For greater than three years, an IEEE Standards Association working group has been refining a draft customary for procuring artificial intelligence and automatic choice techniques, IEEE 3119-2025. It’s supposed to assist procurement groups establish and handle risks 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 judge the draft customary’s parts and to collect details about customers’ wants and their views on the usual’s worth.
On the time, the standard included 5processes to assist customers develop their solicitations and to establish, mitigate, and monitor harms generally related to high-risk AI techniques.
These processes had 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, akin to the necessity to add clear and strong 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 supplies procurement groups extra alternatives to adapt their solicitations with technical necessities and questions relating to accountable AI system decisions. Leaving area for changes is very related when acquisitions of AI are occurring inside emerging and changing regulatory environments.
Gisele Waters
IEEE 3119’s place within the requirements ecosystem
At present there are a number of internationally accepted requirements for AI management, AI ethics, and common software acquisition. These from the IEEE Standards Association and the International Organization 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 affords operationalsteerage for responsibly buying high-risk AI systems that serve the general public curiosity.
The IEEE 3119 standard addresses that hole. Not like the AI administration customary ISO 42001 and different certifications associated to generic AI oversight and danger governance, IEEE’s new customary affords a risk-based, operationalapproach to assist authorities businesses adapt traditional procurement practices.
Governments have an vital position to play within the accountable deployment of AI. Nonetheless, market dynamics and unequal AI experience between business and authorities could be boundaries that discourage success.
One of many customary’s core targets 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 think about making consequential decisions that might have important 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, nonetheless, do complement ISO 42001 in some ways. The connection between each is illustrated beneath.
Worldwide requirements, typically characterised as soft law, are used to form AI growth and encourage international cooperation relating to its governance.
Exhausting legal guidelines for AI, or legally binding guidelines and obligations, are a piece in progress around the globe. Within the United States, a patchwork of state legislation governs totally different features of AI, and the method to nationwide AI regulation is fragmented, with totally different federal businesses 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 danger ranges when it went into impact final yr.
However the world lacks regulatory hard laws with a world scope.
The IEEE 3119-2025 customary does align with present arduous legal guidelines. On account of its give attention to 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 using AI techniques by sure enterprise entities and state businesses.
As a result of most AI systems used in the public sector are procured moderately than constructed in-house, IEEE 3119 applies to industrial AI services and products that don’t require substantial modifications or customizations.
The usual’s target market
The usual is meant for:
- Mid-level procurement professionals and interdisciplinary group members with a average degree of AI governance and AI system information.
- 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 answerable for procurement or oversee workers who present procurement capabilities.
- 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 focused on adapting buying processes for AI instruments.
- AI distributors in search of to grasp new transparency and disclosure necessities for his or her high-risk industrial merchandise and options.
Coaching program within the works
The IEEE Standards Association has partnered with the AI Procurement Lab to supply the IEEE Responsible AI Procurement Training program. The course covers 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 use many of those instruments. For instance, the coaching consists of directions on conduct a risk-appetite evaluation, apply the seller analysis scoring information to investigate AI vendor claims, and create an AI procurement “danger register” tied to recognized use-case dangers and their potential mitigations. The coaching session is now out there for buy.
It’s nonetheless early days for AI integration. Resolution 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 help businesses construct and strengthen their AI danger mitigation muscle groups.
From Your Website Articles
Associated Articles Across the Internet
