The Trump administration, as part of its strategy on artificial intelligence, has spent a considerable amount of time identifying jobs that become obsolete with the rise of automation. As part of that effort, agencies have also looked at predicting what new career paths automation might create in the years ahead. But now some officials say fear over automation-related job security might have gone too far. Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent, who has overseen some of the administration's reskilling pilots, like the Federal Cyber Reskilling Academy, said some of these anxieties about automation aren't new. "This is not a story that we haven't heard before in our nation: Something comes along that radically changes the way that we work, the way that we live, and creating fear about that is not the best path forward," Kent said during a panel hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center on Wednesday.

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Agencies have gotten buy-in from their employees when it comes to automating rote tasks liked data entry. But it's a tougher sell to those employees -- and the public -- to trust artificial intelligence tools for data-driven decision-making. Some agencies, including the General Services Administration, IRS and Defense Logistics Agency expect to save tens of thousands of work hours through robotic process automation-powered bots for back-office functions. There's also room for automation grow, according to research from the Partnership for Public Service and IBM's Center for the Business of Government.