Justin Fulcher on What Government AI Adoption Gets Wrong From the Start

Announcements of government AI initiatives often emphasize capability. Justin Fulcher, who has navigated technology modernization from both the private sector and a senior advisory role at the Department of Defense, argues that the focus should be elsewhere. Agencies that prioritize a tool’s features ahead of its fit with existing operations tend to generate pilots that never scale.

That observation reflects lessons Fulcher developed across two distinct environments. Building RingMD, his telemedicine startup, across dozens of countries taught him that technology succeeds in constrained systems only when it reduces the friction those systems already experience. His work at the Pentagon reinforced the same principle at a different scale.

What Friction Actually Costs Agencies

Fulcher has described the cost of institutional drag in concrete terms. Outdated procurement processes, data systems that cannot share information across departments, and compliance requirements designed for analog workflows do not just slow individual tasks. They compound over time, slowing every downstream decision and consuming resources that could otherwise go toward the agency’s actual mission.

AI tools that address these friction points streamlining documentation, surfacing relevant data faster, or automating routine compliance checks deliver value that is immediately legible to the people doing the work. That legibility matters enormously for adoption. Staff members who experience a tool as genuinely useful become advocates for it rather than resistors.

Justin Fulcher has said that AI tools requiring extensive retraining, generating compliance concerns, or introducing new failure points will find it difficult to gain traction in government settings. The path to durable adoption runs through fit and simplicity. As agencies continue evaluating AI applications, distinguishing between tools that reduce friction and those that create new forms of complexity will be the most important judgment they make. See related link for additional information.

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Announcements of government AI initiatives often emphasize capability. Justin Fulcher, who has navigated technology modernization from both the private sector and a senior advisory role at the Department of Defense, argues that the focus should be elsewhere. Agencies that prioritize a tool’s features ahead of its fit with existing operations tend to generate pilots that…