Technology founder and former government official Justin Fulcher has offered a clear-eyed perspective on what AI can and cannot do for federal agencies. His view cuts through much of the promotional noise surrounding government technology adoption.
AI adoption in the public sector, Fulcher argues, should be evaluated by a practical standard: does it reduce friction or add it? Agencies operate under constraints that private-sector companies don’t face regulatory requirements, procurement rules, interoperability demands, and oversight obligations. Technology that doesn’t account for those realities from the beginning tends to stall.
What “Institutional Drag” Actually Means
Justin Fulcher uses the term “institutional drag” to describe a specific problem. It is not about people being resistant to change or agencies being underfunded. It is about the accumulated weight of processes and systems that were designed for a different era. Data sits in disconnected silos. Compliance frameworks were built for analog workflows. These structures don’t disappear when new software arrives they shape how that software gets used, and often constrain it.
Fulcher has argued this dynamic is common across sectors. He saw versions of it while building RingMD across more than fifty countries and again during his tenure at the Defense Department. The underlying problem is familiar: the gap between what modern technology can deliver and what the institution will allow.
A Framework for Durable Adoption
What Justin Fulcher emphasizes when discussing government AI adoption is implementation discipline. That means clear objectives at the start, realistic timelines, and genuine willingness to iterate based on user feedback rather than top-down mandates. The distinction between tools that improve operations and tools that simply add complexity often comes down to how carefully implementation is managed.
His own work at the Defense Department cutting software procurement timelines and modernizing key IT systems offers a working example of the approach. The goal was never to transform the institution overnight. It was to reduce friction in specific, measurable ways that would hold up over time. That kind of incremental, deliberate progress is what Justin Fulcher argues AI should aim for in government settings. Check out this page for more information.
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