5 Ways AI Can Help Navigate Administration Transition
New administrations bring a flurry of activity and change across the government, especially within the first 30 days. Executive orders (EOs) shift federal priorities and alter programs. Transition teams review strategy, policy, and program documents. Incoming leaders and their staff must swiftly absorb critical information and act on synopsized information and new directives. Agency staff work furiously to support new leadership and directional changes, combing through thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of documents to realign and adjust agency policy and priority.
For the first time, agencies have a new tool to deal with the avalanche of work brought by the transition to a new administration. AI and large language models (LLMs) can pore over vast libraries and retrieve pertinent documents and language. Then, generative AI (GenAI) can synopsize tome-like documents and entire corpora in seconds. By properly leveraging this powerful tool, agencies and their staff are more equipped than ever to deal with textual information accurately and efficiently and to respond to the challenges at hand.
The Challenge
New administrations always bring about change, but the last several administrations have dramatically increased the number of policy pivots and new directions set within the first months of a new presidential term.
In his first 30 days in office, Barack Obama issued 16 EOs. Donald Trump issued 12 in his first month. And Joe Biden issued a whopping 22 EOs in the 30 days after inauguration. By comparison, George W. Bush issued just 2 new EOs in his first 30 days as president.
The incoming Trump Administration is moving at an accelerated pace, with Cabinet appointments coming five times faster than the average president-elect. Trump has promised sweeping changes, including policy reversals, deep budget cuts, significant restructuring, and the elimination of staff and programs. Agencies across the federal landscape will face unprecedented demand to summarize policies, present value, and make difficult decisions to preserve critical programs.
Indicators that the Trump Administration will move at an unprecedented pace and make unprecedented changes:
Additionally, the incoming administration is prepared and poised to hit the ground running, leveraging lessons learned from the first term to implement policy quickly and efficiently.
Agencies can prepare for the accelerated transition and torrent of activity by focusing on improvements to address critical transition activities:
- Policy summaries. Agencies will need to create clear, succinct synopses of large document libraries, complex programs, and complicated policies. Summary activities equip incoming staff and appointees with the information they will use to make decisions on cuts, changes, and restructuring. Ensuring summaries contain accurate, prioritized information and context is critical for informed decision-making and effective implementation.
- Reports and metrics. Agencies will need to present the case for maintaining critical programs, measured in terms of efficiency and value. Creating understanding and concise reports that are supported by data and impact assessment will be crucial in deciding what stays and what goes.
- Responding to policy questions quickly. Incoming leaders will be motivated to demonstrate value quickly. The Trump Administration has already set the tone for rapid and decisive action, suggesting that there will be a flurry of EOs on day one. Appointees will be equally aggressive in making changes. To ensure incoming staff and leadership are equipped with the right information, policy inquiries must be met with near-instant responses that are accurate and impactful.
- Rapid policy assessment. As the Trump Administration shifts and reverses policy, agencies must be prepared to quickly assess impacts, retrieve affected documents, and make updates to align with new directives. Searching across vast document libraries is among the most time-consuming activities, but searches must be thorough and thoughtful to ensure the best policy outcomes.
In the face of such unprecedent change at such an accelerated pace, agencies must prepare by leveraging the most modern tools at their disposal: LLMs and GenAI.
5 Ways LIGER™ Can Help with Administration Transition
LMI has already begun leveraging LIGER™ for critical policy work with customers. Our initial five critical use cases reflect some of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks in policy:
- Assess Executive Orders and Directives
In the face of rapid policy changes, agencies need to act swiftly to assess the impact of EOs as they are issued. LIGER™ accelerates this process by providing quick, accurate analysis and identifying key adjustments and emerging priorities. It ensures the timely distribution of concise briefs, highlights the interconnections between policies, and supports better coordination, allowing teams to adapt faster to evolving directives. LIGER™ ensures rapid understanding of changes, accelerates response times, and supports better decision-making, keeping teams aligned with evolving administration directives. - Identify Documents and Content to Change
With LIGER™, organizations can efficiently search extensive document collections to pinpoint content that needs to be updated to comply with new administration directives. It simplifies change summarization and accelerates retrieval of affected policies, aligning programs to new orders more quickly. By assessing critical topics and retrieving essential documents for discussion and updates, LIGER™ dramatically reduces review times, accelerates policy alignment, and optimizes resource use, ensuring organizations stay agile and responsive to evolving directives. - Summarize Large Document Libraries
LIGER™ summarizes large libraries for incoming leaders, letting organizations seamlessly support transition activities by creating synopses of critical information from vast document collections. It rapidly distills hundreds of thousands of pages into essential insights, enabling incoming leaders and staff to fully understand and assess large volumes of information for informed decision-making. By instantly tailoring summaries to specific audience needs and incorporating stakeholder inputs, LIGER™ ensures comprehensive understanding and streamlined access to critical data for leadership transitions. - Produce Reports & Synopses
With LIGER™, organizations harness GenAI to produce memos, reports, and synopses that are clear, consistent, and easy to digest. It ensures critical program information and institutional knowledge are preserved during staff transitions, supporting seamless onboarding for new appointees. LIGER™ delivers well-structured, concise communications and reports, dramatically reducing time-to-value for transition activities while promoting interagency coordination with accurate, digestible insights. - Answer Policy & Program-Related Questions
Being capable of supporting rapid and decisive action is a baseline requirement in this day and age. Organizations can deliver near-instant responses to specific policy questions with LIGER™ acting as a reliable help desk for new appointees and incoming staff. By providing AI-enabled support, it ensures accuracy and speed during transitions, equipping teams to address interagency questions about changes and interdependencies efficiently. LIGER™ enhances understanding for incoming leadership and staff, enabling them to navigate policies, procedures, and programs with clarity and confidence.
LIGER™ – The New Speed of Possible™
Milasy Mugnolo
Vice President, Policy Analysis & OperationsMilasy Mugnolo leads the policy analysis and operations subservice line, providing policy and operations expertise and analytics solutions to support policy transformation, program integrity, regulatory compliance, and improved outcomes.
Justin O'Neill
Practice Area Lead, PolicyJustin leads the policy practice area for LMI's Policy Analysis & Operations subservice line, developing technology-integrated policy capabilities, including AI-enabled policy analysis platforms, and supporting customers with policy lifecycle transformation.
Harry Edelman
Principal Technical Advisor, PolicyHarry joined LMI in 2024, bringing over a decade of leadership and experience across the federal government including in project management, financial analysis, and operations for the Department of Defense. At LMI, he supports initiatives developing technology-integrated policy capabilities, including AI-enabled policy analysis platforms, and assists customers with policy lifecycle transformation.