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Behind the dashboard helping Tribal Nations track federal policy

Emily Holloway

August 18, 2026

In any given week, hundreds of congressional bills, executive actions and Federal Register notices move through Washington, D.C. Within these updates are policies that directly affect Tribal Nations and indigenous communities throughout Arizona and across the country.

Until recently, analysts from Arizona State University’s Tribal Nations Policy Institute (TNPI) manually reviewed these updates one by one. This meant time-consuming work determining which bills were specifically relevant to Tribal Nations, summarizing them and applying tags to keep them organized.

This is where Emile Eich, member of the Navajo Nation and senior data analyst at TNPI, stepped in to create efficient processes that allow her team to better do their jobs. “One of my goals is to help create an easier workflow, so instead of having to do data entry or tracking, my team can do what they do best, which is analysis,” said Eich.

Eich worked alongside members of ASU’s AI Acceleration team, Senior AI Product Manager John Bevell and Technical Product Manager Abraham Lozano Serna, to create a workflow that supports staff by streamlining parts of the review process and helping them update the Tribal Nations Policy Institute Legislative Dashboard more efficiently.

About the dashboard

The TNPI Legislative Dashboard serves as a centralized resource for tracking federal legislation, executive actions and Federal Register notices that may affect Tribal Nations communities. Rather than requiring tribal leaders, researchers and policy professionals to search across multiple government websites, the dashboard brings this information together into one searchable platform organized around policy priorities that matter most to the community.

“Effective governance requires access to the information that drives decision-making and, for too long, federal policy processes have moved faster than Tribal Nations have had the resources to track,” said Dr. Traci L. Morris, executive director of TNPI. “[The Dashboard] directly addresses that gap by consolidating complex, multi-agency data into a single, actionable platform built around the specific policy priorities of Indigenous communities. TNPI’s two decades of federal policy analysis are embedded in how this tool is structured, filtered and updated.”

The amount of information the TNPI team reviews continues to grow. According to Eich, TNPI’s Federal Register tracker alone contains more than 3,200 entries dating back to 2021, with hundreds of new entries already in review this year. Maintaining a resource of this depth requires a thoughtful process that combines technology with expert policy analysis by the Eich and the TNPI team.

AI that supports a still-human process

As the dashboard expanded, Eich began looking for ways to reduce the repetitive administrative work involved and reviewing and organizing legislative updates while preserving the careful analysis performed by the team’s policy experts. Working alongside Bevell and Lozano Serna, the team explored how ASU’s CreateAI Builder, the university’s flagship AI tool kit, could help with streamlining some workflow capabilities and help support specific parts of that process.

That’s when Eich, Bevell and Lozano Serna came together to design an agentic workflow that assists with repetitive tasks. These include things like identifying legislation that is relevant to Tribal Nations and applying organizational tags. Before the CreateAI Builder was utilized for these steps, they were manual and time consuming processes.

The workflow was designed specifically around the language and context involved in tribal policy work. “We were able to get so much more detailed and specific, especially when working with niche or nuanced things with Tribal Nations,” Eich said.

Instead of analysts manually sorting through hundreds of legislative documents, the system now helps organize and categorize information so the team can focus on policy analysis and review.

While the workflow has significantly streamlined the process, Eich said that human oversight remains central to the team’s work.

“The workflow does not take away that human element. We still have our analysts going in, and they still are reading the entire texts,” said Eich. “That was one of the biggest [benefits] of bringing this project to my team: coming back to them and saying, ‘this is how we can save you time.’”

The collaboration between Eich, Bevell and Lozana Serna transformed what began as an experimental AI project into a scalable workflow built around the specific needs of TNPI and the communities it serves.

As ASU continues exploring real-world applications for agentic AI, the TNPI workflow offers an example of how AI systems can support mission-driven work while keeping human expertise at the center of the process.