From experimentation to efficiency: Ensuring AI delivers for the government workforce

The pace of technological change in government IT is relentless and growing more intense. This accelerating evolution presents a significant pain point when agency leaders face new pressures to readjust the scope of their workforce.

Technological advances present new opportunities for agencies to reimagine how they can accomplish their missions. However, keeping up with these changes—and determining how useful they may be—remains an immense struggle even for those immersed in technology daily. Consider that six months ago, terms like “agentic AI” were just emerging into mainstream conversations; now, not a day goes by without hearing about how they are the next big solution.

At a practical level, the issue facing most agency leaders is how to harness the power of new tools—especially AI and automation—to solve real business problems without incurring substantial experimental spending.

Related to that issue is harnessing those tools to drive workforce transformation more effectively. Addressing both issues while ensuring agencies invest wisely in new technologies remains the center of why engaging experienced partners has never been more critical.

Determining IT’s return on investment (ROI) remains a special challenge for public agencies. That’s in part because the value of preventing incidents (like cyberattacks or disease outbreaks) is often a more critical measure of success (and harder to gauge) than cost vs. budget targets. Another reason is the difficulty agencies face ramping up technologies without fully understanding the total operating and maintenance costs that can lie ahead, even when it’s the right solution.

Avoiding unexpected costs

Migrating to the cloud has helped agencies escape mounting technical debt and improve operational resiliency. However, cloud costs proved higher than expected. Moreover, various reports suggest growing management concerns about “cloud waste.” One study estimates that 40% of all cloud spending may be wasted; another reported that 42% of CIOs and CTOs said cloud waste was their biggest challenge in 2025.

Similarly, the excitement around AI is palpable, with many looking to apply AI to improve processes and streamline workflows so that the human workforce can focus on higher-value activities. However, they must also do so with a discerning eye toward ROI.

So, what should government business leaders be thinking about right now to navigate this new context and successfully transform their workforce and operations?

1. Prioritize ruthlessly based on business problems: Every agency has numerous business problems, but not everything can be priority one. The first crucial step is to identify the most significant business challenges. Then, and only then, should technology be considered a solution, always with a critical eye on ROI. Spending a million dollars on technology to solve a half-million-dollar problem is simply going in the wrong direction.
2. Demand and demonstrate clear ROI: Before embarking on any IT project, especially with new technologies like AI, insist on thorough upfront analysis and financial modeling. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Partners should be able to help you ask the right questions and, if necessary, conduct pilot projects to validate potential solutions and their long-term cost-saving or efficiency-generating impact.
3. Embrace collaborative expertise: No single entity knows everything, especially with technology evolving so quickly. Seek experienced partners who operate with a “special forces” mentality – agile, experienced, and deeply collaborative. These partners should act as trusted advisors, bringing a broad perspective from working with multiple clients and a commitment to staying current with certifications, best practices and solutions from leading providers.

The challenge is moving from simply adopting technology to strategically applying it and ensuring your agency achieves a clear, measurable ROI. That shift can lead to significant benefits for agencies:  

First, achieving tangible cost savings and operational efficiencies. A powerful example is a recent project where we tested an advanced AI voice-to-text application, leveraging AWS solutions to determine the viability of replacing an offshore call center. The key was ensuring the technology solution yielded savings compared to the (already inexpensive) offshore labor. The surprise: Using our knowledge of the latest technology, our client discovered that many callers couldn’t distinguish between the AI agent and a human representative. The interactions were so believable, and the ROI so apparent, that the client opted to transition immediately to full production. Now, it handles tens of thousands of calls monthly and delivers growing savings.

Second, transforming the workforce by automating intelligently. Agencies naturally want to apply AI and automation to repetitive tasks to free up their staff for more strategic work. The trick is to identify high-touch, high-cost tasks that can be readily automated using AI tools and cloud infrastructure that have proven cost-effective. We helped a client, for example, employ FinOps tools to monitor cost controls. The IT ROI became evident through chargeback dashboards, but the added intelligence also revealed opportunities to retrain and upskill human agents to focus on more complex issues.

Third, staying ahead in a rapidly changing technological landscape. Working with partners like LucidPoint, who are “in IT all day, every day” and understand the latest developments at AWS, for instance, is crucial to helping agencies keep up with rapid technology changes and make the most of their IT investments. Our close working relationship with AWS experts and knowledge of AWS’s best practices can help agencies fast-track IT planning, apply proven solutions and insights, and avoid missteps in ways that they often can’t do on their own.

For agencies aiming to accelerate their AI and workforce transformation efforts — and ensure a reliable ROI path— a key factor for success is leveraging the expertise of partners who are:

• Willing to meet them where they are;
• Capable of working shoulder-to-shoulder to deliver proof-of-concept results;
• Experienced in solving challenges with a diverse client base, including Fortune 500 firms.

Another success factor includes working with partners with long-term relationships with AWS, who are fluent with the constant evolution of cloud and AI innovations and features inside AWS’s technology ecosystem and who to turn to inside AWS to address specific agency technical challenges.

The challenge is to move from simply adopting technology to strategically applying it to achieve a clear, measurable impact on the mission and the workforce.

Learn more about how LucidPoint and AWS can help your organization optimize their use of AI and the cloud.

Discover how other AWS partners are helping agencies accelerate their AI and cloud modernization efforts.

This article was sponsored by AWS and LucidPoint.