Regulatory Consulting at RSM US (Gov Consulting)

Overview

RSM US’s government-consulting practice has moved from a general AI-governance framework to sector-specific guidance built explicitly for the public sector’s unique accountability requirements. RSM’s central argument — articulated in its 2026 government-services webinar series and companion insights — is that AI governance carries a higher level of responsibility in government than in most private-sector environments, because public institutions operate under heightened expectations for transparency, civil-rights protection, and public accountability that private companies simply don’t face in the same form. That framing shapes RSM’s AI-governance consulting services, which are built around helping agencies balance innovation with transparency, compliance, and public trust across the full AI lifecycle — not as competing goals but as mutually reinforcing requirements for any government AI system to be viable long-term.

AI-Focused Regulatory Work

RSM’s most direct public-sector contribution is its Q1 2026 government-services webinar and companion guide, ‘AI Governance Foundations in Government,’ delivered by principal John Huyette and manager Arthur Sellers. The guidance walks government leaders through foundational AI-governance principles, risk-management approaches, and lifecycle-governance practices calibrated specifically to the public sector’s distinct legal and political environment — not a generic enterprise framework repurposed for government, but one built around the specific civil-rights and transparency obligations that apply when a government agency, rather than a private company, deploys an algorithmic system. This matters because the accountability bar genuinely is different: a biased hiring algorithm at a private firm is a legal and reputational problem, but a biased algorithm used by a government agency to determine benefits eligibility, policing priorities, or service access raises constitutional and civil-rights questions that RSM’s framework is explicitly designed to help agencies anticipate before they become incidents. RSM situates this work against a fast-moving federal backdrop — by April 2026, federal agencies had reported 3,611 individually tracked AI use cases, including 445 high-impact use cases, across forty-one agency submissions, alongside GSA-facilitated agency access to frontier models from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI, and the structured adoption requirements set by OMB Memoranda M-25-21 and M-25-22. For a directory reader, RSM is most useful as a mid-size firm translating that fast-expanding federal AI use-case landscape into governance practices sized for agencies that may lack the in-house capacity of the largest federal integrators.

Notable AI Policy Work

• Published ‘AI Governance Foundations in Government’ as part of its Q1 2026 government-services webinar series, delivered by principal John Huyette and manager Arthur Sellers.
• Argues public-sector AI governance carries heightened responsibility versus private-sector environments due to transparency, civil-rights, and accountability expectations unique to government.
• Provides AI governance consulting services covering foundational principles, risk-management approaches, and lifecycle governance practices tailored to public-sector legal and political constraints.
• Frames its guidance against the fast-growing federal AI landscape — 3,611 individually reported federal AI use cases (445 high-impact) across 41 agencies as of April 2026, per Atlantic Council tracking — and the OMB M-25-21/M-25-22 adoption framework.
• Positions its AI-governance offering to help agencies balance innovation with compliance and public trust, rather than treating governance as a brake on adoption.

Thought Leadership

1. AI Governance Foundations in Government
   RSM’s public-sector-specific AI governance framework, from its Q1 2026 government-services webinar series, addressing the heightened transparency and civil-rights expectations unique to government AI use.
2. AI Governance Consulting Services (RSM US)
   RSM’s broader AI-governance consulting offering — a comprehensive approach to responsible AI governance, risk, and adoption applicable across RSM’s government and commercial clients.

Clients

State and local government agencies, federal financial-management functions, and mid-size public-sector entities that may lack the in-house AI-governance capacity of larger agencies served by the biggest federal integrators.