Unaccompanied Children Program Policy & Procedure Research Tool

Overview

Development stage

PilotSource: b) Pilot – The use case has been deployed in a limited test or pilot capacity.

High-impact designation

Not high-impactSource: c) Not high-impact

Impact justification

Not reported

Start date

2025-07 (month precision)Source: Jul-25

Withheld from public reporting

NoSource: a) No

Mission

Topic area

Service Delivery

Operational functions

No function tag matched Derived by keyword rules; see methodology

Problem the AI is intended to solve

How can the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) research the laws, standards, policies, and procedures applicable to monitoring visits more quickly while maintaining thoroughness? The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) conducts monitoring visits at least monthly to ensure that care providers meet minimum standards for the care and timely release of unaccompanied children, and that they abide by all Federal and State laws and regulations, licensing and accreditation standards, ORR policies and procedures, and child welfare standards. If ORR monitoring finds a care provider to be out of compliance with requirements, ORR issues corrective action findings and requires the care provider to resolve the issue within a specified time frame. Compliance determination involves research into the various laws, standards, policies, and procedures.

Expected benefits

Faster issuance of well-informed corrective action findings The goal of the UC Program Policy & Research Tool is to speed up this process as children's health and well-being may be impacted before a corrective action finding is issued and the issue is resolved. The UC Program Policy & Procedure Research Tool speeds up research of relevant laws, standards, policies, and procedures content curated and approved by ORR's policy team. This research is one part of the process that informs ORR's monitoring team's decisions on whether corrective actions are needed and if so, what corrective actions.

System outputs

Initial assessment of whether a care provider is in compliance with applicable laws, standards, policies, and procedures applicable to the care of unaccompanied children, with an explanation of evidence pulled from monitoring visit reports and the policy documents and accurate citations. AI is not used to suggest corrective actions but rather support determination of whether care providers are in compliance.

Technology

AI classification

Agentic AISource: Agentic AI: AI systems that perform tasks or make decisions autonomously with minimal human intervention.

System name(s)

ACF Horizon

Custom-developed code

Yes

Public source code

Not reported

Sourcing

How it was built

Contract and in-houseSource: c) Developed with both contracting and in-house resources

Vendor (as reported)

MIT Lincoln Labs

Vendors (standardized)

None on the standard list

A vendor is the supplier named by the agency. It does not identify the underlying model or AI technology.

Data and privacy

Involves PII

No

Privacy Impact Assessment

www.hhs.gov ↗

Authorization to Operate

Yes

Demographic features

k) None of the above

Training and evaluation data

RAG implementation using commercially-available LLMs and curated dataset of applicable laws, standards, policies, and procedures applicable to the care of unaccompanied children

Federal Data Catalog

Not reported

Governance

0 of 8 minimum-practice questions answered. A blank answer means the agency reported nothing; it does not mean the practice is absent.

Potential impacts and how they were identified

Not reported