Agencies are missing a step to share information on better AI acquisition, GAO finds

Agencies need to do more to share lessons learned in the artificial intelligence acquisition process to cultivate a smarter buying environment, according to a Monday report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report noted that, despite AI use cases across federal agencies more than doubling from 2023 to 2024, the procurement and acquisition process isn’t seamless. After connecting with acquisition leaders within four agencies — the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the General Services Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs — the GAO recommended that agencies make several policy updates that address individual challenges in buying AI tools. 

“We talked with many agency officials about challenges acquiring AI,” the report’s authors wrote. “For example, some said there was difficulty accessing AI technical experts, like data scientists, to evaluate contractor proposals. Officials also said it was hard to understand AI-related costs.”

Other challenges the report found included the need to protect government data and intellectual property, the complexity of navigating acquisition timeframes, the difficulty of defining requirements and contract terms, the need for continuous testing and evaluation efforts and the difficulty of determining pricing and overall cost of AI adoption. 

Throughout GAO’s survey, the report authors said the lack of collected feedback across all sampled agencies is a major hindrance to effective AI technology acquisition and adoption. 

“The agencies we spoke with didn't regularly collect and share lessons learned from acquiring AI,” the report said. “Doing so could help them better prepare for using AI in the future.”

The review found that surveyed leaders at each agency blamed current policies for not motivating any type of information collection and cross-agency sharing. Hence, the four recommendations GAO developed all hinge on updating internal agency policy to share lessons learned. GAO said all four participating agencies agreed with the recommendations. 

Guidance from the executive branch is expected to address the lack of information sharing, the report noted, citing an April 2025 memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget that established GSA’s repository of AI acquisition information. Provisions from this memo are expected to be implemented at agencies through department-wide policies.

“Among other things, this OMB guidance states that agencies should share knowledge and resources through a GSA-developed repository. However, we found DOD, DHS, GSA, and VA were not prepared to meet this provision. This lack of preparation stems from an absence of processes or requirements in agency policies to systematically collect lessons learned from AI Acquisitions,” the report said. “Until agencies take action, they are missing opportunities to learn from more established acquisitions and increasing the risk that future AI procurement efforts will repeat avoidable, and potentially costly, mistakes.”

Proposed policy changes are uniform in that they recommend agency leadership “systemically collect” lessons learned and best practices in the AI acquisition process and submit them to the GSA-managed repository to help other federal offices navigate AI procurement. 

“OMB directed agencies to update their AI policies to comply with the requirements in M-25-22 by December 29, 2025,” the report said. “In the past, we reported that agency-level implementation is critical to achieving the advantages of government-wide acquisition improvement efforts directed by OMB.”