Report by Valerie Wirtschafter: “Three consecutive administrations have made adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across the U.S. federal government a priority. Most recently, the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan highlighted AI’s potential to “help deliver the highly responsive government the American people expect and deserve.” To assess the current state of AI adoption across the federal government, this report draws on AI use case inventories from 2023 to 2025, federal jobs data, OMB memoranda, request for information submissions, and interviews with current and former federal technologists across eight agencies.
While the scope and pace of AI adoption accelerated significantly over the past three years, AI use across the federal government remains concentrated among a handful of large agencies. Workforce capacity constraints, a risk-averse culture, procurement and funding challenges, and low public trust in AI systems slow adoption efforts.
To bolster responsible AI adoption, the federal government could expand support for technical talent and AI literacy across agencies; continue to address the structural barriers in procurement, regulation, and budgeting that hinder technology modernization more broadly; and foster public trust through stronger transparency practices, improved use case inventories, and a focus on high-impact, positive applications that demonstrably improve how government serves the American people…(More)”.
