{"id":21728,"date":"2026-04-22T22:02:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-eyes-ai-expansion-for-congressional-business\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T22:02:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:02:29","slug":"senate-eyes-ai-expansion-for-congressional-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-eyes-ai-expansion-for-congressional-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate eyes AI expansion for congressional business"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Senate\u2019s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff \u2014 and it will come with a price tag.<\/p>\n

The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 million boost for the department\u2019s fiscal 2027 budget for AI licenses as appetite grows in Congress for using large language models in day-to-day workflow.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 10 percent of Senate users have already used the free, unsupported version of this technology,\u201d Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee Wednesday. \u201cMoving those users and other Senate users into Senate-supported versions of these platforms is necessary to protect Senate data.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, the Senate green-lighted the use of Google\u2019s Gemini chat, OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in Senate offices with licenses that support enhanced data security measures compared with the free versions. Staff in the House have been using Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as Anthropic\u2019s Claude, approved platforms under the chamber’s internal AI guidelines.<\/p>\n

The cybersecurity team in Hemingway\u2019s office is currently conducting risk assessments on about 40 AI tools, she told lawmakers. The sergeant at arms plans to bring recommendations for AI tools for Senate use to the bipartisan AI Governance Board, and \u201cif the AI products meet our defined criteria,\u201d make more tools available to the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most popular on that list is Claude,\u201d Hemingway noted. The sergeant at arms began assessing the Anthropic product March 3.<\/p>\n

When pressed by ranking member Martin Heinrich<\/a> (D-N.M.) about the sergeant at arms\u2019 policy of issuing one license per Senate user, Hemingway explained that the protocol is designed in part to incentivize staff to use data-protected versions approved by the sergeant at arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is demand to have more than once license per user, we\u2019d be happy to have conversations\u201d with the Legislative Branch panel that funds the sergeant at arms, Hemingway said, calling it a \u201cresource issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that staff whose work focuses on AI and who need access to multiple tools could be accommodated very quickly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Senate\u2019s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff \u2014 and it will come with a price tag. The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}