“Combing through countless PDF reports for hours in search of a piece of relevant information is no one’s idea of an interesting day at work. Tedious, overwhelming, soul-crushing, maybe. Engaging? Not so much. Dedicated public servants — and many others — do it anyway, often, in service to some larger goal: to make the case for a new policy, to advocate for funding or to explain a position. Recently, a team of graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and Integrated Innovation Institute in Professor Chris Goranson’s Policy Innovation Lab: Public Interest Technology course came up with a generative AI application that helps researchers find the information they seek in a matter of seconds, not hours. Their tool, GovScan, provides government workers the ability to locate the proverbial needle in a haystack…”