HHS Champions AI Adoption Through Workforce Development

The Department of Health and Human Services is taking a leading role in federal AI adoption, becoming one of the first agencies to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise across its workforce while investing in training, collaboration and continuous education to help employees integrate the technology into daily operations, health IT officials said Tuesday at GovCIO Media & Research’s Health IT Summit in Rockville, Maryland.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Acting Chief AI Officer Travis Hoppe said his agency has actively supported AI adoption, creating a robust community of practice around it. He added that CDC leaders promote AI’s value through office hours, staff presentations and other initiatives — alongside traditional workforce training tools like classes and courses — to help employees integrate AI into their daily workflows.

“Getting the workforce, not just at the CIO level, but at every single level, to be activated, is one of the ways I think we’ve pushed forward [in AI adoption],” said Hoppe. “We host office hours and staff get to actually talk to each other and ask questions, which is incredibly valuable when we do things like prompt competitions.”

ServiceNow Federal CTO Jonathan Alboum said leadership needs to invest in workforce development opportunities that demonstrate the value of AI adoption.

“It’s incumbent upon us as leaders to work with our staff so they have the chance to learn so they can be successful,” said Alboum. “We need to give them these resources, time and space in order to learn and adopt these technologies.”

Defense Health Agency’s (DHA) Chief Data and Analytics Officer Jesus Caban said AI adoption and education require collaboration across all levels of the agency. He said he routinely meets with CIOs and employees across DHA to identify opportunities for collaboration.

“I’m working with CIO Pat Flanders and other CIOs to come up with a [more collaborative] plan on how we can develop the workforce because the CIOs are making decisions at their local medical centers about what technology to use or cybersecurity concerns,” said Caban.

Developing Continuous Education Pathways

Caban also highlighted the importance of continuous education pathways that build on a strong foundational baseline to maintain high AI literacy. As AI and other emerging technologies evolve rapidly, he said, continuous education will be essential.

“I’m enabling access to a number of AI classes, data science classes for my staff … It’s given them an opportunity for them to learn that in order to grow in your career, they must know data science. I think those are basic knowledge that enabling the staff to understand AI,” said Caban.

HHS Office of the Inspector General Chief AI Officer Arjuna Swaminathan echoed Caban’s points, emphasizing that AI literacy must extend beyond data scientists. By educating the entire workforce, Swaminathan said, agencies can eliminate redundancy and reduce administrative burdens across teams.

“The basic exploratory analytics is something that we would like all of our staff to be able to do, instead of just a select few data scientists,” said Swaminathan. “We’re building up that capacity at the at the very foundational level for all of our staff, and in turn will free up capacity for the data scientists to focus on higher value, more complex analytics work and addressing emerging challenges.”