One of the persistent frustrations of government technology initiatives is the gap between pilot programs and durable adoption. Justin Fulcher, who worked on acquisition reform at the U.S. Department of Defense after co-founding a telehealth company that served markets across Asia, has developed a framework for understanding why that gap exists and how AI developers can close it.
The answer, in his view, comes down to friction. Agencies adopt technology that makes their existing work easier. They resist technology that introduces new training burdens, compliance uncertainties, or failure modes that are hard to explain to oversight bodies. AI tools designed without that constraint in mind tend to stall after initial pilots regardless of their technical merit.
Lessons From Defense Procurement
Fulcher’s work at the Pentagon on IT modernization gave him a close view of how technology decisions actually move through large institutions. Reducing software procurement timelines “from years to months” was one of the concrete accomplishments he contributed to during his tenure. That kind of progress required navigating teams with different institutional histories and different tolerances for risk not simply deploying superior tools.
“The technology that earns adoption is the technology that reduces friction,” Fulcher has said. That observation has direct implications for how AI companies should approach public-sector clients. Ease of integration with legacy systems, transparent audit trails, and alignment with existing compliance frameworks are not features that can be added after the fact.
Justin Fulcher consistently places durability ahead of speed in his assessments of technology adoption. An AI product that agencies can use without extensive retraining, and that generates results that can be explained to decision-makers and auditors, is better positioned for lasting impact than a more capable tool that disrupts operations before it can deliver value. Read this article for additional information.
More about Justin Fulcher on https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrjustinfulcher