TLDR: Federal agencies are actively investing in comprehensive workforce training initiatives to ensure their employees are proficient and confident in utilizing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. This strategic focus aims to bridge the existing AI skills gap, foster a ‘grassroots’ adoption of AI, and unlock new efficiencies and capabilities across government operations, as highlighted by efforts at NASA and other agencies.
Federal agencies are increasingly recognizing that successful integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools hinges not just on technological adoption, but critically on empowering their workforce with the necessary skills and confidence. While experimentation with GenAI is widespread, government AI experts emphasize the paramount importance of ensuring employees are comfortable and proficient with these new capabilities.
This focus was a key discussion point at the Federal IT Efficiency Summit on July 10, where officials detailed their strategies for workforce training. David Salvagnini, NASA’s Chief Data Officer and Chief AI Officer, articulated NASA’s ‘grassroots’ approach to GenAI adoption. Instead of solely pursuing predefined AI use cases, NASA aims to ‘expose people [to] the tools, get them comfortable with them, get them learning how to prompt, get them starting to understand how the tools can help them on their day to day, and then letting the use cases emerge from that awareness.’
NASA’s ‘Summer of AI’ campaign exemplifies this strategy, engaging approximately 4,000 participants across 40 different events over 90 days. This initiative led to a remarkable 300 percent increase in employees undertaking their first AI training, directly impacting about one-third of the entire NASA workforce. Salvagnini hailed the campaign as ‘quite, quite successful,’ noting that from an efficiency perspective, it’s about ‘putting the tools in the hands of the workforce, we’re letting them be comfortable with [the tools], and then starting to find ways in which those tools can be more capable.’
The training efforts extend to practical applications, such as teaching employees how to leverage tools like ChatGPT to ‘accelerate and streamline and produce efficiencies within your job.’ This approach aims to demystify AI and alleviate any apprehension employees might have about using artificial intelligence.
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This push for workforce training aligns with broader industry findings. A June 2025 global research report by Degreed and Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, titled ‘How the Workforce Learns Generative AI in 2025,’ revealed a significant ‘confidence gap.’ While 48% of professionals anticipate GenAI will alter their job responsibilities, a striking 78% lack confidence in using these tools effectively. The report underscores that building GenAI fluency is not merely about access but about creating an environment for skill development, noting that confident GenAI users are 12 times more likely to feel very confident in delivering business outcomes with the technology. They are also 2x more likely to use GenAI daily and 4x more likely to apply it to real problems, leading to 77x more measurable value. This data reinforces the federal government’s proactive stance on training to bridge this critical gap and maximize the return on AI investments.
