What It Means to Become a Frontier Agency

Описание: Carmen Krueger, Corporate Vice President, US Federal at Microsoft, defines a “frontier agency” as one that drives productivity and innovation at the same time. Rather than treating innovation as a future initiative or a special project, she describes frontier agencies as organizations that build innovation into day-to-day work so improvements happen continuously and at speed. She also emphasizes that agility matters more than ever, because the pace of technology change is accelerating far beyond what agencies were dealing with even a few years ago.

A key point in the discussion is that agencies need clear ways to measure progress toward becoming a frontier organization. Carmen explains that government doesn’t use private-sector markers like profitability to define success. Instead, she points to productivity measures such as time saved by employees, increases in accuracy, improvements in quality of work, faster processing times, and better delivery of benefits and services to citizens. She also frames frontier progress as a broader national advantage: when federal agencies become more capable and more effective, the benefits extend to the citizens and communities they serve, as well as warfighters and federal personnel who depend on mission execution.

Carmen also outlines several foundational principles that separate effective innovation from innovation that becomes a distraction. She explains that AI should be used to augment human decision-making rather than replace it, allowing employees to work with more insight and confidence. She warns against “random acts of innovation,” where organizations chase new technologies without connecting them to mission needs, and she stresses that innovation must be tied to measurable mission impact in order to build trust and sustain momentum.

Another theme is process modernization. Carmen argues that many current workflows were built when modern AI capabilities didn’t exist, and agencies will limit results if they simply bolt AI onto outdated processes. Instead, she recommends reshaping business processes around what is now possible, with the goal of shortening cycle times and freeing employees from lower-value tasks so they can focus on higher-impact work.

The conversation closes with examples of measurable outcomes from early adoption. Carmen shares that one large agency’s Copilot pilot produced a 74% improvement in quality of work, a 75% productivity boost, and up to two hours saved per week for many employees. She also highlights an agency effort to process legal, contractual, and financial documents that was expected to take years but was completed in weeks. In another modernization example, developers using GitHub Copilot reported a 25% to 50% reduction in coding time when upgrading legacy systems, demonstrating how AI can accelerate one of government’s most persistent challenges: application modernization at scale.