Charles Worthington, top VA tech and AI official, departs agency

Source Domain: fedscoop.com

The architect of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ artificial intelligence program and digital modernization strategy is leaving the agency after nearly nine years.

Charles Worthington, the VA’s chief AI officer and CTO, said in a LinkedIn post Thursday that “the time is right” for him to step down from his posts.

“When I joined VA, the Office of the CTO didn’t exist, and the VA Digital Service team didn’t have an institutional home,” Worthington wrote. “Today, our 100+ engineers, designers, architects, and PMs have built something I’m immensely proud of, and I will be rooting for every one of them.”

A Harvard grad, Worthington joined the federal government in 2013 as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. He parlayed that experience into a role as senior advisor to the federal CTO, where he co-created the U.S. Digital Service following the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov.

After nearly three years with USDS, including as the White House tech office’s acting deputy administrator, Worthington moved on to the VA in 2017. In addition to leading the agency’s digital modernization work, he also supported its adoption of commercial cloud infrastructure, oversaw the creation of vets.gov, rebuilt va.gov and launched VA Notify, per a congressional bio and his LinkedIn profile.

In addition to boosting digital services for veterans, Worthington worked in recent years to spur AI adoption across the agency. Under his watch, the VA emerged as one of the most prolific AI users in the federal government, with an inventory that’s now 367 use cases strong. Included in that tally is the agency’s VA GPT chatbot.

“I’m pleased to report that all VA employees now have access to a secure, generative AI tool to assist them with their work,” Worthington told lawmakers on the House VA technology modernization subcommittee last September. “In surveys, users of this tool are reporting that it’s saving them over two…

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