ICE starts to explore AI, data strategy support contract

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has embarked on initial market research efforts to explore how it could hire at least one contractor to support its enterprise strategy for artificial intelligence and data.

ICE’s office of the chief information officer has led the agency through a multi-year initiative to become a more data-driven organization and get more tech offerings into a production environment. This includes STELLA, an artificial intelligence platform that functions as a large language model for capabilities such as chatbots and workflow automation.

The production environment now requires ongoing operations-and-maintenance support and continued enhancement work to support ICE’s future transformation efforts, the agency said in a sources sought notice published Tuesday.

AI, data, and technology strategy and architecture are the three major functional areas ICE is looking for industry support in. ICE is also exploring the possibility of an enterprise agentic software factory operating model to aid in AI-enabled delivery.

That factory would have three architectural layers including an enterprise operating model and control plane, agentic orchestration and runtime layer, and independent assurance boundary.

The plane would be set up to support portfolio governance, while the runtime layer would act as a coordinator of AI and software giants. The boundary would provide cybersecurity, accessibility and mission acceptance testing capabilities to users.

ICE’s request for information has 12 questions for industry to answer ahead of the agency’s acquisition planning and requirements development efforts. The RFI asks for feedback on contract strategy, pricing models, multi-cloud and AI platform sustainment capabilities, and experience in AI governance and risk management.

Responses to the RFI are due by 10 a.m. Eastern time on Oct. 16.