5 Federal Tech Programs to Watch: AI, Weather Data and More

Federal agencies are testing new ways to use technology for some of their biggest challenges including detecting disease, accelerating biomedical research, scaling autonomous systems and managing the infrastructure demands of AI.

Some of these programs are new. Others have been underway for years. All have great promise for impacting federal missions.

Here are five federal technology programs to watch as those efforts develop.

CDC’s Real-Time Disease Surveillance

The ongoing multi-state outbreak of Cyclospora illnesses has turned attention to disease surveillance mechanisms at the CDC.

The agency’s BioSense Platform is a cloud-based electronic information system used to quickly identify emerging diseases or environmental disasters. It is part of the larger National Syndromic Surveillance Program to improve readiness and response to health threats through early detection.

As part of the program, emergency department healthcare workers collect clinical data on symptoms, diagnoses and demographics, which become available in the platform as early as 24 hours after a patient’s visit. While the program itself isn’t new, recent electronic health record integration and modernization efforts have led to near-real-time monitoring for analysts, epidemiologists and others.

Here’s how the surveillance process works:

1. People seek treatment at an emergency department or healthcare facility.
2. The facility sends de-identified data to state and local health departments or Health Information Exchanges.
3. That data is then added to the BioSense Platform, which can the public health community can access to monitor public health.

The CDC said the program’s wide-ranging benefits include “detecting potential outbreaks, identifying and mitigating diseases and their spread, improving response during disasters, reducing death and injury, increasing screening, prevention, and connection to counseling.”

The program is especially relevant now as CDC modernizes its public health data infrastructure and expands electronic health record integration to give health officials faster, more complete insight into emerging threats.

ARPA-H Uses AI for Biomedical Research

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health is testing whether artificial intelligence can accelerate the traditional biomedical research cycle through its Intelligent Generator of Research (IGoR) program.

Launched in May, IGoR is an effort to create an AI-powered research ecosystem that continuously refines models of complex and chronic health conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Rather than simply using AI to analyze existing research, IGoR aims to integrate the technology throughout the discovery process. AI systems will help identify gaps in researchers’ understanding of diseases and recommend experiments to fill them. A network of laboratories will then conduct standardized experiments and return high-quality data that can continuously improve the underlying disease models.

ARPA-H aims to use the approach to drive biological discovery at least 10 times faster than traditional methods while enabling scientists to undertake experiments currently considered too expensive or difficult.

Pentagon Scales Autonomous Systems

The War Department is reorganizing its autonomous systems enterprise around a central goal: moving drones and other autonomous capabilities from experimentation into production and fielding at scale.

The department established the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, or DAWG, in 2025 to continue and expand the work of the original Replicator initiative, which sought to rapidly field large numbers of autonomous systems. In June 2026, the Pentagon placed DAWG under the newly established Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS), which reports directly to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg.

The restructuring makes DRPM-UxS the department’s single joint integrator for unmanned and autonomous systems, combining DAWG, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 and service-level autonomy efforts.

Under the new structure, the original Replicator autonomy effort has transitioned into DAWG, which is focused on accelerating the production, fielding and cross-service integration of autonomous systems. Replicator 2 — the department’s separate counter-drone initiative — was consolidated under JIATF-401 and has since become the Domestic Shield initiative.

The Defense Innovation Unit will serve as the Pentagon’s primary industry engagement interface for autonomy, providing companies a central entry point for work involving drones, counter-drone systems, AI-enabled mission autonomy and swarming technologies.

The scale of the department’s ambitions is reflected in its fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $53.6 billion for its Drone Dominance initiative to support autonomous systems procurement, domestic production capacity and advanced capabilities.

EPA Targets Data Centers’ Water Demands

AI and advanced computing create new demands on the nation’s physical infrastructure. The Environmental Protection Agency is expanding its water reuse efforts to address one of the less visible challenges accompanying that growth: water consumption.

In April, EPA launched Water Reuse Action Plan 2.0, which renewed and expanded the national water reuse framework first established in 2020. The effort comes as data centers, energy production and domestic manufacturing increase demand for water and focuses on four areas: technology innovation, energy production, interagency collaboration and domestic manufacturing.

Among the plan’s 27 new actions, EPA and its partners are developing a geographic information system-based tool to identify alternative sources of water, including treated municipal wastewater, that could be used for power plant cooling. The tool was initially intended for the power sector, but EPA is expanding its scope to serve a broader group of users.

Another effort focuses specifically on streamlining permitting for water reuse at data centers. EPA is gathering information about state regulations governing recycled water for industrial cooling to develop best practices that could help data center operators safely use and monitor recycled water while navigating permitting requirements.

WRAP 2.0 is also looking at how AI-powered tools and technologies could support water management for state and local municipalities while strengthening collaboration between government, industry, utilities and regulators.

NASA Innovates Wildfire Technology

Numerous widespread wildfires globally have driven localities to prioritize resources and manage emergency preparations. Much of this activity is made possibly with data visualization technology.

NASA’s FireSense project works with operational wildland fire agencies to apply NASA’s Earth science data and technologies to four areas: pre-fire fuel conditions, active fire dynamics, post-fire impacts and threats and air quality forecasting. It is part of NASA’s broader Wildland Fire Initiative spanning the agency’s science, aeronautics and space technology organizations.

The project combines satellite, airborne and ground-based observations to improve fire detection and tracking, monitor fuel conditions and smoke plumes, and strengthen models used to predict fire spread. NASA is also developing improved maps of burn extent and severity that can support ecosystem recovery after a wildfire.

NASA has conducted annual airborne and field campaigns since 2023 to test instruments, gather data and refine technologies before transferring those capabilities to operators.

FireSense is entering a pivotal stage as NASA builds toward its 2027 to 2028 capstone campaign, which will test how effectively years of research and technology development can translate into operational tools for wildfire agencies.

That operational focus has been built into FireSense from the beginning. The project grew from direct engagement with the wildfire community, helping NASA establish four priority use cases spanning pre-fire conditions through post-fire impacts and air quality.

FireSense will be a program to watch as NASA tests whether its “research-to-operations” model can translate advanced sensors, Earth science data and modeling into capabilities that improve how agencies prepare for, respond to and recover from wildfires.