In July 2025, the White House unveiled its National AI Strategy, a clear signal to federal agencies and their partners to leverage artificial intelligence for the benefit of the American people.
At Abt, we asked ourselves: How can we create more dedicated space for our teams to explore AI in ways that reflect the realities of federal work?
We launched the AI Innovation Spike – an initiative that pairs policy experts with technologists to test how AI can support service delivery in complex public systems.
What’s an Innovation Spike?
In Agile methodology, a “spike” is a focused, time-boxed effort to test ideas, reduce uncertainty, and answer questions that don’t have obvious solutions.
We borrowed the idea and made it our own. Abt’s AI Innovation Spike invites small, cross-functional teams to rally around a real-world challenge, and explore how AI could be part of the solution.
The Abt Edge—and Why It Matters
By now, many of us have seen the headlines from MIT’s Project NANDA: 95% of generative AI pilots are failing to deliver real business value. It’s usually not because the tech doesn’t work; it’s because it wasn’t built with the right people in the room.
Innovation doesn’t happen in silos. It happens when domain experts and technologists bridge context and capability to build together.
Abt brings both to the table, especially when working with fragmented, messy, high-stakes federal data.
- Our subject matter experts bring deep knowledge of policy, compliance, and how federal programs function on the ground. They know what the data means—what’s missing, what’s noisy, and what really matters.
- Our technologists bring the architecture, engineering, and prototyping skills to test ideas fast, and translate them into scalable solutions.
The AI Spike gives both groups space to build bold solutions, even when dealing with messy data.
Space to Build
When you give your people permission to think bigger, they will. This approach is baked into how Abt works. Whether you’re a data engineer or a public health researcher, you’re expected to bring ideas—and get support to build them.
Tools don’t create value. People do. And the way we structure our teams, the way we test ideas, the way we learn from each other, that’s how real innovation happens.
What Comes Next
Some of these ideas will go straight into prototyping. Others might inform future client pilots. A few may get folded into our internal accelerators to explore further.
But all along, we’re building muscle. The Spike gives us a repeatable model to explore, evaluate, and operationalize AI in a way that’s deeply aligned with how government actually works.
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