CBP, NASA Showcase Real-World AI Applications

The Customs and Border Protection and NASA are actively using artificial intelligence in current mission operations to improve frontline services, decision-making and operational efficiency, officials said Friday at GovCIO Media & Research’s Federal Tech Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C.

“Our top modernization priorities at CBP center around national security, economic prosperity, travel facilitation, trade and revenue, like international trade, and advancing IT, AI, data, along with cybersecurity capabilities,” said Chief Management and Governance Officer Carlene Ileto.

One of the agency’s most widely used tools is Chat CBP, an an enterprise generative AI tool for its internal workforce, that answers roughly 225,000 questions each day.

“We are providing a reduction in process … a lack of delay. Things are happening in real time for us — efficiencies, effectiveness — this is wonderful,”said Ileto.

CBP is also using AI to overcome language barriers through CBP Translator, a tool developed in partnership with Google that enables agents to communicate in more than 100 languages at ports of entry.

“When immigrants come to a port of entry, there’s no language barrier,” Ileto said.

AI’s Role in the Artemis Program

Meanwhile, NASA is applying AI to support some of the agency’s most complex missions, including its Artemis lunar exploration program.

Acting NASA CIO Sean Gallagher said the agency has invested heavily in AI and data modernization efforts to improve mission outcomes and reduce operational risk. One recent application supported Artemis launch readiness reviews, a process that requires teams to assess equipment status, safety information and mission data across multiple systems and programs.

NASA used AI and integrated data capabilities to automate portions of the review process and help identify potential risks before launch.

“Our safety and mission assurance organization has to look at all the different threats associated with the launch activity, space operations, and everything else … that’s a pretty big lift. But through AI and through some additional data integration and cleanup work, we’re able to automate and simplify the ability to assess the risk,” Gallagher said.

The Risk of Not Using AI

For some agencies, the challenge is no longer whether to adopt AI but how quickly it can be deployed responsibly.

Nikolaos Ipiotis, CIO at the National Institutes of Health’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), said the agency embraced AI early as part of its mission to solve complex health challenges. Because ARPA-H was built as a cloud-native organization with minimal technical debt, it was able to move aggressively in adopting emerging technologies.

“I would argue probably we’re one of the first, if not the first, agency in the federal government that would leverage AI,” Ipiotis said. “When everybody was considering all the potential pitfalls of AI, from our perspective, the biggest risk of using or not using AI was not to use it.”

Governance Remains Critical

As agencies expand AI use cases, leaders emphasized that governance frameworks must evolve alongside adoption efforts.

Ileto said CBP is strengthening governance processes to ensure responsible innovation as new AI capabilities are introduced across the agency.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, CIO Lance Jenkinson said AI should be viewed as one tool among many rather than a universal solution.

One area where the office sees opportunity is improving collaboration and governance across auditors, investigators and support personnel, helping teams work more effectively while maintaining oversight responsibilities.

“Just like any other tool that we have in a toolbox, … I only use it for specific purposes,” Jenkinson said. “We have to really take a hard look at how do we want to make that decision on when to deploy it, and what type [of AI] to deploy.”

Industry leaders said those governance discussions will become increasingly important as agencies look to use AI to accelerate modernization efforts.

Justin Herman, federal civilian director at Cognition, said AI can help agencies better understand legacy environments, identify vulnerabilities and manage technical debt as they modernize aging systems.

“It’s not just being able to detect, we’re talking about full understanding, knowing what’s there,” Herman said.