Through the Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Assistant for Transportation (AI-CHAT) initiative, sponsored by U.S. DOT’s Highly Automated Systems Safety Center of Excellence (HASS COE), the U.S. DOT Volpe Center developed chat.dot.gov, a web-based chatbot for U.S. DOT employees. The AICHAT initiative and the accompanying chat.dot.gov platform exemplify the collaborative effort between the U.S. DOT Volpe Center and HASS COE. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center assumed primary responsibility for the technical development, including design, integration, and deployment of a secure, cloud hosted, web-based chatbot that enables U.S. DOT staff to leverage large language models for mission critical tasks.

HASS COE contributed essential programmatic leadership, sponsorship, and operational partnership, extending the initial scope through expansion of the beta to all operating administrations, securing Authority to Operate approvals to facilitate additional funding, and sustaining comprehensive user support activities. Partnering the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s technical leadership with HASS’s programmatic oversight and support proved central to the tool’s successful development and broader adoption within the Department.

The chat.dot.gov platform served as a successful AI technology demonstrator, enabling the Department to prototype scalable generative AI chatbot technology across the U.S. DOT workforce—ultimately reaching a user base of more than 5,000 users and averaging 900 simultaneous active users daily while maintaining nearly 100% uptime. While the specific chat.dot.gov platform has evolved as the Department expands its AI capacity to support additional tools, the AI-CHAT initiative is now testing new generative AI initiatives using agentic AI.

By putting AI tools directly into the hands of U.S. DOT’s federal staff, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center and HASS COE are not only boosting productivity but also fostering a culture of innovation across the Department. As these tools mature, U.S. DOT will be better equipped to harness cutting-edge technology, accelerate decision-making, and ultimately deliver safer, more efficient transportation for the American public.

About the U.S. DOT Volpe Center

Since 1970, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center has advanced transportation innovation for the public good, providing multimodal applied research, collaborating with federal, state, and industry partners, and multidisciplinary technical leadership and expertise to solve complex transportation challenges. Learn more at www.volpe.dot.gov.