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RESEARCH REPORT

A federal leader’s guide to reinvention

Delivering value faster for America

10-minute read

January 3, 2025

In brief

  • Federal agencies face an urgent need to achieve results with speed and certainty.

  • By adopting five imperatives of leading commercial organizations, federal leaders can reinvent how they work for the American public.

  • AI simulations show new ways to reinvent public resource allocation for effective results, based on economic modeling and federal budget analysis.

The power of reinvention

For leaders of US federal agencies, a pivotal moment has arrived.

The availability of new technologies, heightened demands for performance, and the need to achieve results with speed and certainty is accelerating at a breathtaking pace.

In this evolving government landscape, federal leaders must pursue agility, efficiency, and effectiveness to unprecedented levels in all they do.

Doing so requires embracing a strategy of continuous reinvention. Like their commercial counterparts, these leaders recognize that reinvention is not a destination but is, instead, a dynamic process that prompts regular reexamination of what is working and why, and quick pivots to achieve success.

By adopting the reinvention imperatives of leading commercial organizations and empowering the workforce around it, federal agencies will more readily adapt to change, deliver results faster, and fundamentally reinvent how government serves America.

The urgency to act

In the commercial sector, relentless competition has pushed private sector organizations to achieve ever-higher standards of innovation, service quality, and efficiency. This urgency has intensified in recent years. Between 2017 to 2022, disruptions—economic, social, geopolitical, climate, consumer, and technological—increased by 200%. Leading businesses have responded quickly by deploying new technologies to reinvent all corners of their organizations and drive greater outcomes for their customers, shareholders, and employees.

While federal agencies have made strides to modernize, this moment is different. The stakes are higher. And the American public wants to see the impact of change faster and more efficiently.

Activating reinvention

Reinvention is an equally vital strategy for the public and private sector. Federal leaders are eager to reinvent and embrace new ways of working. They know that investing in technology, and in particular data, AI, and automation are the key to doing this. But many lack the resources to do it, the comfort with taking necessary risks, the cultural momentum to embrace change, or the velocity to achieve it.

This guidance for federal leaders is based on our research and experience in helping commercial organizations reinvent and adapt those proven practices for federal organizations as well as recent AI-based simulations incorporating economic modeling and statistical analysis of federal budgets. By mobilizing around five imperatives, federal leaders will deliver a transformational return on that investment.

Federal reinvention imperatives

Five essential strategies for delivering next-level performance and mission success

Define measurable outcomes, embed reinvention imperatives, trace productivity gains, and incentivize technology investments to drive efficiencies and cost-savings.

Invest in robust data infrastructure, experiment with AI across the enterprise, become an early adopter of agentic AI, and increase the speed of digitizing processes.

Communicate a clear vision for change, engage employees, baseline skills ready for reskilling to embrace AI, prioritize critical roles, incentivize continuous learning, and take advantage of personalized AI-driven learning tools.

Increase automation capabilities, unlock process efficiencies, reduce IT sprawl and inefficiencies, seize the opportunity to evolve (or delete) dated policies and processes, and accelerate migration from mainframe to modern technology stacks.

Make space for piloting and experimentation, track and measure value and speed the process with Gen AI, increase risk tolerance, and cultivate an innovative culture.

Accelerating action

Across the U.S. government today, federal leaders are shaping a bold future with AI and guiding their organizations and workforce to achieve it.

Guided by these five imperatives, federal leaders can accelerate change and deliver greater value for their mission and the American people, whose security and well-being depend on its success.