SSA AI Chief: Agentic AI Is Ready With Governance, Testing – MeriTalk
SSA AI Chief: Agentic AI Is Ready With Governance, Testing – MeriTalk
https://www.meritalk.com/articles/ssa-ai-chief-agentic-ai-is-ready-with-governance-testing/
Publish Date: 2026-06-29 14:40:00
Source Domain: www.meritalk.com
The Social Security Administration (SSA) believes agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is ready for mission use, but agencies will only realize its potential if they pair the technology with rigorous governance, continuous testing, and modernized data infrastructure, the agency’s chief AI officer said on June 26.
Speaking at ACT-IAC’s AI Forum, Brian Peltier, SSA’s head of technology, customer data, and AI and chief AI officer, said the agency is approaching a fundamental shift in how it delivers services as AI capabilities mature alongside years of technology modernization.
“We’re on the cusp of really changing the way we operate, how we work, and how we service our customers,” Peltier said.
Agentic AI is ready to support agency missions not only because the technology has advanced, but also because agencies have spent years modernizing their underlying systems, Peltier said. Even so, he cautioned that successful deployment depends on governance, security, and operational safeguards.
“[Agentic AI] is nondeterministic. It can do things that you may not expect,” he said. “So, what you really need to do is constantly look at and constantly test from the beginning.”
First, agencies should first determine whether AI is the right solution for a problem before moving forward. Once a use case is identified, they should establish clear performance metrics and desired outcomes, and then bring together security professionals, attorneys, developers, and data specialists throughout development and deployment, Peltier said.
“Monitor that all the way through into production to make sure that it is doing exactly what you want, how you want,” he said. “You must be testing; you must be sampling in production … looking for is it doing what I expect … or … where people are trying to then do injections … if you’re doing something public facing and they’re trying to hack your system.”
Peltier also stressed that AI modernization should…
