{"id":68084,"date":"2026-06-09T22:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/68084\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T22:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:09:07","slug":"gsa-playing-catch-up-with-industry-on-ai-and-tech-agency-head-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/68084\/","title":{"rendered":"GSA playing catch-up with industry on AI and tech, agency head says"},"content":{"rendered":"

A more centralized government portal and more artificial intelligence deployment are just a couple ways the General Services Administration is slowly but surely trying to bring government services up to industry speed, its top official said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

At the IBM Think Gov 2026 conference at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., GSA Administrator Edward Forst said the name of the government technology modernization game is catch-up, and the play is a bit of \u201cinstant gratification\u201d from early wins and measurable goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have stricken \u2014 although not to perfection yet \u2014 the word \u2018monetization\u2019 from our vocabulary,\u201d he said. \u201cI view it in our context as just catching up to yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

One goal the agency is working toward is building upon Login.gov<\/a> to simplify government access, \u201cwhich is going to be so good for the American citizen to be able to find one way into all the stuff we do,\u201d Forst said.<\/p>\n

He said President Donald Trump\u2019s administration is very \u201coutcome-driven\u201d and he needs industry partners to achieve his goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to leave our jobs without making a lot more of this happen, where it makes sense,\u201d Forst said of federal procurement. \u201cIf we stumble in the early days of doing more of this, it\u2019s going to disable us to get to where they do want us to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forst said he is \u201ceager for engagement with people to help us do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never had more stakeholders in my life since it\u2019s the entire American population, and I\u2019ve never had more bosses than I have right now,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery congressman, senator, everybody\u2019s my boss. I have a real boss who sits in the White House, too. You\u2019ve got to engage with them, you\u2019ve got to do a partnership approach, recognizing there\u2019s elements where there are countervailing tendencies, but we\u2019re really trying to measure and get better on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pressure of getting it right, especially around AI deployment, ricochets down through the agency, said Jennifer Rostami, assistant commissioner of GSA\u2019s Technology Transformation Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the government, we are responsible to the public to be conservative with what we do; we can\u2019t introduce something that then makes mistakes, and then somebody in the public is suffering because of that,\u201d she said in a session about agentic AI. \u201cThat\u2019s not our job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rostami said because of this, government innovation is \u201cinherently a bit slow,\u201d so it has \u201crelied on industry for always injecting innovation\u201d and to \u201cpush\u201d them toward AI use.<\/p>\n

Despite the slowness, she also said agencies are experimenting with AI. Forst believes GSA is \u201cat the doorstep\u201d with AI.<\/p>\n

As an example, Richelle Gibson, deputy director at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said on a panel that the agency is \u201cleaning forward\u201d with AI automation, especially to do repetitive tasks like issuing health benefits faster.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe make decisions on simple things within hours,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s a massively different experience for veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n

But hesitancy in AI adoption among government workers is a barrier, Gibson said, especially with fears around AI replacing workers. Gibson said tuning into the people and understanding their fears builds trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t forget the people,\u201d she said, \u201ceven though we\u2019re dealing with technology, because their use of the technology is what determines if it\u2019s successful or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"K.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by K. Sophie Will
\n\t\t\tK. Sophie Will is a reporter at FedScoop. Previously, she was an investigative data reporter at Bloomberg Industry Group. An award-winning journalist and Utah native, she graduated from Boston University and formerly worked with CQ Roll Call, the Utah Investigative Journalism Project, the Deseret News, USA Today, Reuters, HuffPost, WGBH, and more. Reach her on Signal at ksophiewill.66 or by phone at 617-888-0900.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A more centralized government portal and more artificial intelligence deployment are just a couple ways the General Services…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,111,38094,625,28202,28203,2618,38095,38096,38097,38098,4862],"class_list":["post-68084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-department-of-veterans-affairs-va","tag-donald-trump","tag-edward-forst","tag-general-services-administration-gsa","tag-ibm","tag-jennifer-rostami","tag-login-gov","tag-richelle-gibson","tag-technology-transformation-services-tts","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}