Federal Gov’t Seeks to Drive AI Adoption With IT Policies; Steve Harris, Rob Davies Quoted

The White House’s executive order to prioritize federal investments in artificial intelligence and the Department of Defense’s AI strategy reflect major developments in federal policy to advance the adoption of AI, MeriTalk reported Wednesday.

“The new AI Executive Order has turned attention to AI, but before we can leverage the power of AI to enable our workforce and unlock the value of our data we need to build the compute and data management capabilities,” said Steve Harris, vice president and general manager of Dell EMC’s federal business.

“This investment in new infrastructure represents flipping the 80/20 ratio on legacy/modernization spend – these are investments in innovation for enabling human potential,” added Harris, a 2019 Wash100 winner.

Rob Davies, executive vice president of operations at ViON, cited the need for agencies to set objectives and hold pilot projects for AI-related programs.

“Most agencies still have their AI tools deployed in a lab sandbox, which can be limiting,” said Davies.

“In the short-term, agencies need to identify objectives and start pilot programs and build a few real-world wins, before implementing their AI programs more broadly.”