Anyone who grew up with Bob Dylan’s music will recognize “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” He recorded it more than 60 years ago. He was not singing about artificial intelligence (AI), but the song’s theme—that people and institutions must adapt to changing circumstances or be left behind—remains relevant.
Federal employees might want to dust off the title and consider how it applies to their jobs. The times are changing, and your job as a federal employee is not exempt.
The Trump administration has launched America.gov, an AI-powered website designed eventually to become a primary digital entrance to the federal government.
For federal employees, the bigger story is not the website. It is what America.gov reveals about the kind of federal workforce the administration is trying to create.
During Trump’s second term, the federal workforce has already become smaller, and federal payroll jobs are still falling. At the same time, OPM is trying to recruit younger employees, agencies are rapidly adopting AI, governmentwide HR systems are being consolidated, routine work is being automated, and agencies are being told to concentrate hiring on mission-critical occupations and skills such as AI, cybersecurity, and software engineering.
Together, these trends suggest a much bigger theme: an attempt to redesign federal work around a smaller, more technologically capable and potentially younger workforce.
For a federal employee, that raises a very personal question: If AI enables me to do twice as much work, will my agency need as many people doing my job?
One Front Door Instead of 29,000 Websites
Anyone who has tried to deal with the federal government knows the problem America.gov is supposed to address. Imagine you are approaching 65 and need information about Medicare. Your passport also needs renewing. Perhaps you are a veteran trying to determine whether you qualify for a benefit.
Where do you start? Traditionally, you first determine which agency handles the problem, find its website, learn its terminology, and navigate its procedures. America.gov is intended to turn that model on its head.
GSA says America.gov combines information from more than 29,000 government websites with AI-enhanced search technology. Instead of requiring citizens to understand the federal bureaucracy, the idea is to let them ask ordinary questions and have technology find the answers.
The ambitions go far beyond search. President Trump’s September 29 executive order describes America.gov as a single digital point of entry where individuals will eventually be able to sign in, communicate in plain English, and, when technically and legally possible, complete government transactions. The administration says passport renewals and Medicare enrollment are among the services expected to become available.
The order generally covers online federal services used by more than 100,000 people during 12 months. Agencies must identify qualifying services and integrate them with America.gov. IRS tax filing and certain national security services are excluded.
That is where federal employees enter the story.
What Happens to the Person Who Used to Answer the Question?
Consider a hypothetical federal employee named Mary.
Mary has worked for an agency for 22 years. She spends much of her day answering questions, looking up information, checking applications, and telling people what they need to do next.
Today, 100 people might call Mary’s office. Tomorrow, perhaps 70 will ask America.gov first. That doesn’t necessarily eliminate Mary’s job. Her remaining cases may be harder—conflicting records, unusual circumstances, appeals, or decisions requiring judgment.
- AI handles the easy cases.
- Mary handles the difficult ones.
From the citizen’s perspective, that may be an improvement. From Mary’s perspective, it fundamentally changes her job.
And when Mary retires in three years, does the agency hire another Mary? Or does it distribute her remaining complicated cases among several employees and use the vacant position to hire a cybersecurity specialist, software engineer, or data scientist—perhaps an early-career one, in line with OPM’s effort to bring younger employees into an aging workforce?
Multiply that decision across hundreds of agencies and thousands of retiring employees, and the potential significance becomes clear. This is how AI could shrink the federal workforce without another dramatic governmentwide reduction in force. Attrition can do much of the work.
The Bigger Story: Redesigning Federal Work
The administration’s efforts to reduce federal employment, automate administrative processes, and modernize HR share a common denominator. It isn’t technology. It is work.
GSA’s Elimination, Optimization and Automation Handbook, released in June, encourages agencies to eliminate unnecessary activities, improve workflows, and automate repetitive tasks so employees can concentrate on mission-critical responsibilities.
OPM’s staffing instructions go a step further. Agencies are being told to determine how many employees they actually need in what OPM calls a “modern technology-enabled operating environment,” considering how technology affects both the number and the types of positions needed.
For generations, federal staffing has had considerable institutional momentum. If an organization had 500 positions last year, the starting assumption was often that it needed about 500 this year.
The new approach asks a different question: If we were designing this organization today—with today’s technology—how many people would we hire, and what skills would we want them to have?
HR itself is part of the redesign. OPM’s Federal HR 2.0 initiative is intended to consolidate governmentwide systems for hiring, classification, performance management, and workforce analytics, while OPM is also emphasizing an “AI-ready workforce.”
The Productivity Revolution May Matter More Than Layoffs
America.gov is the public side of a much larger change. The government is also putting AI directly into employees’ hands.
GSA has negotiated governmentwide arrangements that give agencies access to commercial AI products. Agencies are experimenting with systems that can research information, summarize documents, analyze data, prepare drafts, and automate workflows.
The technology is also moving beyond chatbots. A chatbot tells an employee how to perform a task. An AI agent may eventually perform portions of the task itself.
Federal employees understandably approach automation with one question: Will AI take my job? For many current employees, the more immediate question may be, “How much more work will I be expected to do because I have AI?”
If AI allows an employee to process substantially more cases, managers may eventually expect more cases. Position descriptions, performance standards, and training requirements could change. An employee who knows how to use AI effectively may become considerably more valuable than an equally experienced employee who does not.
Instead of placing as much value on producing routine documents or processing transactions, agencies may increasingly value resolving difficult cases, detecting AI mistakes, exercising judgment, and producing measurable results. The employee’s value increasingly comes from the part of the job the machine cannot do.
The Employee Who May Thrive
Now imagine John, another federal employee.
John isn’t a computer programmer. He is a program specialist with 15 years of experience, but he has learned how to use AI.
Instead of spending three hours searching regulations, he has AI conduct the initial search, and then he verifies the results. Instead of starting a report with a blank screen, he asks AI to prepare a first draft and spends his time correcting and improving it. Instead of manually sorting hundreds of comments, he has software categorize them, and he investigates the unusual cases.
AI hasn’t replaced John. He has become more productive because of it. That may be precisely the type of employee agencies will increasingly want: someone combining institutional knowledge with the ability to use new technology.
There is a lesson there for employees wondering what America.gov means for their careers. The safest place in the future federal workforce may not be the job that AI cannot touch. There may eventually be relatively few of those.
It may be the job held by someone who understands how to make AI useful while providing the judgment, experience, and accountability that AI cannot.
The Times Really Are A-Changin’
America.gov may look like a website today. Look beyond it, however, and it looks less like an isolated technology project and more like another piece of a federal workforce experiment already underway.
Can the government provide the same—or better—services with fewer employees by using technology to eliminate routine work and focus people on jobs that require expertise and judgment? Nobody knows the answer.
Technology projects fail. AI makes mistakes. Federal computer systems can be antiquated. Laws and regulations constrain what agencies can automate. And federal programs frequently involve messy situations that don’t fit neatly into an algorithm. There will still be plenty of work for human beings.
The more interesting question is what kind of work it will be. For federal employees, that may be the real message behind America.gov.
The times are indeed changing. And this time, the new coworker may be a machine.