Today marks the one-year anniversary of Donovan, our pioneering mission-focused AI application designed to responsibly support the public sector. Utilizing a variety of large language models (LLMs), Donovan has helped to inform the ways government organizations can leverage AI to make faster, more informed decisions and minimize time searching for information.

Over the past year, we have successfully rolled out Donovan to numerous government agencies. As we celebrate this milestone, we wanted to look back at the AI capabilities that have been deployed and what Scale AI Public Sector has planned for the next year to accelerate the adoption of AI to provide decision overmatch.

Information Retrieval: Donovan incorporates Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) so that users can use LLMs to interact with information pertaining to their mission. This feature allows users to upload, access, and query data in secure classified environments. Donovan provides precise, well-informed insights that are directly linked to verifiable sources. Each insight generated by Donovan is accompanied by citations, grounding the information in credible references, and enhancing the reliability of the data presented.
Geospatial Chat: Another standout feature of Donovan is geospatial chat, which integrates geographic filtering with the power of an LLM. This allows users to interact with a map interface where they can select a specific area and then pose questions directly related to that location. Donovan processes these queries and delivers answers that are exclusively relevant to the chosen geographic area. Additionally, if the citation of the response includes a specific location, Donovan can pin that location on the map. This pin comes enriched with important metadata from the citation, enhancing the depth of information available.
Text-to-API: Donovan's text-to-API capabilities enable seamless integration with other applications or systems. Users can input queries in natural language, which Donovan then translates into API requests. This capability allows Donovan to fetch and relay information from connected systems back to the user through a RAG response - presenting the information in natural language. This streamlined process not only simplifies interactions with complex databases, systems, and other data sources but also ensures that users receive accurate and relevant information swiftly, enhancing productivity and decision-making. This includes making enormous and mission critical information available through our partnerships with Flashpoint, Strider, and 4DV.
Report Generation: This feature allows users to create customized templates that cater to common requests for information or specific documents relevant to operations. Once a template is set up, users can generate reports that not only address predefined questions using LLMs but also consider new data as it becomes available. Donovan significantly reduces the manual effort required, allowing users to focus on strategic tasks while staying informed with the most up-to-date insights. As a result, users are able to cut their workflow from hours to minutes and spend more time on cognitive tasks that require human context and creativity.

We are excited to continue improving Donovan to empower public sector organizations with AI. We’ve listened to users and found that Donovan is most useful when tightly aligned with the tools, knowledge, and understanding of a team’s mission. This insight shaped our vision for Donovan and guided our team to develop capabilities to expand Donovan’s reach and empower even more organizations to leverage AI for mission-critical tasks.

Our vision for Donovan includes:

Role-Based Workflows: Donovan is positioned to utilize tools like RAG and seamlessly access public APIs. More than just a tool, Donovan will have the ability to suggest contextually appropriate questions and mimic specialized roles, assuming personas such as a geospatial imagery analyst or a cybersecurity specialist. These enhancements are designed to make Donovan not only a user-friendly platform but a personalized force multiplier, customized to the unique demands and challenges that public sector team members face.
Frontier Multimodal AI Capabilities: In support of role-based workflows, Donovan will be able to utilize custom models that retain specialized knowledge and skills for specific tasks, and can outperform standard off-the-shelf models. For example, a fine-tuned model for analyzing military reports and communications could quickly extract and summarize key information, understand DOD-specific acronyms, and provide actionable insights that strictly follow military doctrine.

Donovan will continue to elevate the quality of insights for users through improved AI techniques. Semantic search enhances Donovan’s ability to understand a user’s intent from a query. Teams will also be able to explore different modalities with large multimodal models (LMMs). Users can leverage LMMs for a variety of use cases including identifying objects in geospatial imagery and reading and interpreting maps.

We are incredibly excited about the upcoming enhancements to Donovan. As exciting new features are being brought to life, Donovan can continue to help transform the way government organizations operate. If Donovan can support your team, contact us at federal@scale.com