The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has numerous strategic and tactical initiatives ongoing to develop, test and deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, all aimed at increasing departmental and component effectiveness and efficiencies across diverse mission areas.

Current DHS AI Efforts and Initiatives

DHS’s AI strategic policy development, as well as their FY 2026 budget request, provide both strategic and tactical examples of how AI capabilities continue to evolve at the department and its components. Some noteworthy AI-related efforts underway include:

• AI Roadmap: DHS release its AI Roadmap in 2024, outlining AI implementation priorities. Since then, DHS has completed generative AI pilots; recruited AI experts through the AI Corps recruiting sprint; deployed the DHSChat internal generative AI chatbot; and released several guidance documents on implementing AI in Critical Infrastructure and for threat mitigation.
• AI Use Case Inventory: DHS maintains an inventory of unclassified and non-sensitive AI use cases across DHS, updated yearly. DHS revised the 2024 UCI in July 2025 and plans to create an updated 2025 inventory to align with OMB memo M-25-21, Accelerating Federal Use of AI through Innovation Governance and Public-Trust.
• GenAI Public Sector Playbook: In January 2025, DHS released its GenAI Public Sector Playbook with lessons learned from DHS’s pilot programs and actionable steps for the responsible adoption of GenAI technologies in the public sector.
• AI Cybersecurity: CISA has released an AI Cybersecurity Collaboration Playbook to foster cooperation among government, industry, and international partners to strengthen AI cybersecurity and provide information-sharing processes to help protect from emerging AI threats. CISA is integrating AI capabilities into its CDM Dashboard and Cyber Analytics and Data System to enable analysts to keep pace with the volume of data received and rapidly identify trends and inform decisions.
• Border Inspections: CBP’s FY 2026 budget provides $137M for the national rollout of the Non-Intrusive Inspection (NII) system platform, enabling data access for AI models, expanding AI capabilities, and increasing AI deployments to additional ports of entry. CBP invests $1.0M for AI in Cargo and NII systems to reduce processing time of cargo truck containers and provides an increase of $732K to support an AI initiative to enhance Narcotics Smuggling Targeting algorithms/models.
• Management and Productivity Aids: The DHS Management Directorate has deployed AI for numerous routine activities to provide DHS-wide mission support services and oversight, including to automate the creation of document summaries and briefing materials, and to analyze and extract topics/themes from unstructured text responses to surveys. In-progress use cases include budget spending and risk analysis and user behavior analysis of multi-factor authentication of DHS applications.
• FEMA Disaster Recovery: FEMA’s FY 2026 budget includes $455K to implement AI in FEMA’s Recovery program to support call center activities, agent training, and survivor support for registration, eligibility determination, and inspections, as well as identifying and mitigating fraud.
• Language Translation: ICE’s FY 2026 budget includes $1.4M in new funding to leverage AI for their mobile language translation application to provide on-demand translation services to agents during interactions with aliens.
• Coast Guard Detection Technologies: The USCG’s FY 2026 budget includes $39M for R&D into AI to develop innovative new detection and identification technologies to strengthen U.S. detection programs.
• AI Governance: Science and Technology Directorate’s FY 2026 budget includes $180K for an AI subject matter expert within S&T’s AI Testing and Evaluation activities area to enhance AI governance across DHS.

Pursuing DHS AI Efforts

Companies interested in investigating DHS’s evolving AI efforts can check out the DHS AI information page to stay informed of ongoing developments. Companies may also pursue opportunities to contribute to DHS AI innovation through their S&T Directorate, which provides a variety of opportunities for industry engagement, including requests for information (RFIs), requests for proposals (RFPs), grants announcements and other funded and unfunded opportunities, including partnerships. Many of these opportunities may be of interest to innovative small businesses and start-ups.

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For more information on other federal AI-related policy, acquisition and technology initiatives driving Deltek’s federal AI market forecast, see our report, Federal Artificial Intelligence (AI) Market, 2026-2028.