Why Federal AI Pilots Stall at Scale
The Problem in Numbers Federal agencies are awash in AI pilots. The 2025 Federal Agency AI Use Case Inventory documents 3,611 use cases across 56 agencies—more than double the prior year. But most of them stall. HHS: Only 38.4% of 271 use cases reached operations and maintenance. VA: 72 of 227 use cases retired within a single year. Across all agencies: 41% are piloting. Only 8% have achieved scaled deployment. This is not a technology problem. The models work. The infrastructure exists. The problem is architectural, organizational, and programmatic. The Core Issue: Handoff Failure Pilots succeed at technical proof. They fail at transitioning to production. A pilot team works around constraints for 90 days. A production system cannot. When a pilot succeeds and leadership asks "can we move forward," the production...