Data Analytics

Chief AI Officers Ready Agencies for What’s Next

From setting new policies on the technology to preparing IT infrastructure for its deployment, these leaders have their hands full.

Ryan Petersen

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Ryan Petersen has worked in publishing for more than two decades, most of it spent creating award-winning content and strategy for CDW’s family of tech magazine brands. As editor-in-chief, he works with his team to develop compelling and useful industry-focused stories to share with the technology world. Outside of work, Ryan enjoys spending time with his children, traveling, online gaming, and following Iowa Hawkeye sports and Cubs baseball.

Generative AI, chatbots, large language models and machine learning have taken the world by storm. The federal government is no exception. As chief artificial intelligence officers take the helm to advance the many AI/ML initiatives now taking shape in every agency, new ideas and innovation — which only two or three years ago wouldn’t have seemed possible — are more welcome than ever.

As agencies lay the groundwork to make the most out of these newfound capabilities, IT and data-focused teams are limited only by their imaginations when it comes to achieving this next, perhaps most critical phase of modernization and digital transformation.

What’s Behind the Shift?

Since an October 2023 executive order directed a coordinated governmentwide approach to ensuring the safe and responsible development and use of AI, agencies have recruited or appointed new CAIOs to oversee the rollout of these rapidly evolving capabilities and tools.

The executive order pledges to “ease AI professionals’ path into the Federal Government to help harness and govern AI … and work to ensure all members of its workforce receive adequate training to understand the benefits, risks and limitations of AI for their job functions.” The executive order further promises support to modernize federal IT infrastructure, “remove bureaucratic obstacles, and ensure that safe and rights-respecting AI is adopted, deployed, and used.”

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In practical terms, this sweeping directive also requires agencies to set new policies for how they will leverage or install AI tools to meet citizens’ needs, advance their agencies’ missions and prepare infrastructure to ensure all the essential data processing power and connectivity needs required of AI/ML solutions will be met, and then some.

This issue of FedTech takes a deep dive into federal IT’s new AI imperatives, understanding how the groundwork is being laid for AI-enhanced productivity and citizen services, and uncovering a few of the AI-focused projects that are already underway (read Federal Agencies Experiment with Generative AI While Incorporating Safeguards). We also interviewed six newly appointed AI officers or chief data professionals to gain a better understanding of their impressions, intentions and priorities as they take on the increasingly demanding tasks of driving new, AI-intensive mission-critical priorities (read Federal CAIOs Outline Early Use Cases and Challenges with the Emerging Technology).

There’s more to AI than predictive text and image generation. As our country embraces AI tools and capabilities, federal IT and AI leaders will help to ensure no citizens are left behind.

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