Priority 01
Build permanent multidisciplinary teams, modern talent systems, and leaders with the authority to own outcomes and continuously improve services.
The case
Government cannot own outcomes if it rents all of its ability to understand and change the systems that produce them. Capable vendors and outside partners can help, but public institutions need enough permanent expertise to set direction, make trade-offs, evaluate performance, and keep learning.
Permanent delivery capacity is broader than hiring more technologists. It means rebuilding the systems that recruit, develop, organize, support, and retain public servants, while giving multidisciplinary teams and operational leaders the authority to own services, release frequently, measure outcomes, and improve continuously.
What the agenda asks
Create permanent product, engineering, design, data, operations, and policy teams that can understand services end to end and remain accountable for their outcomes.
Treat classification, recruiting, assessment, onboarding, performance, and retention as connected operating systems that can be measured and improved.
Organize funding, decision rights, measurement, and leadership around teams that can release frequently, learn from results, and keep improving after the initial intervention ends.
Across the field
This is a curated view of active work that advances the priority, not a claim that every organization shown has endorsed the full Agenda.
Research and policy development
Niskanen and NAPA have assembled comparable evidence on how states hire, classify, pay, evaluate, and discipline their workforces. Niskanen is extending that base into an ongoing personnel reform program, analysis, and model legislation.
Human-resources practices benchmarked across all 50 states
Operating and scaling
Work for America connects mission-driven candidates to state and local roles through Civic Match while helping government HR and operations teams improve the hiring machinery itself through its Talent Accelerator and practical tools.
Working with more than 280 state and local governments
Launching
The People Lab’s Public Servant Project is building shared evidence about public workers through an annual state and local workforce survey, research on public perceptions, and a developing hub for what works in government workforce policy.
The first national validated annual survey of state and local public servants
Operating
Tech Talent Project is connecting proven technology leaders to public roles and preparing them to succeed through state-transition support, Tech to Gov, and its Tech Executive Leadership Initiative.
More than 200 technical leaders matched across 30-plus states
What could happen next
These are possible next moves, not promises. Each one names what it could unlock and what is still needed to move it forward.
Scoping
Explore a shared, modular service layer that states could adopt around unemployment insurance, reducing repeated procurement and making it easier to improve the claimant experience without replacing every underlying system at once.
What would help
Find states and delivery partners willing to scope a first shared kernel. Explore this opportunityExploring
Explore whether congressional committees could pair embedded technical practitioners with serious model access and wraparound support to expand committee capacity and give staff firsthand experience of what AI makes possible.
What would help
Bring together committee leaders, technical practitioners, and support organizations to design a first placement. Explore this opportunityHelp move this priority
The Workbench will provide a way to suggest work, correct a description, or help shape an opportunity. Recoding America will keep the public view selective and coherent.
Help shape the Agenda