There is a specific and fixable failure running through federal AI procurement that GAO’s April 2026 report (GAO-26-107859) surfaces with unusual clarity: agencies are accumulating experience with AI acquisitions and then letting that experience evaporate.

The pattern shows up in concrete cases. VA’s SoKAT program—a natural language processing tool built to scan veterans’ survey responses for indicators of suicidal ideation—was retired in January 2023 after officials concluded it didn’t improve enough over existing solutions to justify the cost. No lessons were documented. VA has multiple other AI programs targeting suicide prevention among veterans. Those programs could have benefited from what SoKAT’s team learned. They didn’t, because it was never written down.