Coordination that works: Lessons from our government operations Roundtable

Last month, we were delighted to convene state and local officials from across the country for a virtual conversation about what works in state and local coordination — it was a candid, closed door convening for public servants and partners to trade notes on their experiences, challenges, and solutions. 

Leaders joined from different states and sectors — elections, homelessness, public health, veterans services, emergency management, and more — with one shared goal: learn from each other’s day-to-day reality of managing their mission across a complex network of state and local agencies. 

At Civic Roundtable, our mission is straightforward: build technology that helps people in government engage the right people and partners, unlock and preserve institutional knowledge, and securely collaborate  and communicate. Thousands of conversations with public servants continue to shape what we build, because the best government technology is grounded in the lived experience of the people doing the work. 

A practical framework: Five functions of government operations

We grounded our conversation in a simple framework drawn from our deployments that we call the Five Functions of Government Operations. It’s become a useful model for our partners because it helps teams name where work tends to break down — and where investment will have the biggest payoff.

1. Planning: identifying the right partners and building a clear strategy
2. Communicating: reaching stakeholders where they are, consistently
3. Coordinating: bridging silos to execute the plan in the field
4. Organizing: Capturing all institutional knowledge and context to surface answers faster
5. Measuring: Understanding what’s working, then improving going forward

This framework is meant to help teams recognize themselves in the work and to translate lessons across very different missions. Roundtable’s platform powers all five functions of government operations, giving agencies and ecosystems shared infrastructure that makes coordination easier, faster, and more resilient.

Case studies: State and local coordination in action

Across three very different public sector challenges we shared with the group, a common pattern emerged: coordination breaks down not from lack of effort, but from operational friction—updates stuck in inboxes, institutional knowledge held by a few staff members, and partners who can only connect during scheduled meetings (if they’re actually able to attend at all). 

In Arizona, extreme heat response required transforming a governor-launched task force into a living coordination hub where alerts could reach frontlines quickly and guidance could flow between meetings. In New York, the State Board of Elections tackled turnover at the county level with a single trusted space that replaced answers scattered across email threads with a dynamic resource repository and real-time Q&A. In New Jersey, Essex County's homelessness response took a transformationally proactive approach to the "weak link effect" wherein systems are only as effective as their least-supported partner by connecting and empowering nearly 100 historically siloed service providers across the county. In each case, their solutions centered on creating shared digital infrastructure that enables real-time coordination, reduces the hunt for information, and gives leaders visibility into where support is needed most.

What we heard in the room: Anonymized insights

Across breakouts, a few themes came up again and again:

• Institutional memory is fragile. When information lives across inboxes and in people’s heads, new staff are forced to piece together years of context on the fly.
  
• Some days can feel like running a marathon uphill without water stations or a course map. That’s not a personal failure, it’s a systems challenge — and systems can be improved.
  
• The challenge isn’t motivation, it’s operational friction. Collaboration works best when there are easy ways for partners to engage and work together

At Roundtable, we know conversations like these matter because we’ve been part of so many with our partners in the trenches of elections, homelessness, public health, veterans services, emergency management, and beyond. And when practitioners realize teams in other states and sectors have the same points of friction, it becomes easier to imagine what “better” can look like — and know that it is within reach.

Looking ahead to 2026

This Roundtable was one conversation, but it’s part of a bigger commitment: creating spaces where public servants can speak candidly, learn quickly, and bring practical ideas back to their teams. In 2026, we’re excited to host more of these convenings and to continue building our product alongside the people closest to the work. If you joined us, thank you for showing up for each other. And if you’re navigating coordination challenges in your own ecosystem, we’d love to learn from you — and keep the conversation going.

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