The Who, What, and Where of AI in the Public and Private Sectors

This seminar maps who adopts AI, what work changes, and where adoption concentrates across the federal workforce, drawing on longitudinal evidence from the Gallup Practice Panel for 2023 to 2025. Adoption in government has accelerated but remains below private sector levels. Uptake is most pronounced among senior leaders, supervisors, and project managers. Use cases concentrate on learning, idea generation, information consolidation, and simple automation. The core mechanism is organizational transmission: trust in leadership and clear managerial communication are the strongest predictors of employee uptake and the key complements that translate adoption into higher engagement and job satisfaction with lower burnout. Dr. Makridis will present federal specific cuts and conclude with actionable program levers for agencies: communicate purpose and guardrails, institutionalize short feedback processes, target enablement for individual contributors, and align procurement with measurable augmentation outcomes rather than raw usage.