Feds Prioritize Strategic AI Adoption Amid Tech Hype

Federal government is looking to break through the hype of AI to thoughtfully innovate and invest in emerging tech while training a workforce that is ready to integrate and adapt to this technology.

“Because of the excitement around AI, there’s a sort of pressure to AI-ify everything. And so, we’re really trying to dial back within the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to say, let’s think about the problem that we’re solving and whether AI is the right solution for that problem,” said Taka Ariga, OPM CDO, acting CAIO and director of enterprise data and AI, during GovCIO Media & Research’s AI Summit on Nov. 7.

The AI boom has forced agencies to critically look at digital readiness and read through the hype to get to operational efficiencies. Tech leaders at OPM, Army and Department of Education said this critical thinking surrounding AI and emerging technology hinges on a digitally ready workforce.

A “digitally ready workforce” spans past the implementors to include user literacy and other divisions outside of IT like acquisition, lawyers, privacy officers and operations because it’s a team sport. As government begins to move past tech pilots to broader integration, it is going to take a cohort of AI literate workers to navigate the governance process.

“I do believe that AI will be demarcated between people that choose to use it well versus people that don’t,” Ariga added. “So, part of it is upskilling, reskilling, but also making sure that we have the talent pipeline to come in to make sure that the next generation of the federal mission delivery is based on digital ready workforce.”

The Innovation Directorate Army Recruiting Command is focusing on literacy, fluency and education to ensure an enterprise effort to AI adoption. The command’s Acting Director Col. Kris Saling compared AI development and integration to car manufacturing.

Around two and a half years ago, the command introduced a data literacy course for members of the workforce to become more critical consumers of data. The course has been adopted for its professional military education, and now, everyone receives the training.

“You need the folks who are the engineers who are going to build the car, but what do we actually need for the folks who are going to drive it? Or the folks who aren’t necessarily driving it, but they need to know it’s on the road. This leads kind of how we’re tackling that problem,” Saling said.

Government is defining use cases to look for small efficiencies that have immediate returns as opposed to looking for “big bang” transformational AI projects that could take years to turn around, said Davon Tyler, acting deputy COO for IT management and CISO for ED’s Federal Student Aid.

By taking this approach, the federal workforce can learn along the way, with incremental changes, as AI is slowly introduced into agency operations. As agencies continue to implement emerging technology and upskill the existing workforce to build literacy, Ariga said it’s helpful to build out a “transition period” in its strategies.

“I think it’s incumbent upon us to sort of build that transition period so that the impact is less than gradual,” Ariga added. “If you build in that transition period for people to articulate how we’re reducing opportunity costs along with real costs, and what areas of opportunity might arise from that, [the workforce] might be more receptive.”

Because AI growth and development is unpredictable and the timeline is undefined, it’s difficult for agencies to identify workforce requirements needed for the future workforce, but leaders are keeping an eye out for key soft skills — like curiosity, communication and patience — in their recruitment efforts.

“You’ve got to have the curiosity and that drive to go and solve that problem,” Saling added.

It’s also important for the future workforce to uphold a high level of responsibility and accountability when using AI within federal agencies. Ariga explained there is a need for risk-based decision making for the AI workforce to maintain compliance while exploring the potential of AI.

“There’s also a world where these tools can be used against us too. We’re very aware of that. As we cross into this new this new environment, there’s a lot of work to make sure that people understand how to leverage this tool and information that’s in there, and how do we get it out if it does happen. That’s going to be something that’s going to [present] contractual challenges,” Tyler said.

Agencies are also focusing on streamlining the federal hiring and recruitment process to make it easier for talent to come into government positions, while also looking at incentivizing these positions as government competes with industry.

OPM has a Tech to Gov program made up of human resources professionals, recruiting experts, technical leads and hiring managers to share best practices on federal government-wide hiring of people with AI and other technical skills.

“There are a bunch of things that we’re trying to do to strengthen the hiring process. I think one of the most critical ones is trying to reimagine these job series,” Ariga said. “Part of it is articulating that career path … [but] what are agencies doing to make sure that there’s a successful career path, there’s a program and folks get to see success ahead.”

As agencies continue to modernize its hiring process, leaders emphasized that patience is key for the workforce. Agencies are operating in an environment with policy, regulation and statute that is not updated. Saling noted the Privacy Act hasn’t been updated since the 1980s, so modernizing and moving at the speed of technology is not realistic.

“Understanding, we’re not trying to make things hard for the sake of making it hard, but because we’re trying to protect the integrity that information to make sure that the government can function in a way that’s intended doing,” Ariga said. “We understand what AI could do, the potential mission differentiator, but we want to do so in a way that allows us to be successful and not necessarily end up on the front page of [the newspaper].”