The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is investing $83.4 million across four artificial intelligence (AI) projects at the Agriculture, State, and Transportation departments, according to new federal investment records.
The largest award provides $52.3 million to the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to replace legacy payroll technology used by the National Finance Center, which processes pay and benefits for 605,000 employees across 170 agencies.
USDA plans to consolidate more than 50 applications into a cloud platform that uses automation and AI. The platform meets Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program requirements and applies layered security controls. The agency will roll out the platform through test runs, a USDA pilot, and staged expansion to other customer agencies.
“Without immediate action, the risk of system failure or cyber threats will escalate, potentially jeopardizing the delivery of paychecks and benefits to hundreds of thousands of federal employees,” the TMF investment record states.
“Rising maintenance costs and a shrinking pool of programmers with knowledge of the aging code compound that threat,” it adds.
The payroll project will also support HR 2.0, the Office of Personnel Management’s plan to rebuild federal human resources systems governmentwide.
A second USDA investment provides $10 million to build the Environmental Review & Analysis System, which will consolidate 10 systems used for environmental reviews. USDA plans to use AI to identify applications eligible for expedited review and estimates the platform will save 1.8 million labor hours each year.
The State Department will receive $17.3 million to introduce agentic AI across a technology environment that includes more than 450 systems serving 80,000 users at more than 270 locations. The department plans to streamline help desk services, support foreign policy research and scenario planning, and give trained employees a secure environment for building automated agents.
State expects the effort to save more than 100,000 staff hours annually after it reaches all agency help desks. The department estimates time savings worth nearly $15 million in the first year and about $20 million the following year.
“A person will review every automated decision and minimum risk management practices will be followed,” according to the investment record.
The Department of Transportation’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection will receive nearly $3.8 million to add AI tools to its Aviation Complaint, Enforcement, and Reporting System. The office plans to automate complaint categorization and duplicate detection, identify complaint trends, and retrieve records for congressional, Freedom of Information Act, and public inquiries.
Transportation expects the tools to identify complaint trends up to 80% faster, achieve 80% to 85% accuracy in complaint classification and duplicate detection, and cut records-request response time by up to 75%.
“It is great to have the TMF focused on products that matter, and I’m excited for more to come in the quarter ahead,” Jessie Posilkin, acting TMF director, said in a Sept. 30 LinkedIn post on the new investments.
The investments come after the TMF launched a targeted call for proposals earlier this year focused on generative AI and permitting modernization.
TMF is administered through a partnership among the TMF Board, the General Services Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget.