The GovNavigators Show

Bots Writing RFPs? Josh Martin on the Future (and Risks) of AI in Procurement

• Season 4 • Episode 156

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0:00 | 23:06

This week on the GovNavigators Show, Adam and Robert sit down with the GovNavigator Network's Josh Martin, former Chief Data Officer for the State of Indiana turned founder and AI practitioner, for a candid, highly practical conversation about what AI can (and can't!) do in government today.

Josh shares how he’s building AI-powered tools to solve real-world problems, like instantly preparing for vendor meetings or streamlining procurement reviews, and explains why AI’s biggest value isn’t replacing people, but accelerating decision-making. He also offers a clear-eyed warning: agencies that over-automate without human oversight risk serious errors, hallucinations, and reputational damage.

We dive into how governments can responsibly adopt AI, the importance of understanding data and prompting, and why “personal responsibility” is the missing ingredient in most AI strategies. Josh also reflects on his transition out of government, what he misses, and where he sees the biggest opportunities for innovation across the public sector.

Show Notes:

What's on the GovNavigators' Radar?

  • May 2-4: Professional Services Council Annual Conference
  • May 5: AGA’s Performance Counts Summit
  • May 6: Service to America Medals
  • May 14-15: ACT-IAC’s Emerging Technology & Innovation Summit
SPEAKER_02

Welcome everyone to the Gov Navigator Show, a government-focused program that won't make you seasick. We're the Gov Navigators. I'm Robert Check. And I'm Adam Hughes. We hope to enlighten and enliven your week with news and insightful, entertaining guests, all on the topic of government management.

SPEAKER_00

Enjoy today's episode of Gov Navigators, brought to you by the creative geniuses behind the award-winning podcast Fedheads. And we can blame it on our friends at government executive for putting on too stellar of a party. I agree.

SPEAKER_02

I agree. What a delightful time we had at the Evening of Honors Hall of Fame Awards slash Fed 100.

SPEAKER_00

Why do we have to lean into the after party every time?

SPEAKER_02

We should know better at this point. Right? Yeah. We're getting too old for this. We really are. That is true. That is a true statement. But it was delightful. So so many friends love honoring people who are doing amazing things in government. Any chance we get to do that, it is worthwhile to take time to do that.

SPEAKER_00

100%. But while we were having fun on the wharf, Congress was actually doing some work. Now I don't want I don't want to give too loud applause for passing a funding bill about six months into the fiscal year.

SPEAKER_02

Six months plus, yeah. Yeah. But hey, the shutdown's over. The partial shutdown. The DHS shutdown.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Almost all of DHS was almost all correct. In the bill, leaving ICE and CBP to be dealt with at a later date, likely in reconciliation.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, which is the Republicans in the House and Senate have already been moving forward on that path. So and then those two agencies, and frankly, most of DHS was funded through the last big beautiful bill. So they have been operating, just not with current year funds.

SPEAKER_00

The uh something incredible happened in the House this week.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. And you're not talking about you're not talking about the open yelling and cursing at Speaker Johnson on the House floor by Republicans. No.

SPEAKER_00

We're talking about the the OASIS that is the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform. Yeah. One of our favorite committees. Sounds strange because it's often acrimonious, but the committee marked up nine bills intended to help agencies prevent fraud.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And these are some, and we've talked about this before, we've mentioned it before, these are some fantastic reforms that'll really help agencies and help the government as a whole do something that it probably shouldn't have been doing a long time ago, but had there were certain obstacles and challenges in place. And the this slate of bills should really do a lot to help expedite the way that agencies can stop fraud before money goes out the door.

SPEAKER_00

They've got a long way to go before they're enacted. But they would do things like improve data sharing, set up a special IG for fraud at the Department of the Treasury. They would, you know, allow Treasury to delay payments that are suspected of being fraudulent. So I hope they make progress getting those enacted, and we'll be watching them closely.

SPEAKER_02

Yep. And we were proud to support those bills. And kudos to the staff on the oversight committee who have been working on this for a long time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Big by person show on the committee.

SPEAKER_02

Um also it looks like DOD has a new agreement with seven major AI companies to use their tools in classified environments. That was just announced on Friday. Where's your target in that list? I'm pretty sure they're on it. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah. And there's new I know this is breaking news. Another executive order, a new executive order was released that's in mandating the use of fixed price contracts and requiring agencies to firm fixed price. And requiring agencies to use justifications when those when the a different type of vehicle is used. So it's gonna be interesting to see how that shakes down the chain.

SPEAKER_00

Where's poor LPTA? Don't say that.

SPEAKER_02

Roadkill. Roadkill. Totally true. So yeah, lots more to come on that. It just was released. And it'll make some waves, I think, in the GovCon community. Yep. All right, let's get to the guest.

SPEAKER_00

So, Adam, we are beginning the Batan Death March of featuring our network members. That's right. And we couldn't be more delighted to have back on the show Josh Martin. Josh, thanks for being with us. Yeah, thanks for having me back.

SPEAKER_02

That's quite popular demand, I think.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Last time we had you, you were just leaving your purchase as chief data officer of the state of Indiana. So we can talk more about that, but tell us what you've been up to.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so you know, I was gonna take some time off, but so Saturday and Sunday, I guess, was enough because I had enough carryover meetings with context that uh I just went back uh and and launched my webpage on that on that Monday, January 13th, and been a co-founded second company on human-centric AI teaching so that we could help at three tiers get folks more comfortable with that in the government space. And I successfully exited that in in August after getting all the content built and having all of these other interesting things come up that I've been working on. So yeah, I've been staying busy, but it's also been nice to really work on some of my own personal projects and doing some more development work that still ties in very closely with working with Lesie Data, the experience working in government data systems and you know strategy. How do we move how do we move this forward?

SPEAKER_02

So, in this short amount of time, while while Robert and I have just slogged away here with our little podcast, you've already started two companies and completed the work of one company. Yeah. Okay, AI is an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_01

We're falling behind, Robert. Tell us uh about your the what you're teaching executive level with AI. They don't need to be scared, what it really means, answering questions. I was like doing a lot of as they were asking things. I was still getting in one of my AI platforms and being able to show them, being able to publish a stack website during a one-hour session. Well, really during 10 minutes by posting it up into my AWSS3 bucket and giving them a website that tells their information about their organization. Then we dug down into a second level for the operations managers to get them to understand how to empower the people that are actually fingers on a keyboard. So it's really just getting the higher managerial staff comfortable enough to let the operations folks who are doing the work innovate. And that was the game plan.

SPEAKER_02

Are you thinking of that mostly in the private sector or trying to make sure these tools were inside government too?

SPEAKER_01

The the curriculum itself can traverse any sector, private, nonprofit funders, government, legislative branch. I think it would be really helpful for quite a few of them to just take a basic class on AI, especially after following some of the uh the summer study committees here in Indiana on AI and the uh legislative session that's currently ongoing.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, interesting. Yeah. I was thinking about that too. My wife and I were talking the other day because she's was recently elected to the school board where we live in Virginia, and one of their main areas that they're going to be focused on in this coming year is AI. It's more than chat bots, but high school kids primarily, I think, are using Chat GPT and Gemini and those. But it is a it's a daunting task for non-technical people who don't spend their day every day working on these things. Right. And then I think there's the added challenge of particularly on the government side, how do you write policy that governs these new tools in a way that, like you, I think you've been talking about is flexible and encouraging, but also puts up some guardrails. Yeah. Particularly when you're talking about kids, obviously, right? So yeah, I don't was that a part of any of the things that you developed or the conversations you were having with the state at the time?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, we were working on it at the state. We knew we need a flexible policy, agile policy. It's going to need updated, everyone's going to need to be involved. So that was really collaboratively developed as the first cut, knowing that constant updating is going to be necessary. Too many policies just sit on the shelf, don't get read, don't get communicated effectively, and then we lean back on them when there's a crisis situation, and we have to be much more proactive on this. But not to get you know over dependent on policy, but understanding what's capable now without violating anything. You know, what could you be using it for as a government employee now that doesn't put you in jeopardy at all, or not putting any data into it, but saying, you know, hey, I've got so this is a really good example of something that I built as just a small agent. Most of us at the executive level get vendor meetings pushed on us, have no preparation time, or what they send over isn't, you know, real solid. So five minutes before the meeting, you're trying to scramble and Google them and whatnot. So I actually created a little agent that you just type in the vendor that you're meeting with and hit go, and it does a whole rundown of what business they're in, what products they do, who their competitors are, what and it gives you at the end a list of questions that you should ask that are you know intelligent questions that are applicable questions. So it's not you know a waste of your half hour, how many hours they could get on your calendar. So really helpful to me and something I actually put out in a LinkedIn post not long ago for for folks to use too. So you're literally building tools that you wish you had for an executive government.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So you shared how to you shared like a link to the tool or how to create the tool yourself.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's a link to the tool, so it's got the knowledge base behind and everything. It's a Gemini gem. Google calls their little agent builder gems. So it's just a gem you go to and you can just put your information in there and hit play. Robert is rapidly googling if you're like, wait, I need to find this.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I missed that post. I missed that link to post. I'm pissed you didn't tell me before I'm doing five podcasts in a row. That would have been pretty helpful. It's you know, you can then ask a question back and forth too.

SPEAKER_01

Come back and give it notes, it's gonna store information for you.

SPEAKER_00

So that's that's really cool. That's great. So, what are some other examples of uses that are clearly within guidelines that folks should be leveraging right now?

SPEAKER_01

I think how many people love procurement and how many bad RFPs have we seen? You go out and you look at some.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, you're talking about people in our universe, they might have answered those differently, but uh okay.

SPEAKER_01

I I that's I'm gonna yeah, some of the state books, but I mean, from us on the outside that are looking at them, reviewing them, deciding what we reveal them against the knowledge your business that you operated that corpus to evaluate those to see if you know you want to put the time and effort into it, if it fits you, or if you want to make a pass.

SPEAKER_02

So I haven't seen as much on this recently, but I feel like last year in particular, maybe even the end of the Biden administration, there was a lot of commentary, you know, in the federal GovCon community about well, AI is gonna write the RFP, and AI is all responses to the RFP. Basically, then two bots communicate back and forth to decide who gets government contracts. What's your perspective on whether that is happening a lot?

SPEAKER_01

Is that a bad thing? And we see this in a lot of the different professional services. There's been attorneys that have been you know caught with bad citations to case law. Then and if you just let the AI go back and forth and back and forth, and there is hallucinations that start to get in there, those hallucinations can be a bit pretty wild, and your procurement for toilet paper could be a bidet, you know, depending on how that works. But it I think it is a good advantage for both sides. You know, did you I mean just a quick cut at here was our business problem and here were our requirements. Did this 150-page submission meet the requirements?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I feel like when you're uploading content, right? And I feel like the accuracy of those types of reviews is much better than saying go out and pull stuff off the internet or you know, yeah from anywhere. You know, and you reminded me too. I there was there's been some GAO reviews where for pro for contract protests, where GAO has uh has fined the protester because they used AI to write the protest, and it came up with fake citations about why there should be a protest. I think it I've seen it three or four times. So I mean, I think we're gonna see more and more of that as we go forward.

SPEAKER_01

I my entire team is AI besides myself. It's all AI augmented workflow, or else I couldn't be as productive as what I am. Um, but you have to know like the knowledge behind it. I I don't well, I don't know. Adam Adam might not need you on as truck. Oh yes. Oh, I love that. But yeah, yeah, I just some pretty cool stuff with audio generation too. But and it sounds like a podcast just to explain things in to people that I don't want to spend, you know, a long mainly my parents. Uh here's a link to this audio thing. You know, listen to it and let me know if you have more questions.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Let me tell my wife about to use that with her mother.

SPEAKER_01

That's great. I it is a great idea. I mean, there's so many helpful things, and it's just it's a velocity builder, you know. But you have to understand, you know, the way that you're prompting it, you have to understand like where to tell it to get its information from. You have to know enough that as you're reviewing it, you can call out, ooh, that's not right, or you need to check that again because it does make errors frequently. And you know, there's ways that you can you can work on that, you can run it through multiple models, but you know, not every state or organization is going that way. They're still doing kind of these monolithic you know procurements of they're either a Google shop or Microsoft Shop or working in AWS, and you know, you're kind of limited and restricted. But there's some good middleware platforms that are coming out there that were built privacy and security first that I've been working with a couple. One of them is called kendo.ai, and it has data security security built in. So there's already data loss protection in there. You have visibility across your entire organization. You can turn in on and off models. It's really a great product. I met them several years ago and just looking at the product, talking to them about it the previous time, I was like, guys, you guys have the thing that lowers the barrier to entry for government. I mean, that's the biggest thing that we're worried about is that data exfiltration. Is there gonna be a social security number gonna get out there? Is there gonna be a name? Is there gonna and they handle all that out of the box? So that's pretty cool. I use that for a lot of my back-end work on some of the apps that I'm doing. So it's actually calling through them and pulling back using the best model for operations. So instead of saying I'm doing everything in Chat GPT or I'm doing everything in Llama or everything in Claude, you can use those models based on what they're really good at.

SPEAKER_00

Josh, we talked about people using it and getting in trouble because of hallucinations or errors. You must see this, you know, listening to you. You might go and fire a bunch of people and just rely completely on AI to do your work. But there we see clients we won't who shall remain nameless, or people in social media who clearly are just giving over without any oversight. And it's like you've so it's so obvious. How do you coach people that they can't do that? That that will embarrass them, it will you know potentially lead to major mistakes and reputational damage.

SPEAKER_01

And the the biggest thing that it that comes with AI and using AI is your own personal responsibility. And you need to know what you can and can't use it for, what you should and shouldn't use it for. And you need to, if you're gonna let it not take over some of your menial or work, but take over part of your primary responsibilities, and you're comfortable with that, you're gonna have to live with those errors that are gonna happen. It's a huge risk factor right now. You know, you can't automate everything. I couldn't automate all of my work, but I can take the knowledge base that I have in my head, work with the AI to rapidly prototype, to develop code, develop strategy documents, to do things that you know AI really solves this problem. It's called the blank page. You know, think about writing a resume for the first time. You open your Microsoft Word and you're looking at a blank page. You know, you go out of data strategy, you're looking at a blank page. So you have this blank page problem. And this can just get you to a place where you can get started. And some of the AI has gotten really good at asking, you know, more questions. Would you like me to do this? Would you like me to work on this? Here's your next steps. But you but have to know how to have that conversation back and forth with it and make sure that if it is doing automated work, like doing LinkedIn posts for you, which I do recommend, because I've seen some of the same same things that I'm sure. So I mean it's so obvious. It's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Who knew there were so many emojis?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I I'm not gonna deny using it, but all of the content that it creates I heavily review and it's heavily guided by me. But yeah, there's a lot of emojis. So it's gone back to Markdown. A lot of the production is now the output's coming out in markdown language, which was kind of so sorry. Markdown was kind of like it's it's a text-based document that's kind of an outline that a computer can read and put in those emojis and do the formatting. So yeah, it's just and it was something that we kind of went away from because it's clunky, and now it's starting to kind of meet re-emerge, which is interesting, but it's also very credit intensive if you're doing major agency loads. And if you don't know that, you can blow through one and a half million credits in an afternoon, like I did.

SPEAKER_02

It's like, well, it's like you know, everything that's old is new again in some ways, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. This is right, right dual, right job. You know, HTML, HTML5 is something that's great. You can have it output in that, and even though you can't, you know, read the code that's in the text, you just open it up, the bread browser pops it up, and you can see it, and it's all there. Beautiful reporting, you know, easy to consume graphics, all of that stuff gets put together. So there's tons of potential there. But you know, when you talk about hooking into systems, uh especially sensitive systems, you have to be so incredibly conscious and so understanding of what absolutely is happening, yeah, and how are you going to maintain regulatory compliance with that? So there's a lot to it. And you know, there's a lot of opportunity for eliminating busy work, work that's I would consider, you know, not a huge value add for a person to be doing this repetitive stuff over and over again and have them focus on more knowledge work, more important tasks. So I think that's where a big opportunity is.

SPEAKER_02

Particularly, I mean, most of the repetitive work, as long as you to your point have set it up correctly, the computer is going to be a gazillion times better at it, just even from an accuracy standpoint. Don't even think about speed, right? So so I wanted to, we're running out of time, but I wanted to ask you a little bit more about how you're liking it outside of government. You were you worked for the state of Indiana for a long time. A long time. Uh, and now you're not anymore. And what was that transition like? And are you enjoying it? What where do you miss it?

SPEAKER_01

You know, I served my 12 and a half year sentence and was released on good behavior. But it was, you know, looking back, gosh, did I get a lot done? But the day that I that I the Friday that I deleted my state information off of my phone and my accounts, the sigh of relief. I mean, once you get in there and you're grinding those gears for so long, you don't realize how burnt out you get. So there was a really nice relief and kind of recovery period from that burnout. Yeah, it is a big shift, though. You know, you're coming out of a very you know structured bureaucratic system, and you're looking at like I'm really looking at the innovative space. You know, what's the future going to look like? What intellectual property can I build now that's gonna have potential? You know, what things are gonna be tools that could be used to help the public sector? So I still get to you know do the good. I'm still working with some public sector folks and some some vendors that work with the public sector, educating them on there is how you approach the people in the public sector. Don't just walk in with a slide deck, you need to be knowledgeable, and there's a way to have a good conversation there so it's not painful for all involved. By the way, so that's been uh that's been a pretty big benefit. And I always keep I was like, is this valuable? And they're like, This is so valuable, you know, and that's just kind of like behavior one-on-one. You know, this is how you interact with these folks, but you know, there's parts of it I really miss. I I miss you know, working with a lot of the great folks that I worked with, you know, most of them did kind of leave around the same time. Most of us have been there for for quite a while. So that's you know, I miss it and I don't miss it at the same time.

SPEAKER_00

I've learned so much, Josh, just from this 20 minutes. But that's true of every conversation we've had. So thanks for spending time with us. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_01

And when you guys are ready for uh for a little, you know, fire sale, hands-on with some AI, I've got some toys to play with. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00

All right, we know where to go to. Thanks, Lau.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_00

We neglected to inform our listeners where we were recording from.

SPEAKER_02

True. Yeah, we forgot. Because we're in a new location yet again.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the only thing missing from the Greenbriar, at which we're attending the Professional Services Council's annual conference, is Bill Webner from Allencore.

SPEAKER_02

That's true. Bill Webner, who famously said he would never attend another conference. And he's keeping his work. He is he is stuck to it. You know, maybe it was the 11th hour decision, but yeah, but we're at the Professional Services Council out in wild, wonderful West Virginia. What's the state tank? I can't remember. PSC is a great organization, it's a great conference, and we're having a ball. And we also got the Sammy's this week.

SPEAKER_00

The Service to America Metals. Yeah. Where we're once again leaning into the after party.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I was gonna say we literally haven't learned our lesson. So, but it's gonna be great. Always one of the best nights of the year.

SPEAKER_00

You skipped one of the most important events Tuesday. Oh, I did. What is AGA is hosting its annual performance counts summit? Oh, yes. This is your baby. Yeah, that's

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

It's a great lineup. Our friend Mary Goldsmith is gonna moderate a panel on what Congress is doing in this arena. We'll have Ken Biefenbach, the head of the track. And then we'll have a panel on Green, so the panel on loans. It's gonna we're gonna cover the landscape. It's gotta be great.

SPEAKER_02

And the price is right. The price is short. It's free. Have a great week, everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Gov Navigator Show, brought to you by GovNavigators. We sure hope you enjoyed it and learned something in the process. And didn't get seasick. Right, of course. If you want to know more about us and what we're up to, please follow us on social media or visit govnavigators.com. Ahoy! Oh jeez.