Why government agility is (finally) having its moment

November 1, 2025

Anna Sever

For agencies, speed is the new measure of competence
During my time in the public sector and leading agency teams, I saw firsthand how fast priorities can shift. New mandates arrive with little warning. Regulations evolve overnight. Programs that took months to design suddenly need to be launched in weeks. The pace of government is reactive, relentless and shaped by public need. And while that urgency drives innovation, it also exposes how dependent progress is on the systems beneath it.

The challenge: policy change doesn’t wait
For most agencies, every policy shift sets off a chain reaction. Interpret the new rule, align stakeholders, adjust workflows, modernize reporting, retrain staff and communicate changes to the public. These aren’t small tasks. They’re logistical feats, often attempted within the confines of aging technology and rigid procurement cycles.

Speed to implementation is critical, yet it’s often throttled by the very infrastructure meant to support it. Outdated systems struggle to exchange data. Manual processes add weeks to what should take days. And with federal scrutiny high, agencies must balance urgency with accuracy while staying fully compliant while protecting against fraud.

This dynamic leaves even the most capable teams asking: how do we move faster without compromising integrity, security or public trust?

The solution: flexibility built for the federal pace
Our teams and federal clients see a clear pattern emerging. The most successful modernization efforts aren’t necessarily the largest or most expensive, they’re the ones designed for flexibility from the start. Across programs, our experts help agencies embed flexibility into their systems so that policy shifts become moments of adjustment, not disruption.

Rather than rebuilding entire infrastructures, agencies are finding ways to integrate new tools into existing frameworks, reducing complexity and security while improving responsiveness. It’s an approach that values progress over perfection.

Safeguarding integrity as speed increases
In the rush to deliver services faster and more responsively, agencies must still preserve the integrity of their systems. Theft of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, for example, continues to rise. In 2024, states had to replace more than $190 million in stolen benefits.

The problem is not simply how much is stolen, but how and why. In this case, fraudsters often exploit legacy systems (magnetic-stripe EBT cards, for example), cloned data, weak online authentication and slow responses.

By building fraud prevention into modernization from the outset, agencies can simultaneously accelerate deployment and reduce risk.

Instead of lengthy, one-size-fits-all modernization projects, we focus on configurable solutions that adapt to each agency’s mission. Whether it’s modernizing benefits eligibility, strengthening program oversight or improving data interoperability, these platforms streamline the path from policy to practice.

Experience at scale, precision in design
Conduent brings decades of experience supporting federal, state and local programs that touch the lives of millions. Our work spans eligibility and enrollment systems, payment processing, Medicaid and public health, and more.

That scale gives us an advantage: we understand the nuances of federal mandates, yet we approach each engagement with the specificity it deserves. Our technology combines enterprise-level resilience with agency-level customization, giving leaders the tools to respond to change without rebuilding from scratch.

Every new federal directive presents both a challenge and an opportunity: to deliver faster, smarter and with greater transparency. Conduent’s solutions help agencies bridge that gap, turning policy into performance one configurable module, one integration, one outcome at a time.

Learn more about how Conduent helps agencies accelerate speed to policy and modernize for impact at conduent.com/navigating-the-new-era-of-government-efficiency.