https://fedtechmagazine.com/ en https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/how-ai-strengthening-federal-workforce Amid all of the excitement around artificial intelligence, it’s easy to lose sight of a more fundamental question: What does AI actually mean for the people doing the work? In this issue of FedTech, we explore a simple but essential idea — that the true value of AI lies not in replacing human expertise, but in amplifying it. Federal agencies are already beginning to shift their thinking. Rather than viewing AI as a standalone capability, many are integrating it into the daily workflows of employees. The goal is not automation for its own sake, but augmentation: giving teams the ability to… Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:23:40 -0400 Mickey McCarter https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/how-ai-strengthening-federal-workforce https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/qa-cisco-public-sector-chief-shares-how-federal-agencies-must-modernize-ai As senior vice president of U.S. Public Sector at Cisco, Gary DePreta works closely with federal, state and local government leaders as they navigate technology modernization, cybersecurity challenges and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. With more than two decades at Cisco, he has a front-row seat to how agencies are preparing for an AI-driven future. In this Q&A, DePreta discusses the infrastructure, security and workforce challenges federal organizations face as they seek to operationalize AI and explains why modernization has become an urgent priority. Click the… Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:34:36 -0400 Mickey McCarter https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/qa-cisco-public-sector-chief-shares-how-federal-agencies-must-modernize-ai https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/how-agentic-ai-government-can-transform-federal-operations-perfcon Artificial intelligence technologies such as agentic AI are transforming the federal government by providing ways to automate customer service functions and build out new applications. In fact, 82% of government organizations have deployed AI agents, according to IDC research for Salesforce. Agentic AI involves systems that work autonomously to find and synthesize relevant information. NVIDIA describes agentic AI systems as “the new digital workforce.” They are “a new breed of AI systems that are semi- or fully autonomous and thus able to perceive, reason, and act on their own,”… Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:51:08 -0400 Brian T. Horowitz https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/how-agentic-ai-government-can-transform-federal-operations-perfcon https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/how-federal-agencies-use-cloud-power-real-time-scientific-discovery From mapping the stars to tracking the weather, government agencies are driving scientific research. But these data-heavy efforts come with challenges. “There’s the overall volume of the data. There’s the velocity at which it’s coming at us, and the fact that time is of the essence: We need to process it, we need to generate the alerts, we need to broadcast those out in real time,” says Adam Bolton, the U.S. data facility lead for the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. SLAC is the Department of Energy’s lead lab for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is transforming astronomy into a real… Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:38:03 -0400 Adam Stone https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/how-federal-agencies-use-cloud-power-real-time-scientific-discovery https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/intersection-ctem-and-security-spending-federal-agencies Across federal agencies, cybersecurity leaders are being asked to do more with less — defend expanding attack surfaces, modernize legacy environments and demonstrate measurable outcomes from every dollar spent. At the same time, many organizations are managing an increasingly complex mix of tools, data sources and alerts that make it difficult to separate real risk from background noise. I’ve seen this challenge firsthand: Agencies often have strong security capabilities in place but lack a clear way to determine whether those investments are delivering meaningful risk reduction. Tool sprawl… Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:35:46 -0400 Ben Bourbon https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/08/intersection-ctem-and-security-spending-federal-agencies https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/how-llms-are-becoming-research-co-pilots-federal-medical-scientists With the growing volume of medical research, keeping up to date on recent findings can be challenging. The number of cancer-related publications listed in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed citation database, for instance, has more than doubled since 2005, according to news platform OncoDaily. To help researchers sift through this vast pool of data, some federal agencies are employing large language model (LLM) functionality. This includes the National Cancer Institute, which used a chatbot feature it had added to its Fellows and Young Investigators (FYI) app to onboard fellows during… Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:04:06 -0400 Erin Brereton https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/how-llms-are-becoming-research-co-pilots-federal-medical-scientists https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/5-questions-avoiding-mistakes-multicloud-environments Many federal agencies don’t choose multicloud; they arrive at multicloud. Maybe an acquisition brought Amazon Web Services (AWS) workloads into a Microsoft Azure shop. Maybe the data science team adopted Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for its machine learning tooling. Here are five questions to ask to avoid mistakes in multicloud management. 1. Do Applications Run the Same Way On Every Cloud? True multicloud doesn’t mean running identical deployments everywhere for redundancy. That’s expensive and operationally complex. It means using each cloud for what it does best and ensuring portability… Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:11:12 -0400 Steve Dowling https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/5-questions-avoiding-mistakes-multicloud-environments https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/governance-results-building-enterprise-ai-90-days The challenges of integrating artificial intelligence into federal agencies often occur not during a pilot program, but afterwards. As second and third pilots arrive, each tends to bring different owners, tools and vendors, until the IT and program teams responsible for modernizing agency systems find themselves managing sprawl instead of delivering on mission. That was the central theme of Asim Iqbal and Aaron Chapman’s CDW Government panel at the AWS Summit Washington, D.C. Iqbal and Chapman argued that governance is what turns AI experiments into durable, compliant results, as well as what… Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:25:36 -0400 Ashley Hackett https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/governance-results-building-enterprise-ai-90-days https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/zero-trust-strategies-help-federal-agencies-improve-visibility-and-control To say that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services handles a lot of data would be an understatement. This agency within the Department of Health and Human Services administers Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Health Insurance Marketplace. It is responsible for ensuring the health coverage of more than 160 million people, or nearly one of every two Americans. With so much protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII) to manage and secure, CMS has been at the leading edge of zero-trust deployment for several years… Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:17:54 -0400 Alexander Slagg https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/zero-trust-strategies-help-federal-agencies-improve-visibility-and-control https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/review-axis-q1728-le-brings-edge-ai-federal-surveillance Federal agencies are under increasing pressure to modernize physical security systems that were originally designed around centralized video monitoring and passive recording. Those legacy deployments often struggle to keep up with today’s requirements for real-time threat detection, cybersecurity hardening and efficient data management. At the same time, any new technology must meet strict federal procurement standards. The Axis Q1728-LE network camera, part of the Q17 Series, addresses both challenges by combining edge-based intelligence with Trade Agreements Act-compliant availability.… Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:22:19 -0400 John Breeden II https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/07/review-axis-q1728-le-brings-edge-ai-federal-surveillance