Episode 147: Stuck in Pilot Mode: Deep Grewal on the Federal AI Readiness Gap and the Data Problem No One Wants to Fix

Written By GovNavigators

This week on The GovNavigators Show, Robert Shea and Adam Hughes sit down with Deep Grewal, Vice President of Public Sector at MinIO, to unpack the findings of a new survey on the federal government’s AI readiness, and why so many agencies are still stuck in the pilot phase.

While AI ambition is everywhere, Deep explains that the real bottleneck is in data management. From lineage and governance to infrastructure, portability, and total cost of ownership, the conversation makes the case that the unglamorous foundational work will determine which agencies actually scale AI and which remain in perpetual experimentation.

They dig into the tension between cloud-first and cloud-smart, the rise of hybrid and sovereign architectures, the GPU and storage crunch, and why AI must become a mission-wide capability rather than a bolt-on “innovation project.” Deep also lays out a practical checklist for moving to enterprise AI: get your data house in order, modernize infrastructure, upskill the workforce, establish governance, and prove the ROI.

If you’re trying to move from AI pilots to real production, this episode is your roadmap. 

Show Notes:

What's on the GovNavigators' Radar:

Mar 4, 2026

  • Alliance for Digital Innovation’s Understanding OneGov: Discussions with GSA Leadership

Mar 5, 2026

  • The MUST ATTEND Driving Government Efficiency Summit

Mar 11, 2026 

  • Data Foundation event on Treasury’s Do Not Pay

Mar 19, 2026 

  • RSM Webinar: AI Governance and Responsible Adoption in Government 

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Episode 146: The Oracle of Identity: Jordan Burris on Industrialized Fraud and the Government’s Daytona Moment