Artificial intelligence and automation technologies have begun to help government transform the technology lifecycle management (TLM) of hardware, software, networks and infrastructure as its workforce shrinks.
The federal workforce declined by about 317,000 employees in 2025, according to the workforce data system the Office of Personnel Management launched in January.
While the staffing cuts did not hit every agency equally, the Trump administration clearly expects agencies to do more with less, and TLM supports that endeavor.
“We have to be smart about how we use technologies to make up for this change,” says Jonathan Alboum, federal CTO at ServiceNow. “This is very much in alignment with how the administration is thinking about AI and how the AI Action Plan calls for innovation in government and delivery of services.”
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Real-Time Visibility and Proactive, Predictive Maintenance With TLM
One of the biggest benefits TLM offers is real-time, continuous visibility into an agency’s IT assets.
“Comprehensive, enterprise, real-time visibility is the holy grail, a key enabler to ensure configuration management, patching efficacy and compliance, and remediation,” says Ed Debish, client adviser at Tanium. “Our customers are able to take action across hundreds of thousands of endpoints in seconds with accuracy and confidence, and we can monitor and report the change or the results of the information we requested within seconds, providing real-time feedback.”
TLM processes become more proactive and dynamic through the deeper insights provided by AI and automation. IT assets can be managed for maximum efficiency.
“Now, you can move assets around to where you have shortages, or if you have a large number of assets going out of service at the same time, you can get ahead of that by proactively swapping some out and avoid a big tidal wave of asset replacements,” Alboum says. “This is very hard to do without AI because the data is so voluminous and complicated. It’s hard for a human operator to manage it all.”
In addition to being able to proactively get ahead of technology shortages and end-of-life assets, TLM provides an opportunity for agencies to automate manually intensive patch cycles and deployments.
“We have a new capability called Tanium Automate,” Debish says. “It can save significant work hours to automate manual and mundane processes into a workflow.
In instances where agencies have several teams involved in reducing enterprise risk — whether conducting vulnerability management, compliance scans or patching — the Automate capability merges these trusted processes into one playbook to free up the workforce to focus on difficult tasks that require a human.
Being able to apply automation to patching and other regular IT asset maintenance leads to additional benefits further downstream.
“In many cases, AI will help determine whether to fully replace a system or simply enhance key components,” says Terry Halvorsen, vice president of federal client development at IBM. “Either way, it accelerates modernization, reduces costs and helps agencies adopt new technologies faster and with greater confidence.”
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AI-Enhanced Planning and Deployment: Accelerating Infrastructure Rollouts
While AI-supported TLM can extend the life of an agency’s assets, procurement will continue. Bringing TLM automation to bear on this often lengthy and complex process can deliver savings to budget-strapped agencies. Start with a clearer understanding of your IT resources.
“Procurement, especially within the government, has always been an inaccurate process based on historical or inaccurate data,” Debish says. “Real-time asset visibility for software installed and its usage, along with the hardware in use, unlocks the ability to accurately forecast future budgets, spending plans, hardware refresh lifecycles and software license true-ups. Significant savings can be realized immediately.”
Automated TLM also empowers agencies to look around for unused assets before buying new ones.
Imagine deploying AI agents as part of a workflow started when a request ticket is logged for a new software asset. The agent can automatically check if there are infrequently used licenses for that software within the organization. If such a dormant license is discovered, the agent can then uninstall it and move it over to the worker who had put in the request for the asset.
“This is an example of a software asset management agent we developed inside ServiceNow and shared with clients,” Alboum says. “This kind of agent-driven procurement can be used with all sorts of assets.”
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Continuous Monitoring for Security Speed and Scale
One of the most important areas where agencies gain much-needed assistance from AI-powered TLM is security. Being able to automate patching and proactively address end-of-life assets and their vulnerabilities greatly reduces an agency’s attack surface. It also provides the necessary speed and scale to be able to respond to attacks from autonomous machines.
“The goal isn’t to remove people entirely but to move them up a level, out of constant reaction and into oversight,” Debish says. “Humans set policy and step in when needed, but day-to-day cyber defense increasingly becomes machines operating against machines.”
Finding Technology Lifecycle Management Success With AI and Automation
As agencies familiarize themselves and begin pilots with the AI and automation tools available through their TLM platforms, a good first step is to assess where applying this technology can deliver the most value.
“When you look across agencies at where AI pilots failed, it’s usually the ecosystem itself failing, not the AI,” Halvorsen says. “You need a clear problem and the ability to gather the right high-quality data for AI to work.”
Implementing new tools to TLM processes that have been around for decades can present some unique challenges around change management that have to be addressed.
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“The governance of all these AI capabilities is going to be really important as we move into this year,” Alboum says. “The federal IT community has a tremendous opportunity to use these technologies to change the way we serve the customers of the government and change the way people think about government.”
