For greater than three years, an IEEE Requirements Affiliation working group has been refining a draft customary for procuring synthetic intelligence and automatic resolution techniques, IEEE 3119-2025. It’s supposed to assist procurement groups determine and handle dangers in high-risk domains. Such techniques are utilized by authorities entities concerned in schooling, well being, employment, and lots of different public sector areas. Final yr the working group partnered with a European Union company to guage the draft customary’s parts and to collect details about customers’ wants and their views on the usual’s worth.
On the time, the usual included 5processes to assist customers develop their solicitations and to determine, mitigate, and monitor harms generally related to high-risk AI techniques.
These processes have been drawback definition, vendor analysis, resolution analysis, contract negotiation, and contract monitoring.
The EU company’s suggestions led the working group to rethink the processes and the sequence of a number of actions. The ultimate draft now consists of an extra course of: solicitation preparation, which comes proper after the issue definition course of. The working group believes the added course of addresses the challenges organizations expertise with getting ready AI-specific solicitations, corresponding to the necessity to add clear and sturdy knowledge necessities and to include questions relating to the maturity of vendor AI governance.
The EU company additionally emphasised that it’s important to incorporate solicitation preparation, which provides procurement groups extra alternatives to adapt their solicitations with technical necessities and questions relating to accountable AI system selections. Leaving area for changes is particularly related when acquisitions of AI are occurring inside rising and altering regulatory environments.
Gisele Waters
IEEE 3119’s place within the requirements ecosystem
At present there are a number of internationally accepted requirements for AI administration, AI ethics, and basic software program acquisition. These from the IEEE Requirements Affiliation and the Worldwide Group for Standardization goal AI design, use, and life-cycle administration.
Till now, there was no internationally accepted, consensus-based customary that focuses on the procurement of AI instruments and gives operationalsteerage for responsibly buying high-risk AI techniques that serve the general public curiosity.
The IEEE 3119 customary addresses that hole. Not like the AI administration customary ISO 42001 and different certifications associated to generic AI oversight and threat governance, IEEE’s new customary gives a risk-based, operationalmethod to assist authorities companies adapt conventional procurement practices.
Governments have an essential function to play within the accountable deployment of AI. Nonetheless, market dynamics and unequal AI experience between business and authorities might be obstacles that discourage success.
One of many customary’s core objectives is to raised inform procurement leaders about what they’re shopping for earlier than they make high-risk AI purchases. IEEE 3119 defines high-risk AI techniques as people who make or are a considerable consider making consequential selections that would have vital impactson folks, teams, or society. The definition is just like the one utilized in Colorado’s 2034 AI Act, the primary U.S. state-level legislation comprehensively addressing high-risk techniques.
The usual’s processes, nevertheless, do complement ISO 42001 in some ways. The connection between each is illustrated under.
Worldwide requirements, usually characterised as tender legislation, are used to form AI growth and encourage worldwide cooperation relating to its governance.
Onerous legal guidelines for AI, or legally binding guidelines and obligations, are a piece in progress world wide. In america, a patchwork of state laws governs totally different elements of AI, and the method to nationwide AI regulation is fragmented, with totally different federal companies implementing their very own tips.
Europe has led by passing the European Union’s AI Act, which started governing AI techniques primarily based on their threat ranges when it went into impact final yr.
However the world lacks regulatory exhausting legal guidelines with a world scope.
The IEEE 3119-2025 customary does align with current exhausting legal guidelines. As a result of its deal with procurement, the usual helps the high-risk provisions outlined within the EU AI Act’s Chapter III and Colorado’s AI Act. The usual additionally conforms to the proposed Texas HB 1709 laws, which might mandate reporting on the usage of AI techniques by sure enterprise entities and state companies.
As a result of most AI techniques used within the public sector are procured fairly than constructed in-house, IEEE 3119 applies to industrial AI services and products that don’t require substantial modifications or customizations.
The usual’s audience
The usual is meant for:
- Mid-level procurement professionals and interdisciplinary staff members with a reasonable degree of AI governance and AI system data.
- Public- and private-sector procurement professionals who function coordinators or consumers, or have equal roles, inside their entities.
- Non-procurement managers and supervisors who’re both accountable for procurement or oversee employees who present procurement features.
- Professionals who’re employed by governing entities concerned with public schooling, utilities, transportation, and different publicly funded companies that both work on or handle procurement and are excited by adapting buying processes for AI instruments.
- AI distributors searching for to know new transparency and disclosure necessities for his or her high-risk industrial merchandise and options.
Coaching program within the works
The IEEE Requirements Affiliation has partnered with the AI Procurement Lab to supply the IEEE Accountable AI Procurement Coaching program. The course covers the right way to apply the usual’s core processes and adapt present practices for the procurement of high-risk AI.
The usual consists of over 26 instruments and rubrics throughout the six processes, and the coaching program explains the right way to use many of those instruments. For instance, the coaching consists of directions on the right way to conduct a risk-appetite evaluation, apply the seller analysis scoring information to investigate AI vendor claims, and create an AI procurement “threat register” tied to recognized use-case dangers and their potential mitigations. The coaching session is now obtainable for buy.
It’s nonetheless early days for AI integration. Determination makers don’t but have a lot expertise in buying AI for high-risk domains and in mitigating these dangers. The IEEE 3119-2025 customary goals to assist companies construct and strengthen their AI threat mitigation muscular tissues.
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