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Good practice Imported

Justinian — Virginia's Statewide AI System for Rewriting and Cutting State Regulations

United States of America · Richmond · See the United States of America profile · See the Richmond profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 75% 47/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin ordered every state agency to run Vulcan Technologies' AI system, Justinian, through the state's regulatory code, aiming to build on an already-achieved 26.8% cut and reach a 35–50% reduction in regulatory requirements.

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Vulcan Technologies, under contract with the Commonwealth of Virginia's Office of Regulatory Management (Governor's Office)
Period
May 2025 – present (initial contract May–August 2025; statewide mandate ordered July 2025)
Keywords
AI regulatory review, red tape reduction, policy design, legal drafting, state government

Context

In July 2025, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin directed every state agency to run its regulations through Justinian, an AI system built by the Y Combinator-backed startup Vulcan Technologies, as part of a push to cut the volume of Virginia's regulatory code. The state's existing Office of Regulatory Management had already achieved a 26.8% reduction in regulatory requirements through a multi-year manual review predating the AI tool.

Objectives

Youngkin's stated ambition with Justinian is to reach an overall 35-50% reduction in regulatory requirements, building on the pre-existing 26.8% manual-review reduction. This is described as a target/goal; no AI-attributable reduction figure has yet been published.

Activities

Justinian works by ingesting the commonwealth's regulations alongside relevant state and federal law, splitting them into discrete provisions, and running concurrent AI agents — trained on American case law — to identify redundant, obsolete, or ultra vires (legally unauthorised) rules and draft possible rewrites for human reviewers. Vulcan's initial engagement was a three-month, $150,000 contract running through August 2025, covering agency-by-agency recommendations, an economic-impact analysis, and a roadmap for a statewide rollout; Vulcan has separately raised a $10.9 million seed round to expand the product to other state and federal government clients.

Conclusions

Coverage of the rollout, including reporting that cites regulatory-policy academics questioning how rule changes generated by an opaque AI process will be validated, has raised open questions about how Virginia will audit Justinian's recommendations for legal accuracy and unintended consequences before they take effect, and about what happens to the tool's output once the initial contract period ends. The Commonwealth has publicly committed to an economic-impact review and a phased rollout plan, but as of this evaluation no independent, published audit of Justinian-generated rule changes exists.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Initial engagement was a three-month, $150,000 contract (May-August 2025); Vulcan Technologies has separately raised a $10.9 million seed round to expand the product; full statewide rollout cost has not been disclosed.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Initial contract May-August 2025; statewide mandate ordered July 2025; rollout ongoing as of this evaluation.
Staffing & skills
Vulcan Technologies AI engineering team (vendor), Virginia Office of Regulatory Management (Governor's Office) oversight staff, State agency reviewers evaluating AI-drafted rule changes

Conditions for success

  • Human review of AI-drafted rewrites before rules take effect
  • Economic-impact analysis alongside AI recommendations
  • Phased, agency-by-agency rollout with a roadmap for statewide scale-up

Common failure modes

  • No independent audit of AI-generated rule-change recommendations exists
  • Regulatory-policy academics question how an opaque AI process will be validated for legal accuracy and unintended consequences
  • Uncertainty about what happens to the tool's output once the initial contract period ends

Where it fits

Governance type
US state government (executive branch mandate)
Scale
statewide (all Virginia agencies)
Income level
high income

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Data sources

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