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Help the government accelerate AI adoption and provide better services!
Who: You — all government employees are eligible to participate! Hosted by GSA; industry partners include Databricks, OpenAI, and IBM.
What: The MCP is a potential standard for connecting AI systems to real-world data and services. As AI use expands from conversational tools to autonomous agents, its practical value depends on reliable, governed access to federal data assets and service delivery capabilities. We’re looking for your help building MCP servers for your agency’s open data assets and service delivery use cases. Whether you’re working with datasets the public needs to discover, services citizens interact with, or APIs that power critical decisions, this is your opportunity to make that information AI-ready.
Where: Online — it’s a virtual event.
When: September–October, 2026
How: Register now to receive information on how to participate, as well as future announcements.
As artificial intelligence systems expand from conversational tools to autonomous agents, their practical value depends on reliable, governed access to real-world data. The Model Context Protocol has emerged as a foundational standard for connecting AI systems to external data sources, serving as the bridge between AI agents and the APIs, databases, and open data portals that hold the federal government’s most valuable information assets and service delivery capabilities.
To scale the development of this critical infrastructure layer, the AI Tooling Meetup Group from the AI Community of Practice is organizing this federal governmentwide open data and service delivery MCP hackathon: a collaborative, competitive event designed to empower subject matter experts and developers across federal agencies to prototype MCP servers for their open data assets and service delivery use cases.
The 2026 Model Context Protocol Server and AI Agent Hackathon will deliver value at multiple levels simultaneously:
The federal government has made substantial investments in open data and service delivery, yet a critical gap remains: these vast information assets and the underlying service delivery mechanisms are largely inaccessible to the next generation of autonomous AI agents. While the data exists, AI systems lack the structured, context-rich “translation layer” required to query, interpret, and perform actions within complex government services. The core challenge of this hackathon is to bridge this disconnect by empowering the federal workforce to build MCP servers — the standardized interfaces that allow AI to safely and effectively understand, retrieve, and submit information to vital government services.
This hackathon serves as a vital infrastructure-building initiative, empowering domain experts to translate their specialized knowledge into reusable, agent-ready code. MCP shows promise and may potentially be used to improve how government services can be delivered. Participants gain hands-on experience with technology that may reshape citizen engagement while positioning their agencies at the forefront of AI-enabled service delivery, helping build expertise that will be increasingly valuable across government.
Select from one of three applications:
We will provide full training on MCP implementation, server architecture, and deployment best practices through webinars prior to and during the hackathon. We will also host open office hours with technical experts to assist participants during the event.
Due to federal legal requirements, we cannot offer cross-agency monetary prizes, but winners will be recognized in an awards ceremony by senior government officials.
Judges will be government and industry technical experts.
At the conclusion of the hackathon, participants must submit:
Exact dates are still being finalized, and are subject to change. Watch this space or register for details.
To ensure a successful hackathon experience, we recommend that participants possess a mix of the following technical and domain skills. While not every team member needs to be an expert in every area, your team should collectively be comfortable with these prerequisites. Individual participants should have proficiency in each of the areas.
Core development environment:
Have questions? We’re here to help! Reach out to us at aicop@gsa.gov.
Artificial intelligence