Treasury signals interest in AI coding assistants, chatbots

The Department of the Treasury is on the hunt for information on the latest and greatest artificial intelligence-powered coding assistant and chatbot technology.

Late last month, the department issued a draft solicitation seeking comment from qualified providers that could meet the needs of a proposed — but unofficial — procurement of “state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered coding assistant tools (similar to GitHub Copilot, AWS CodeWhisperer, Cursor, etc.) and AI-based chat tools (similar to ChatGPT) that can be delivered as a shared service across the Department and its bureaus.”

In a draft statement of work accompanying the solicitation, Treasury says the AI coding-assistant tool would “support the software development lifecycle by enhancing developer productivity, improving code quality, and accelerating delivery through features such as code generation, completion, debugging, and refactoring.” The tool should also work in a wide range of programming languages, such as “TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, C++, Go, SQL, Bash, PowerShell, COBOL, and PeopleCode,” the draft says.

Along with that, the AI chat assistant it envisions would be “capable of natural language understanding and generation to support a wide range of knowledge work and user interactions” for use on tasks like “summarization, content drafting, question answering, policy interpretation, process explanation, and knowledge retrieval.”

On top of being secure, reliable and FedRAMP-authorized, the tools must meet a variety of requirements spelled out in the draft procurement documents, including advanced model capabilities “comparable to leading large language models such as GPT-4, AWS CodeWhisperer, Claude, or similar state-of-the-art technologies.”

Treasury also emphasizes that the tools “include built-in mechanisms to mitigate bias and support explainability of outputs in accordance with applicable AI governance and ethical use principles.”

As of late 2024, Treasury had at least 54 ongoing AI projects in use, according to a larger repository compiled by the Biden administration. Data submitted by Treasury shows that it had several chatbot-type pilots it was working on, including one called “Winnie … which provides self-service Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to IRS staff regarding various Information Technology (IT) topics.”

Treasury’s interest in these AI tools comes as its IT workforce has been slimmed under the Trump administration. Tony Arcadi left the role of CIO earlier this year. Then Jeff King, who was appointed to replace him, also left, along with Brian Peretti, the agency’s chief technology officer, and Rick Therrien, the chief information security officer. DOGE representative Sam Corcos has been tapped as the department’s latest CIO.

In March, about 50 IT executives at the IRS were cut from the agency, FedScoop reported. In April, the tax agency’s CIO Rajiv Uppal also announced he was leaving, according to an email that FedScoop obtained.