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Good practice Imported

The Federal AI Use Case Inventory — How Many AI Systems US Agencies Actually Report Using

United States of America · Washington, D.C. · See the United States of America profile · See the Washington, D.C. profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 12% 80/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Under OMB Memo M-24-10, US federal agencies (except DOD and intelligence) must inventory their AI use cases yearly and publish them; the 2025 inventory logged 3,611 use cases across 56 agencies — up 105% from 2024's 1,757 — with 445 flagged high-impact.

3,611 use cases
AI use cases reported, 2025 inventory (2025)
1,757 use cases
AI use cases reported, 2024 inventory (2024)
105 %
Year-on-year increase in reported use cases
56 agencies
Submitting federal agencies (2025)
445 use cases
Use cases flagged high-impact (2025)
271 to 447 use cases
HHS use cases, year-on-year
367 use cases (215 high-impact)
VA use cases

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — Federal AI Use Case Inventory
Period
annual since 2022, mandatory under OMB M-24-10 since March 2024
Keywords
public administration, AI governance, federal oversight, transparency

Context

Executive Order 13960 (December 2020) first required US federal agencies to inventory their AI use cases, and OMB Memorandum M-24-10 (March 2024) made the exercise mandatory and annual for all agencies except the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.

Activities

Each covered agency must inventory its individual AI use cases, submit them to OMB, and publish a public version on its own website, for example the Department of Justice maintains a dedicated public AI-inventory page, making entries independently checkable use case by use case.

Results

The 2025 consolidated inventory recorded 3,611 individual AI use cases across 56 submitting agencies, a 105% increase on the 1,757 use cases reported in 2024, with 445 flagged as high-impact; agency-level growth is individually documented, such as the Department of Health and Human Services rising from 271 to 447 use cases and the Department of Veterans Affairs reporting 367 use cases including 215 high-impact ones.

Conclusions

The inventory is a genuine transparency and disclosure mechanism, but it does not evaluate whether any given use case works well or delivers public value, it measures reporting volume rather than outcomes, and it categorically excludes Defense and Intelligence Community AI from its scope.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) administers the inventory mandate; each of the 56 covered federal agencies is individually responsible for compiling and publishing its own use-case list, as the Department of Justice does on its dedicated AI-inventory page.

Conditions for success

  • A binding OMB memorandum (M-24-10) with a clear statutory/policy mandate compelling annual publication.
  • Decentralised compliance, with each agency publishing its own inventory on its own website, enabling independent case-by-case verification.

Common failure modes

  • The mandate categorically exempts the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, leaving a significant share of federal AI use outside its reach.
  • The inventory counts reported use cases but does not assess whether any individual system performs well or delivers public value.

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Data sources

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