Microsoft Copilot is changing how federal employees work. Instead of searching through files or drafting from scratch, they’re having conversations with AI. They ask questions, request analysis, and get instant responses.
Here’s what most agencies haven’t realized yet: those conversations are records.
Why Copilot Chats Are Records
When a federal employee asks Copilot to summarize a complex regulation, analyze budget data, or draft policy language, that exchange contains business information. The question reveals what information the employee needed. The response shows what information Copilot provided. Together, they document how decisions were made and what intelligence informed agency work.
Under the Federal Records Act, if an interaction documents agency business, it’s a record, whatever tool created it. That includes conversations with AI.
The Army has made this explicit. In an August 2025 memo, Army CIO Leonel Garciga directed application owners to ensure that user interactions with AI, including prompts and AI-generated content, are identified, retained and secured as official records.
Federal agencies are already using Copilot for research, analysis, and decision support. Contract officers are asking Copilot about procurement regulations. Program analysts are requesting data summaries. Legal staff are researching case precedents. Each conversation captures a piece of the agency’s work, and each one needs proper records management.
The Challenge of Conversational Records
AI conversations create a records management challenge that didn’t exist before. These aren’t static artifacts sitting in a folder. They’re exchanges happening in real-time across Microsoft 365 applications: in Teams, in Outlook, in the browser.
The volume adds up fast. A single employee might have dozens of Copilot interactions in a day. Multiply that across an agency, and you’re looking at thousands of conversational records being created weekly. Without a system to capture and manage them, they simply disappear.
Traditional records management wasn’t built for this. You need a solution that understands conversational AI, integrates with Microsoft 365, and applies NARA-compliant records management to these interactions.
Feith’s Solution for Copilot Records
RMA iQ now captures Microsoft Copilot conversations as managed records. When employees interact with Copilot, those chats are automatically identified, classified, and retained according to your agency’s schedules.
The conversation gets preserved: the complete exchange between employee and AI becomes a retrievable record. You get full audit trails showing who asked what, when, and what information Copilot provided. Everything is searchable, reportable, and compliant with NARA requirements.
RMA iQ provides native integration between Feith’s records management platform and Microsoft Copilot, designed specifically for federal compliance requirements.
What This Means for Your Agency
Federal agencies can now adopt Copilot with its conversations captured as records. Your employees get the productivity benefits of AI assistance while your records program maintains complete control over the information those interactions generate.
You have visibility into how AI is being used across your agency. You can respond to FOIA requests that touch on Copilot interactions. You can demonstrate compliance during audits. Most importantly, you’re preserving the complete record of how your agency’s work gets done in an AI-assisted environment.
As conversational AI becomes standard across government, records management needs to evolve with it. Feith RMA iQ brings Copilot conversations under the same retention schedule as the rest of your records.
Ready to manage Copilot conversations at your agency? Contact Feith Systems to learn how RMA iQ handles AI records management.