The U.S. federal government currently operates 7,000 public-facing websites. The number of software licenses it owns remains unknown, but likely runs into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The 24 major government agencies each run their own IT operations, each of which employs thousands (or even tens of thousands) of technical staff, resulting in a maze of 24 mini-fiefdoms that makes visibility into how critical information is stored, used, and shared essentially impossible.

With the AI revolution booming in SF, few in tech would knowingly and willingly step into a world so defined by chaos and bloat as the DC bureaucracy. But for Gregory Barbaccia, who was appointed Federal Chief Information Officer (FCIO) by President Trump in January, the role represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create change that can reverberate across the government and into the lives of millions.

For Barbaccia, who spent a decade building key internal processes while head of investigations and internal security at Palantir, the opportunity to transform the government’s digital systems is rooted in the administration’s mission of identifying and weeding out decades of waste and fraud — one reason he keeps an empty chair at the round table in his office with a placard that reads “Taxpayer” yards from a Halloween-style skeleton perched in an anteroom Barbaccia calls the “Lobbyist Waiting Room.”