We’re in a critical moment for the future of government. Amidst ongoing cost-cutting efforts from the federal government — efforts that are resulting in a decline in state budgets — it’s never been more important for government agencies at every level to operate effectively with fewer resources. In 2025, effective and efficient government operations in budget-constrained environments are functionally impossible without technology.
As governments at the local, state, and federal level invest in software, there is one defining characteristic that separates good technology investments from the wasteful — how well it directly supports public servants delivering services.
Emergency management agencies deliver services by responding to natural disasters; local health and human services departments by helping people recover from opioid addiction; departments of community affairs by helping people experiencing homelessness find stable housing; police departments by responding to emergencies; economic development agencies by spurring job growth.
Critically, no department does it alone. Government work is inherently collaborative — police departments work with fire departments, homelessness coordinators work with public health departments, local election officials work with their state and federal counterparts.
Technology that fundamentally improves how cross-functional groups of public servants work together to solve a problem is non-negotiable.
Deploying technology to empower the public sector’s frontline employees to better work for the communities they serve is the central principle underpinning Civic Roundtable’s government operations platform.
But we also know the current suite of software tools that are supposed to help public servants are failing them. When we started building Roundtable, we talked to hundreds of public servants who shared similar challenges over and over again: “Information is scattered across dozens of websites and chat apps and email and listservs and document repositories. It takes me forever to find the people or information who can answer my questions. It shouldn’t be this hard.”
Nearly every person with a smartphone is used to searching — on Google, in their email, and in most modern consumer software. But on the federal website that collates grant opportunities, search functionality is in beta — in 2025. It’s one of countless examples of how far behind most government technology is.
Roundtable’s government operations platform is designed to make government employees more efficient and effective to better serve their communities. It’s the next step — from 1) manual processes that were woefully inefficient to 2) off-the-shelf tools and government-built software that can’t effectively do what public servants need, to 3) Roundtable.
Let’s look at a few examples of how Roundtable makes government work faster, more accurate, and more effective:
