Tracking every decision, dollar and delay: The new process intelligence engine driving public-sector progress

Presented by CelonisThe State of Oklahoma discovered its blind spots the hard way. In April 2023, a legislative report revealed its agencies had spent $3 billion without proper oversight. Janet Morrow, Director of Oklahoma’s Risk, Assessment and Compliance Division, set out to track thousands of monthly transactions across dozens of disconnected systems.The Sooner State became the first U.S. state to apply process intelligence (PI) technology for procurement oversight. The transformation, Morrow says, was immediate. Real-time monitoring replaced multi-year audit cycles. The platform from market-leader Celonis quickly identified more than $10 million of inappropriate spending. And the oversight team was able to redeploy staff from 13 to 5 members while dramatically increasing effectiveness.“Process for Progress”: A global movementOklahoma’s pioneering success using powerful new process technology spotlights an emerging global trend. Morrow was among more than 3,000 leaders gathered at Celosphere, Celonis’s recent annual conference, to explore how AI, powered with business context by PI, can deliver commercial returns as well as environmental and financial benefits worldwide. The vision: process intelligence as a foundation for public and social progress. The movement sees the combination of AI and PI like Oklahoma’s as a powerful way to help governments and other organizations deliver vital services more cost effectively, with improved decisions and better-informed policies. From procurement to juvenile justice to healthcare and environment, scores of organizations are now getting a first look at the famously byzantine, opaque way things get done.For veteran financial leader Aubrey Vaughan — now Vice President of Strategy for Public Sector at Celonis and formerly a top executive at a major financial software firm — the move toward real process improvement has been a long time coming. He recalls testifying proudly before Congress a few years ago about uncovering $10 billion in improper government payments at his previous company. Afterward, a senior government official pulled him aside and suggested he downplay the achievement.The reason, he was told: “The next question they’re going to ask you is, ‘Why is that happening?’” says Vaughn. “Today we can answer not only why, but how we fix it.” Across the U.S. and the globe, public agencies are tightening budgets. Desire to deploy AI to close the gap is colliding with a hard reality: you can’t automate what you don’t understand. Here are three real-world examples of organizations using PI and AI for better outcomes. Oklahoma: Real-time AI spending analysis boosts accountability Within just 60 days of implementation, Celonis reviewed $29.4 billion worth of purchase order lines, identifying $8.48 billion in statutory exempt purchases and flagging problematic transactions. The system now provides real-time feedback to buyers within 15 minutes of purchases, allowing immediate course correction.The system revealed agencies were purchasing from a vendor at prices 45% lower than the statewide contract, forcing renegotiation. “Real-time AI analysis has increased accountability by providing key insights into spending patterns and streamlining contract utilization,” Morrow explains. Last year, Oklahoma adopted Celonis’s Copilot feature, which uses conversational AI to let executives ask questions in plain language. Now, when the Governor or a cabinet member wonders about a contract, they get answers in seconds, not weeks, Morrow says. Her group is expanding the technology to other agencies. It’s also exploring how emerging AI agent capabilities can further automate compliance and spending analysis.In Texas, uncovering a startling hidden pattern in young offenders At Evident Change, a social research non-profit, Erin Espinosa’s work is about good stewardship — not of taxpayer money, but of young lives. Analyzing 400,000 data points from juvenile justice and public health systems in Texas, the former probation officer-turned Ph.D. made a startling discovery: the mental health treatment that young offenders received (or didn’t) was a stronger predictor of incarceration than the seriousness of the offense that brought them into the system. Espinosa told courts, legislatures, Congress. Nobody believed it.Frustrated, she partnered with Monica Chiarini Tremblay, a professor at William & Mary College. While traditional analysis showed correlation, Celonis process intelligence helped the pair show a clear, quantitative causation: A fragmented mental health system was actively pushing kids toward worse outcomes. Further machine learning analysis also demonstrated that doubling down on the same interventions increased likelihood of undesirable out-of-home placement for juvenile offenders.Recently accepted for academic publication, the real-world findings represent both indictment and opportunity. Espinosa and Tremblay are planning a larger 2026 pilot implementation of PI-based analysis, bringing together social services, juvenile justice, mental health providers, and education officials. “This is a perfect intersection of business, social work, adolescent development, and community financial implications,” Espinosa says. They’re now exploring how AI agent technologies could flag at-risk youth and trigger coordinated responses before patterns become entrenched.A $1-trillion defense budget — that has never passed a clean audit The U.S. Department of Defense faces financial challenges on an exponentially larger scale. As Acting Secretary of the Army, Robert M. Speer hired a big-three accounting firm to map the service’s financial processes. Three years later, the analysis was obsolete — processes had changed dramatically. So, when Speer first saw process intelligence, he was truly excited about what it revealed. “I can see not only the data,” he explained, “but where it’s coming from, the business process delivering it.”Tom Steffens, former Deputy Chief Financial Officer of Defense, agrees: “There’s clearly a missing piece to the puzzle.” Both recently joined Celonis’s Public Sector Advisory Board. They see potential for AI agents to automate compliance monitoring across DoD’s complex ecosystem.The stakes are unimaginably huge. The Department of Defense will receive more than a trillion dollars in funding in FY 2026. It’s also the only federal cabinet agency that’s never passed a clean audit. Beyond accounting, fast-changing geopolitics and modern warfare demands systems as dynamic as current battle environments. “We’re talking about the ability to shift in real time,” says Speer. “We know that’s what happens on the battlefield, but we need something on the back end of those enabling processes and systems to ensure that happens correctly.” The pair is working with defense leaders to show how process intelligence can create the foundation for transformation — enabling modeling and scenario planning that can support battlefield decisions with data-driven confidence rather than delayed, obsolete information.Efforts to modernize and optimize complex government systems and processes got a big boost recently. Working with partner Knox Systems, Celonis received FedRAMP authorization earlier this year, the security credential required for federal cloud services. “Knox powers the most secure and longest-running managed federal cloud,” notes CEO Irina Denisenko, supporting 15+ federal agencies. The authorization positions the technology “as the backbone of compliance for the next generation of government SaaS.”Where process meets purposeEarly public sector adopters are proving what’s possible with process intelligence — from identifying billions in potential savings to revealing why children enter the prison pipeline. The potential extends wherever public funds shape public good: climate response, education, infrastructure, emergency services.Advocates often speak of “process for progress” or “process for empathy” — using transparency to change minds and hearts, not just policies. Says Chiarini Tremblay, who worked on the Texas juvenile offenders’ system: “We have to understand complex systems and make data-driven decisions, but the goal is always improving outcomes for people.”It’s not just a U.S. movement. In the UK, for example, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust have deployed PI with dramatic effect. Director Andy Hardy used Celonis to analyze 244,000 outpatient cases, revealing massive variation in care delivery.By optimizing appointment reminders from four to 14 days before visits, the trust enabled earlier cancellations and saw an additional 1,800 patients weekly. The waiting list was reduced by 5,300 patients in eight weeks. Concludes Hardy: “Data understandable to clinicians is as important as scalpels.” Technology continues to race ahead. At Celosphere 2025, Celonis unveiled a host of new offerings and platform updates for public and private sector organizations including the Orchestration Engine, which coordinates actions across workflows involving AI agents, human tasks, and legacy systems.All are built on the Celonis Process Intelligence Graph, which creates a “living digital twin” of a business or public agency’s processes. It’s system-agnostic, working across disconnected systems typical to government operations — integrating decades-old mainframes and cutting-edge cloud applications simultaneously.Agency heads and others note, however, that success demands more than software. For example, when Oklahoma reduced its oversight team from 13 to 5, resistance emerged. Morrow’s team invested heavily in training and change management. Process intelligence reveals improvement opportunities, but people implement solutions’ she explains. Ongoing, long-term education and cultural change are needed. “Continuous operational improvement is a lifestyle,” says Celonis’s Vaughn. “You need to have a culture that wants to build better processes, better systems, more efficient systems.”The tools are ready. The business case is proven. What remains is the will to change — and the courage to look clearly at the systems meant to serve the public good.Sponsored articles are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.