Run the AI Use Decision Gate Before You Proceed
Explore how to apply the AI use decision gate to make defensible, consistent decisions on AI adoption in DoD and federal environments. Learn to document assumptions, unknowns, and consultation points to ensure safe AI use, verify authorized environments, and set clear stances like go, conditional-go, no-go, or escalate. This lesson helps you manage intake workflows under time pressure by focusing on workflow changes and risks rather than tool names.
An internal email asks you to start using an AI assistant for tomorrow’s brief, and the request sounds practical. The mistake is answering it like a preference question with a quick yes or a firm no. That response is easy to write, but it is hard to defend later because it skips the work details that actually decide whether the use is safe. Time pressure makes this worse because the first fluent draft looks like progress. The workflow change is what matters, not the tool name.
The request usually arrives without the key facts attached. It rarely says what the output will be used for, who will rely on it, or where the output becomes hard to reverse. It also hides uncertainties that change everything at intake, such as whether the workflow might be within a National Security System boundary. A National Security System (NSS) is an information system that meets specific national-security criteria, such as supporting intelligence activities, military command and control, certain ...