaries, and other aspects of the production of written materials for use in diplomacy. We spoke with Matthew Graviss, who leads data and AI at State, in late August to discuss progress in delivering AI-powered tools to the agency’s 80,000-plus employees. This article has been edited for length and clarity.
Nextgov/FCW: State seems to have really gone all-in on AI. You’ll execute an enterprise AI strategy that involves people from all corners of the agency. Can you give us an overview of the strategy and an update on where you are now?
Gravis: It’s a truly exciting time at the State Department when it comes to using technology to enable diplomacy. We have had an exciting year since the AI Strategy was signed last October. We took action quickly, as you suggested at the top: we created an AI conference board. Together with the deputy secretary, I chair the board of directors. We have an AI steering committee that is really focused on driving the implementation of the AI strategy for the department.
There are a lot of people in the department who are very energetic and really committed to bringing these types of capabilities to our workforce. When you look at the strategy, it can seem quite simple, and that’s by design. We have a goal in terms of infrastructure. We have objectives in the areas of culture, communication and training. We have a purpose in policy and governance and ensure we have the guardrails around the technology we use. And then we have an innovation goal that focuses on last mile delivery.
Nextgov/FCW: How are you introducing AI tools?
Gravis: The collaboration with the Chief Information Officer, Dr. Kelly Fletcher, has played a pioneering role in providing secure technology for the department. We have gained experience with open source, generative AI models and large language models. We went through an experience of onboarding in a secure manner, through the FedRAMP process and through our own security processes, to bring models into the department.
Nextgov/FCW: You are the Chief Data Officer and the Chief AI Officer. Why does it make sense to intertwine these roles?
Gravis: I’m glad I have both hats. Good AI is based on good data. You know, other parts of the State Department are going to come to us and say, “Hey, we need this AI model to do X, Y, and Z.” We say, “Sure, send us the data,” and the data isn’t ready yet. And so data readiness has been critical in our view. We have the Data.State platform that we have matured over the last few years. It is designed to create data access across the department, enabling more data-driven diplomacy. We have done extensive work on data sharing and data governance to ensure access, accountability and transparency.
The other thing I want to point out is that the CIO and I focused on AI use cases where we used publicly available tools based on publicly available data, like media summaries and things like that. That started to build culture and literacy within the department, while simultaneously executing on those other objectives of the strategy, getting the infrastructure ready, and preparing our data for use in AI.
Nextgov/FCW: Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at an event in June, which you moderated, to introduce AI to agency workers. What does it say about the state’s commitment to AI that the agency’s head is prioritizing employee engagement?
Gravis: It’s a really big deal if you can get the head of your cabinet-level cabinet to spend time, not just at that event, but leading up to the event, and learn about the progress we’ve made, and a will see some of our cases. the instruments in action. What leadership spends their time on is a strong indicator and driver of progress.
Nextgov/FCW: You said at the event in June that you received a lot of feedback from experienced users of AI products and services. How do these types of responses from staff encourage and support your efforts?
Gravis: We have combined our delivery of technology with a very robust communications program and training program to really understand and educate people on how to use it, but also create feedback. I’ll give you an example: We’ve really started doing a lot of robust testing around cybersecurity and ethics. As we grew, we started asking for feedback. So they started not only highlighting where they see it working well, but they’re “taking care of the backlog.” to use certain software terms. They work through the backlog of what should come next, based on what they see as the need. And that’s why we’ve tailored our roadmap to what employees need across the board.
Nextgov/FCW: What updates can you share as we approach the one-year anniversary of the public release of the enterprise AI strategy?
Gravis: I am very enthusiastic about one development on the personnel front. We have this agency chief data officer program that we started a few years ago to try to get data leaders and AI leaders in each of the agencies and headquarters as close to policymakers as possible. We have appointed 15 agency chief data officers over the past few years and will be making an announcement for more agency chief data officers in the coming weeks. So we’re really excited about that because I think that’s the next wave.
We need to both create the ecosystem, from an infrastructure perspective, but also create these leadership roles that can take advantage of the technology opportunities that are in front of us. So keep an eye on the scripts that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is developing, which can hopefully increase the adoption of this type of technology within the government.
