The US federal government’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) has asked agencies to submit “high-impact and shovel-ready” project proposals for improving the use of technology in permitting and planning decisions, and in AI adoption.
The TMF – a funding initiative created in 2017 by the General Services Administration (GSA) to modernise the government’s technology infrastructure – published its call for proposals on 9 July.
It said the call had been made to advance two of president Donald Trump’s priorities for technological innovation in government: eliminating delays to technology infrastructure projects, and resolving barriers within agencies to using AI for better public service delivery.
In the call for permitting technology proposals, the TMF said it seeks technology projects to advance Trump’s memorandum ‘Updating Permitting Technology for the 21st Century’, and noted that such projects have traditionally “struggled to secure funding and/or leadership buy-in”.
It said that permitting and environmental review processes are critical to America’s economic, energy and national security, but that “current federal technology does not meet the modern standard required to reduce unnecessary burden and red tape for individuals and businesses” in planning decisions.
It added that legacy systems “prevent the data sharing needed to speed up the decision-making process while retaining its integrity”.
Projects submitted to address these problems are expected to “identify the specific service delivery standards and functional requirements the project would address, and how that modernisation would improve permitting efficiency and effectiveness for project sponsors and agency staff”.
Proposals must also “demonstrably advance” the implementation of the agency’s Permitting Technology Action Plan, it said.
Overcoming foundational challenges to AI adoption
The call for proposals on ‘Advancing American AI in Agencies’ is intended to accelerate agency adoption and implementation of current and evolving AI capabilities.
The TMF said each project submitted should do one or more of the following:
- Prepare agency data and infrastructure for the analytical, process, and capacity demands of applying leading-edge modern AI.
- Pilot specific applications of emerging AI tools or data science techniques to define or refine agency approaches and guardrails
- Produce modern and secure, future-enabled AI tools and solutions at agency enterprise scale.
“The pace of technological change means agencies urgently need to securely access modern AI capabilities; help staff translate programme needs into code and workflows; and apply AI models and tools to high-quality, well-governed data,” the TMF said.
“While the private sector has quickly developed an array of AI offerings for the public sector, many agencies’ legacy technology infrastructure is not prepared to safely or optimally use those offerings.”
It added that foundational challenges include data that isn’t “structured or contextualised in a way that can reliably yield meaningful, traceable, and trustworthy insight when processed by modern tools”; enterprise stacks that aren’t ready to handle AI agents engaging on a citizens’ behalf; and small agencies that have an outsized need for AI-enabled modernisation and similar readiness gaps to large agencies, but which have “more limited buying power and capital flexibility”.
“These challenges and developments create an urgent and important window of opportunity for agencies to improve readiness and accelerate responsible implementation. TMF is particularly interested in projects that would meaningfully transform agencies’ data and capability maturity, adoption timeline, and ongoing delivery innovation – while paving a path towards deprecating legacy systems and technology debt,” it said.
TMF ‘made for moments like this’
In a post on LinkedIn, Jessie Posilkin, acting executive director of the TMF, said that the funding body was “made for moments like this, where agencies can’t afford to wait on budget and procurement cycles”.
She added: “Flexible forward funding means agencies can move faster and more efficiently. And our experience and learning from nearly a decade of investing enables us to be a unique partner to agencies in successful delivery.”
It is understood that the TMF has about US$200m in potential investment available to accelerate modernisation initiatives.
Agencies must submit their proposals by 24 July 2026 but “early submission is strongly recommended”, the TMF said.
Posilkin acknowledged that this represented “a very narrow window” but that the short timeline was necessary because the TMF could expire on 30 September unless Congress decided to extend it.
“With more time, we could do even more – but we’ll meet as much of the agency need as we can, while we can,” she said.
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter.
After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings.
As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century.
He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
