How AI can positively impact mission goals across the federal government

As federal agencies increasingly adopt AI technologies, a critical issue remains: how to balance AI’s opportunities with its inherent risks. In a recent video interview, Microsoft Federal CTO Jason Payne and SMX CTO Anthony Vultaggio share their insights on the evolving landscape of AI in government.

Payne highlights the three pillars of successful technological transformation: culture, innovation and workforce. “All transformations start from the center of culture,” he says. “We need a culture that embraces change and wants to adopt new technologies to drive innovation.” According to Payne, this is only achievable with a workforce with the necessary skills and readiness to engage with AI.

For his part, Vultaggio emphasizes the importance of building on known solutions and accelerators to increase the success rate of AI implementations. “We provide a lab environment where clients can experiment with their data, identify their use cases and engage in prompt engineering to understand how users will interact with the data,” he says.

According to Payne, failure to adopt AI poses significant risks, particularly in cyber defense. He stresses the importance of defending at machine speed, as attackers increasingly use generative AI to launch sophisticated cyberattacks. “The need to defend against these attacks at machine speed is critical, as generative AI is being used not just to breach networks but also to expand within them,” says Payne.

Vultaggio reinforces the urgency of adopting AI, noting that federal leaders who fail to leverage AI risk falling behind competitors who gain a first-mover advantage through automation and AI.

Looking toward 2025, both CTOs see AI becoming deeply integrated into the federal landscape. “AI is building out business intelligence capabilities and citizen services, leading to high client satisfaction and expanding implementations,” says Vultaggio.

Payne describes the future as one where AI is an intrinsic part of daily operations. “By 2025, AI will be part of our culture, part of how we think about solutions and how we advance our missions,” he says.

Learn more about how SMX can help your agency transform its operations with generative AI.

This video panel discussion was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and underwritten by SMX.