{"id":18999,"date":"2026-04-27T21:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/18999\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:07:10","slug":"interior-still-grapples-with-probate-backlog-even-with-ai-assistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/18999\/","title":{"rendered":"Interior still grapples with probate backlog even with AI assistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of the Interior continues to struggle with an overwhelming backlog of probate cases even as AI has been added to the process, Secretary Doug Burgum said during a budget hearing<\/a> last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of its Indian Affairs division<\/a>, DOI is responsible for gathering information about descendants\u2019 family and property, preparing documents for the Office of Hearings and Appeals and working with other trust offices to distribute assets to designated heirs or beneficiaries.<\/p>\n

A single case takes about eight years on average to be resolved. In total, there are about 43,000 unresolved cases that the agency needs to move through the pipeline, a 10% decrease from last year\u2019s count of 48,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d Burgum said of the backlog\u2019s scale and the current resolution timeline.<\/p>\n

As part of the effort to curb the sizable problem, the Interior is using AI to analyze cases and identify missing documents to \u201cget it over the finish line,\u201d according to Burgum. Notably, this use case is not explicitly identified in the agency\u2019s mandatory AI inventory<\/a>, though the secretary first disclosed the exploration of AI in probate workflows<\/a> last year. Interior did not respond to FedScoop\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While AI is often heralded as a tool that speeds up and streamlines workflows, there are still plenty of paper processes in the probate pipeline that are preventing the agency from truly gaining ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have people in Interior who are at copying machines and licking stamps,\u201d Burgum told lawmakers. To submit a probate request, people have to walk into an office or reach out to a call center. DOI then begins communicating with them by mail, sending documents back and forth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how antiquated this is,\u201d he said. \u201cGetting this all moved online is going to dramatically increase our productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency also plans to launch a public-facing dashboard to improve transparency, allowing individuals to track their cases through the various steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s fiscal 2027 budget proposal for Interior<\/a> allocates a $7 million bump in funds and increased staffing to the Bureau of Indian Affairs\u2019 real estate services central oversight function, which \u201caligns with the Department\u2019s broader modernization agenda.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The proposed appropriations, however, feature drops in funding for the Office of Hearings and Appeals, tribal courts that process probate claims, the trust services unit and tribal priority allocations for probates.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Lindsey<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by Lindsey Wilkinson
\n\t\t\tLindsey Wilkinson is a reporter for FedScoop in Washington, D.C., covering government IT with a focus on DHS, DOT, DOE and several other agencies. Before joining Scoop News Group, Lindsey closely covered the rise of generative AI in enterprises, exploring the evolution of AI governance and risk mitigation efforts. She has had bylines at CIO Dive, Homeland Security Today, The Crimson White and Alice magazine.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of the Interior continues to struggle with an overwhelming backlog of probate cases even as AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13598,24,25,111,13599,7058],"class_list":{"0":"post-18999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-2027-budget","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","12":"tag-department-of-the-interior","13":"tag-digitization"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}