Leidos introduces HeadWay Dispatch to govern AI agents

Leidos said on November 4 that it has introduced HeadWay Dispatch, a platform for governing AI agents from different vendors while keeping people in charge of critical decisions. The Reston, Virginia release names no price and no customer.

HeadWay Dispatch is designed to give organizations oversight without requiring them to start over with their existing AI investments. Steve Hull, president of Leidos Digital, said that as agents operate with greater autonomy, organizations need to know when to trust them, when to intervene, and how to account for their actions. The platform is part of the HeadWay suite, which Leidos describes as combining data platforms, analytics, and AI.

The release lists three controls. Know is a view of which agents are operating, what they can do, and which systems they can access. Control sets which actions an agent can take on its own, which need human approval, and which are blocked. Prove creates tamper-evident records of agent decisions as they occur. Leidos said requests can be routed through HeadWay Dispatch so agents do not store passwords or API keys.

Two more pieces are not shipping with this release. Leidos said it is developing Experience, which would tailor what each operator sees by role, and Intelligence, which would coordinate agents from different vendors under a common policy. It also said it is extending the controls so they hold when a network connection is degraded or lost. Those are development plans, not features the November 4 note says are available now.

The note points at federal buying rules without claiming a certification. Leidos said HeadWay Dispatch can assist agencies with Office of Management and Budget memos M-25-21, on AI governance and human oversight, and M-25-22, on competition and portability in AI purchasing. It did not say an agency has adopted it, and it did not give a general availability date beyond the November 4 introduction.