The Interiors Division is following comments from Secretary Doug Burgham and an agency spokesman to evaluate the use of artificial intelligence as a potential tool to mitigate the backlog of probate cases managed in tribal communities.
“AI technology is being investigated, particularly to streamline the ability to search the area of data entry and the ability to find individuals by searching multiple databases. This is a continuous internal process.”
The backlog of probate cases has been a long-standing issue for the department due to the process by which some of the tribe's reservations, known as parcels, are inherited, according to the 2024 Congressional Research Services Report. When a tribe member dies, the land is passed to multiple heirs without being divided, allowing multiple bets to be created on a single plot. The problem is commonly referred to as “sorting”.
Despite attempts from Congress and the presidential administration to address the issue and reduce the amount of sorting that could occur, the backlog of interior probate cases persists. In a recent budget hearing in front of a panel of House Adctors, Bulgham said there are currently 48,000 outstanding probate cases on the tribal land, affecting the amount of homes available.
Bulgham said the tribe leaders had informed him that a measurable proportion of homes had police tapes around them. [are] Because they have been stuck on probate for years.
“We have created some strike teams, and that is an area where we need to be creative… [and] Burgum told lawmakers on the House Budget Subcommittee on Internal, Environment and Related Institutions last month. He also said he has limited lawyers to address his workload.
The system of problems that handle probate cases is a trust asset accounting management system managed by the Indian Affairs Bureau, according to the department's website. According to a 1999 article in High Country News in 1999, titled “Can Computers Solve India Problems,” the system itself was already assumed to be useful for solving problems several decades ago when it was first introduced.
Peace said the reason probate cases can take a lot of time to resolve in response to Fedscoop is because small profits make assets like money and property titles more complicated. “It takes time to gather documents to prove that an individual is an heir to a real estate,” Peace said.
So, you can use AI to “track and monitor full probate packages” to identify different types of real estate distributions, read birth and death certificates, assist in data entry, scan historical data for accuracy, determine if documents have been changed, and make sure the probate package is completed before submitting your interior office and appeal.
The interest in using AI as a solution is as government-wide agencies are exploring different ways to deploy buzzy technology for their mission. According to the required annual use case inventory, there was about 1,700 use of AI within the administrative sector that could be published in December, but it is unclear how the Trump administration, which cuts federal spending, including contracts, affected their numbers.
Furthermore, the disclosures that AI is investigating arise as the Trump administration faces criticism of cuts on staff and programs across government, including the BIA. For example, during a surveillance hearing on Thursday, DN.M. Rep. Melanie Stansbury promised Bulgham to meet tribal leaders and asked BIA to try and reverse the proposed budget cuts, calling them unsustainable. In response, Bulgham said he would be open to meeting Stansbury's sub-chair, the bipartisan Native American Caucus.
During President Barack Obama's second term, former Indian Affairs secretary Kevin Washburn told Fedscoop that he is not certain whether AI is part of the solution, but “certainly we should explore.”
Part of the problem with the backlog is that the real estate itself is often nominal value. In other words, the cost of probate is greater than the value of each property, Washburn explains in an email. The federal government, regardless of administration, is responsible for the heirs of the estate to ensure that the case is more prompt and accurately probate. Meanwhile, it is also responsible for ensuring that it doesn't cost $75 a year to manage accounts that cost less than a dollar, he said.
“Many of us don't trust us completely [AI] But if it can be used in a way that matches the privacy and other interests of the heirs, it may be a tool that federal officials should use to address the backlog if it helps to produce faster and more accurate probate results,” Washburn said.
