Federal authorities urged FedRAMP to prioritize the approval of AI tools, as suggested by the CIO Council
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) has announced a new focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) cloud services, marking a significant moment for federal cloud security and AI integration.
In June 2024, the FedRAMP program office launched a priority approval process for GenAI tools, signifying the beginning of this shift. This decision, part of President Trump's AI Action Plan, comes after the General Services Administration (GSA) awarded schedule contracts to three commercial AI providers in the last few weeks.
The re-prioritization is centered on AI tools used for chat interfaces, code generation, debugging, and prompt-based image generation. The priority is for AI cloud services that provide access to conversational AI engines designed for routine and repeated use by federal workers.
Large language models (LLMs) and associated APIs are included in this re-prioritization. However, as of the available search results, no specific AI cloud services have been identified as having fulfilled the five criteria to be prioritized by FedRAMP.
The FedRAMP program office is using its emerging technology prioritization framework to manage this re-prioritization effort. The criteria for AI cloud services include offering enterprise-grade features, guaranteeing data separation and protection, being available for government use via the GSA Multiple Award Schedule program, and meeting the requirements for a FedRAMP 20x authorization within two months of acceptance for prioritization.
A new criterion for AI tools is demand from at least five CFO Act agencies or specific recommendation by the CIO Council. It's unclear whether Anthropic's Claude, which can be accessed by agencies through Palantir via the FedRAMP marketplace listing, meets this criterion.
Peter Waterman, the director of FedRAMP, stated that the process and concept of information management apply to AI in the same way as any other service. The new focus on AI cloud services is a transformative moment, emphasizing AI adoption within government and providing access to authorized emerging technologies that have been vetted using FedRAMP's security standards.
This decision is a critical step in getting trusted AI tools deployed across government and in use to streamline operations and improve workflows. Only Google's Gemini has earned a FedRAMP authorization among the mentioned AI tools, indicating a need for further development and vetting of these technologies for government use.
