The Buzz with ACT-IAC
The Buzz with ACT-IAC
2025: Year in Review
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This episode reviews the standout moments in government innovation and leadership from 2025. Key themes include the humanization of technology, the evolution of government contact centers, reimagined leadership in a hybrid world, the integration of AI in procurement, and the future of value creation through digital networks. Discussions highlight the importance of mission-first thinking, leveraging human-first design, embracing networks, and investing in emerging talent.
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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound
(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)
Yohanna: [00:00:00] Welcome to our end of year 2025. Highlights. Over the past year, new tools, new thinking, and new collaborations have challenged how government delivers mission serves citizens, and evolves its workforce. We're pulling together standout moments from the buzz to reflect on what shaped the year. And look ahead to what comes next.
Yohanna: First up, we dive into a conversation where the human element of technology became front and center.
The Human Element in Tech and Mission with CIO, DOC Brian Epley– May 21, 2025: You said it in the opener about everything's gonna be humanized. I'm glad to hear that because I said it all the time. You have to be human first. And so you're talking about the professional journey. Uh, but the human aspect of it is the community that I, I've thrive in.
The Human Element in Tech and Mission with CIO, DOC Brian Epley– May 21, 2025: Um, and, and the, the challenge and the opportunity is the same coin. It's just how you're [00:01:00] looking at this. Um, and I think you have to embrace not only, uh, the people, but the ideas they've been there, whether it's a year or a decade. They have insight in terms of what the challenges are and where they can go, uh, as a leader, um, we have to focus on and give vision to that.
The Human Element in Tech and Mission with CIO, DOC Brian Epley– May 21, 2025: We have to convey that vision to not only the workforce but our stakeholders. So they fully understand what you're doing. Where are we focused? What's our true north? By doing that, then you can empower the workforce to accomplish those outcomes. And, and then obviously any leader's gonna have traditional performance management, uh, to, to track those metrics to ensure that we're.
The Human Element in Tech and Mission with CIO, DOC Brian Epley– May 21, 2025: For making progress to plan course correct. Where appropriate. Um, but I think that that plan, that overarching approach is how you embrace the workforce. You embrace the challenges, you turn those into opportunities. You put the workforce out front, you get behind them, you support them, give them what they need to accomplish the vision that you set forth.[00:02:00]
Yohanna: From the human side, we moved to the service side. How contact centers are evolving in government,
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: I've known for years, decades actually, the amount of money that the government spends on contact centers. And nobody's been paying attention to contact centers and, and the importance of it to the delivery of services, including digital services.
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: And you can't have an omnichannel experience. Without contact centers and, and really they're, they're so fragmented within agencies, so there was nothing in the DC area that dealt with contact centers related to government. Everything was in Nashville or Las Vegas. So I wanted to do something to bring con government, contact center leaders and industry partners together so that they could start.
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: Learning from each other, networking, sharing. And so that's what today's about.
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: So, um, how do we accelerate our customers to done and, and having that omnichannel, um, offering is what I think most [00:03:00] of our customers aspire to get to. Right? Having more than just phone, having more than just email. But chat, but also social media.
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: Yes. I haven't heard that much today about social media being, um, an option, but when we're talking about sentiment, you know, one of the features that as we've developed this agentic layer right, with our agents, um, it is the ability not just for managers to be able to listen into a call, but to actually train the agents to listen for certain tone.
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: Certain key words and I was just talking to someone about a crisis hotline. Mm-hmm. Um, and being able to pick on the, pick up on those, those things and be able to flag that to, um, a supervisor or a manager in real time. Wow. That they need to pick up immediately. That's not something you have to wait on.
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: Right. That's something that can happen in real time, and I think that's an amazing, uh, feature and capability that's coming to you live in the June summer timeframe. Okay? Right. It'll have it sneak preview, fed [00:04:00] ramp. It'll have its fed ramp approval around that time. And so that's the, that's what we are encouraging customers right now to get into a proof of concept.
“Live at the 2025 Contact Center Annual Summit” – May 28, 2025: Test it out.
“Exploring the Integrated Value Network” – July 3, 2025: Just do it right. Just do it. We heard that.
Yohanna: Next, we highlight how collaboration and leadership are being reimagined in 2020 five's. Hybrid world
“Leadership and Collaboration Strategies in a Hybrid World” – Sept 4, 2025: leadership really is, is understanding how you can create relationships, uh, to get to outcomes, right? Whatever the outcome is that your organization is working towards.
“Leadership and Collaboration Strategies in a Hybrid World” – Sept 4, 2025: Um, so in these, in this program, as long as you have the humility. To not believe that you know everything, to listen and to really truly gain those experiences, um, uh, to, to, to live into those experiences. Uh, then, then, then that's when you're really gonna benefit greatly from this, the program like Voyager.
“Leadership and Collaboration Strategies in a Hybrid World” – Sept 4, 2025: So having that situational awareness and, and the skills to [00:05:00] manage or lead a team that you may or may not have picked yourself, right, because you'd be. Don't get green fields to play with all the time. You walk into organizations by accepting a job and you have a team of 20 people and you're like, yeah, I wouldn't have hired those five people, or These are five superstars.
“Leadership and Collaboration Strategies in a Hybrid World” – Sept 4, 2025: You don't know what the makeup of the team is, but you can only go to war with the Army you have. Right? So Voyager helps you navigate some of those things. And then Partners is more of folks that are already in well established leadership PO positions, but. Either they're going from a senior management role into an executive role, or they're already have their one foot through it.
“Leadership and Collaboration Strategies in a Hybrid World” – Sept 4, 2025: So how do you now transition from a, a management role into having an executive presence in, you know, somewhat navigating the politics of an organization? To me, partners did provide me a good understanding of, you know, how, how to navigate some of those high level challenges [00:06:00] and. I had some solid takeaways.
“Leadership and Collaboration Strategies in a Hybrid World” – Sept 4, 2025: In terms of how I can manage different personalities at work
Yohanna: and now to the bold frontier, how AI is reshaping acquisition in government.
“ICYMI: AI Revolution in the Acquisition Life Cycle” – Oct 9, 2025: Um, and I wanna make sure that the workforce that I'm working with, I'm particular to the, um, procurement world, that they know what that is, because sooner or later, if it hasn't happened already. You're gonna, a package is gonna hit somebody's desk or inbox to say, you are, you are going to procure some AI something.
“ICYMI: AI Revolution in the Acquisition Life Cycle” – Oct 9, 2025: Um, what does that, I don't want that person to, when it hits their inbox to say, what does this mean? It's too late at that point. Um, I've always said, and I strongly believe, if you don't know what it is, you do not know how to procure it Well. And so I wanna make sure that the workforce, particularly the procurement workforce, understands the, [00:07:00] um, complexity, the nuances, um, and the many, many benefits as well as the risks associated with buying all types of the flavors of AI that are out there.
“ICYMI: AI Revolution in the Acquisition Life Cycle” – Oct 9, 2025: Um, part of that is something that Wole mentioned, um, is keeping the human in the loop. When I've heard of, um, there are agencies that are using procurement tools that ha, that are AI driven, um, that are helping craft statements of work, helping craft, you know, sues, et cetera. Um, making sure that, that there's, when something is generated, that there is someone actually reviewing it and, and, and understanding what is it putting out there?
“ICYMI: AI Revolution in the Acquisition Life Cycle” – Oct 9, 2025: If it's a solicitation, is it putting out proper? Is it actually creating proper. Um, the proper information.
Yohanna: Um, I'll stop there. Halfway through our year in review, what stands out so far is the speed of change and the need for mission First thinking as the technology evolves, [00:08:00] stay with us as we dig into platforms, networks, and partnerships that are defining government tech.
Yohanna: In 2025, here's a view into the future of value creation through digital networks.
“Exploring the Integrated Value Network” – July 3, 2025: I see it as Keanu Reeves at the end of the first Matrix film. But instead of standing in a business building and seeing a bunch of agents, uh, I walk around the US Capitol and I just see all this green code of federal requirements moving back and forth. We found a way to use program integration as a means to innovate.
“Exploring the Integrated Value Network” – July 3, 2025: New priorities and laws like the Evidence Act are driving us into a new era where integration itself is the innovation. Like for example, AI is powerful. It's getting more powerful every moment, but without the [00:09:00] integration across the governance documents about without seeing the map, it's just going to guess.
“Exploring the Integrated Value Network” – July 3, 2025: And I would like to give the AI the map of our federal governance structure. Before it writes the structure for us, you know, I like, there's, there's this rise of structured causal data models like IVN and, and with those we can train AI on the ground truth of what our structure really is so that it can understand why things matter.
“Exploring the Integrated Value Network” – July 3, 2025: And not just make inferences based on the org chart and the law. And, and I think that's gonna redefine decision making in public service. And I think it'll also, uh. Create a role for AI that is easier for us to trust instead of telling us what to do to validate what we're doing, find the supporting evidence that's in fact in the law, that would guide the decisions and you know, maybe form some interesting [00:10:00] questions like the ones that we're asking each other today so that we have.
“Exploring the Integrated Value Network” – July 3, 2025: A broader vision. We have a bigger picture, we have a more reliable map of what we're working on so we can make smarter program choices.
Yohanna: Next up, innovation on the ground Live at one of our major emerging tech conferences.
“Live at Emerging Tech Demo Day: Insights from Next Phase Solutions” – July 10, 2025: While it's not trivial to build the technology components of AI to produce some answers. It's still not as difficult as giving really, really good answers. And so we're here demonstrating that, uh, today for what's called a rag pipeline. And so this is the large language model chat bot type of application that's able to inject specific business knowledge that that LLM was never trained on to provide more detailed and specific answers.
“Live at Emerging Tech Demo Day: Insights from Next Phase Solutions” – July 10, 2025: And again, it's not the technology. Components [00:11:00] necessary that we wove together to produce that rag pipeline. That's interesting. It's all the interstitial knowledge it's taken to provide good answers when you do that, because you don't get those out of the box.
Yohanna: And to wrap this episode, a final reflection on leadership development and emerging leaders.
“Voyager Voices: Stories of Growth and Impact” – May 14, 2025: You know, if you don't play, you don't win, right? So you just, you always have to go through things that. Uh, make you uncomfortable. That's the way that we all evolve and change, right? If you're in a comfort, you know, in a comfort zone, you're there and never will move out of it. But sometimes you just gotta get uncomfortable and do things that scare you a little bit.
“Voyager Voices: Stories of Growth and Impact” – May 14, 2025: You know, just try everything. There is no right or wrong answer here, you know? It is, it is. Just try to do it. Um, put the best foot forward, be honest. And, and
Yohanna: in 2025, the themes were clear. Adopt mission, [00:12:00] leverage human first design, embrace networks, and invest in emerging talent. Thank you so much for joining this recap of the buzz.
Yohanna: Tune in next year as we continue to explore how government and industry move together toward impact.