Artificial Intelligence-Ready Data Act

This bill requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards and guidelines to make open government data usable for artificial intelligence (AI), and requires federal agencies to adopt those standards. It also specifically directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to make its data AI-ready for operational forecasting.

Sec. 2, Establishment of standards and guidelines: The NIST Director, consulting with other agencies, must develop standards and guidelines to help federal agencies make open government data assets AI-ready. These standards must be adaptable, recommend improvements to data availability and utility for AI training, identify other data assets that should be made available, and require data to be AI-ready, downloadable, accurate, human-readable, in an open machine-readable format, and secure. The Director must publish proposed standards for public comment for at least 60 days, and final standards must be published within one year of enactment.

Sec. 3, Implementation of standards and guidelines: The President, through the Office of Science and Technology Policy, must require each federal agency head to adopt the NIST standards and guidelines. Each agency head must then adopt and adhere to them, ensure any agency-specific adaptations remain interoperable with other agencies, and ensure major IT acquisitions account for the standards.

Sec. 4, AI readiness of NOAA data assets for operational forecasting: After adopting the standards, the NOAA Under Secretary must ensure NOAA data assets support integrating AI and machine learning into operational forecasting, specifically for model analyses, observations, satellite datasets, and environmental observations. The Under Secretary must brief Congress annually for five years on progress.