Blog

Field notes from the back office.

Long-form writing on AI, government, FCA practice, procurement, and what we learn watching backlog graphs go down. Written by people doing the work, not a content team.

Featured

The post we keep being asked about.

Essay

The case for boring AI in government

Frontier model demos make great press. Public-sector decisions need predictable, observable, replayable systems. Here's what we mean by "boring," why it costs more to build, and why agencies should refuse to settle for less.

By Maya Okonkwo · 14 min · April 2026

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Latest

Recent writing.

Essay

Why "hire more caseworkers" doesn't scale

The arithmetic of state and federal hiring vs. citizen demand.

M. Okonkwo · Apr 2026

Field note

Nine weeks in Vermont

What the disability backlog clearance actually felt like, day by day.

P. Nair · Mar 2026

Counsel

FCA in the age of AI document review

What changes for relator firms, for the DOJ, and for defendants.

D. Reyes · Mar 2026

Engineering

Replayable agents

Why we made every model call deterministically replayable, and what it cost.

P. Nair · Feb 2026

Procurement

Writing an RFP that won't disqualify modern AI

Six clauses every state RFP gets wrong.

M. Okonkwo · Feb 2026

Counsel

Defensibility in administrative court

The audit trail bar and how to clear it.

D. Reyes · Jan 2026

By topic

Browse the archive.

AI policyAdjudicationDisabilityPermitsFOIAMedicaidUIFCAQui tamDocument AISecurityFedRAMPStateRAMPProcurementEngineeringForward deploymentCivil serviceOutcomes
Series

Multi-part deep dives.

Inside one workflow (10 parts)

End-to-end series on disability initial determinations, from form to decision letter.

Building FedRAMP from zero (6 parts)

The org-chart, control-by-control reality of authorization.

Replay engineering (4 parts)

How we made agents observable, replayable, and diffable.

The FCA practice in 2026 (5 parts)

How AI document review reshapes economics for plaintiff firms.

Authors

The bylines you'll see.

Maya Okonkwo

CEO. Writes about the agency-side of GovTech.

Daniel Reyes

President & GC. Writes about FCA, defensibility, ethics.

Priya Nair

CTO. Writes about engineering, document AI, agents.

Aiden Park

Head of Federal. Writes about procurement & capture.

Lina Faraj

Forward Deployed. Field notes from agencies.

Guest contributors

State CIOs, IGs, and counsel. Edited but not sanitized.

Most read

Top of the year.

1 — The 95/5 Rule

The post that named the framework most agencies now use.

2 — How to clear a backlog

An eight-step playbook with the metrics that matter.

3 — Why per-seat AI pricing fails in gov

And what to demand instead.

Newsletter

The monthly digest.

You're in. First issue ships next Tuesday.
Editorial

What we won't publish.

SEO sludge

If a post is for the algorithm and not the reader, we kill it.

Vendor swipes

We compare on substance. Never with snide.

Customer leaks

No customer is named without explicit permission.

Got a guest post in you?

If you're a civil servant, IG, or counsel with something to say, we'd love to publish it.

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