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Government Is Changing. Decision Intelligence Is How We Stay Ahead.

Steve Tolbert

November 12, 2025

Government Is Changing. Decision Intelligence Is How We Stay Ahead.-featured-image
In this article

    I’ve spent my career building and scaling mission-focused businesses in and around government. One constant I’ve observed year after year is that the rate of change in government planning and decision-making continues to accelerate.

    Just this year, Congress directed PPBE reforms in FY26 NDAA language and the President issued numerous executive orders demanding better, faster, more transparent decisions. Everywhere, leaders face relentless scrutiny, rising demands, and budgets that won’t grow to match. If agencies can’t show that every dollar spent best advances the mission, the consequences are real: delayed or reduced capabilities, higher lifetime costs, and eroded public trust.

    It is this challenge that brought me to Decision Lens. The company has been transforming government decision making for 20 years and today, when it is needed the most, we’re doubling down on delivering advanced decision intelligence that drives successful mission outcomes.

    Decision Intelligence: the operational upgrade government needs

    Decision Intelligence is the discipline of combining data, human expertise, artificial intelligence, and risk analysis into a traceable, repeatable practice. It turns fractured inputs into rapid, defensible action: realistic scenario runs, quantified trade-offs, and a solid rationale for every funding decision.

    This is not abstract. Consider the public examples: Congressional testimony highlights decades of cost growth in Navy shipbuilding, underscoring systemic decision and execution challenges; senior DoW leaders have warned that audit success requires breaking down stovepipes; and the Department of the Air Force has cautioned that delayed authorities and appropriations may leave readiness exposed. These are not isolated problems but are symptoms of systems that can’t convert data into accountable choices. Decision Intelligence is the mission-critical response.

    Investing in the future

    Changing how government makes critical decisions about investments requires focused capital, product rigor, and hands-on operational support. We’ve concentrated our investments in three areas that produce fast, defensible impact.

    Product Innovation

    We’re accelerating a government-grade, traceable decision workspace that produces material outcomes. Highlights we’re shipping now: open APIs and connectors to common financial and ERP systems for a single source of truth; scenario and optimization engines and a variety of hosting options across impact levels. To extend our lead, we’ve engaged a team of strategic advisors comprised of former agency senior executives, CIO’s, DoW flag officers, and top Silicon Valley technology innovators, each with decades of relevant experience, to drive our strategy for meaningful product innovation. With the guidance of this deep body of knowledge, we’ll be advancing AI features that responsibly extend the capabilities of the platform, accelerate improved decision making, and ensure investments are aligned to strategic and policy requirements.

    Enablement & Embedded Expertise

    Tools don’t change behavior—people and processes do. I’m proud to announce the introduction of our Customer Experience (CX) practice – led by Dr. Yasmeen Burns. Dr. Burns is a leading business transformation executive with over 20 years of experience driving large-scale customer and organizational change. Under her stewardship, Decision Lens is embedding experienced practitioners with agency teams, running tightly scoped pilots tied to measurable KPIs, producing outcome-based playbooks, and helping to orchestrate deliberate organizational change so analysts, program leads, and executives can begin leveraging decision intelligence to drive better Government investments.

    Decision Excellence: standards, frameworks, and measurement

    Sustained improvement requires shared standards. We’re partnering with subject matter experts, practitioner networks, and associations to codify best practices for criteria design, risk-adjusted prioritization, and decision maturity. By defining “what good looks like” and embedding it into tools and training, agencies gain repeatability that is resilient even through leadership transitions. This effort will lead to a revolution in decision-making that will mature organizations and eliminate the false trade-off that quick decisions must sacrifice rigor.

    Decision Lens’ Unique Approach

    There are dashboards, optimization vendors, and consultants that hand off slide decks. Decision Lens is different by purpose and practice:

    • Platform + Practice: Secure, enterprise-grade technology coupled with embedded operational support and acceleration services.
    • Government-first architecture: FedRAMP authorization, IL6 compliance, .gov/.mil/AWS GovCloud support, and open APIs built in, not bolted on.
    • Scale without friction: No seat-based licensing removes a major barrier to broad access across enterprises.
    • No black box: Scenarios are vetted and explained before human review to ensure organizations always understand the “why”.

    Put simply: where alternatives create outputs, we create an intelligence layer running throughout to deliver the outcomes that agencies can operate, sustain, and defend – and if needed, quickly re-prioritize to reflect inevitable changes in key program variables.

    Impact & Success Metrics

    We measure ourselves the way our customers do: real dollars, repeatable cycles, time-to-value, and defensible decisions.

    • Pilot ROI: measurable improvements in 6-10 weeks—reallocations within a single budget cycle.
    • Analyst productivity: significant reductions in manual prep so analysts spend time on strategy.
    • Audit readiness: automated rationale capture and briefings that hold up under congressional and IG review.
    • Adoption at scale: broadened access across teams without per-user costs.
    • Institutional change: durable process adoption in months; a new default for mission decisions in the next couple of years.

    Those metrics turn early wins into capability—and capability into institutional trust.

    Decision Lens is Accountable

    This is more than a roadmap: it’s a leadership commitment. We have strategic backing, deep public-sector experience, and a team ready to embed with agency leaders in the field. Decision Lens commits to material results: we will prove Decision Intelligence with measurable wins in operational pilots within weeks, demonstrate durable institutional change in months, and help make mission-first, defensible decisions the default across agencies in less than three years.

    If you carry the burden of defending trade-offs, invite us in. Let us embed with your team, demonstrate rapid, verifiable results, and together change how government spends every dollar.

    Government is changing. The demands will not wait. Decision Intelligence is how we keep up, and Decision Lens is ready to help you lead.

    Together, we have a lot of important work to do.

     

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