Presented by Ceylonese
Oklahoma State discovered its blind spots the hard way. In April 2023, a legislative report revealed that his agencies spent $3 billion without proper oversight. Janet Mower, director of Oklahoma’s risk, assessment and compliance division, set out to track thousands of monthly transactions across dozens of disconnected systems.
The state soon became the first US state to apply process intelligence (PI) technology to monitor procurement. Mover says the change was immediate. Real-time monitoring replaced multi-year audit cycles. Market leader Salonis’ platform immediately identified more than $10 million in inappropriate spending. And the oversight team was able to redeploy staff from 13 to 5 members while dramatically increasing effectiveness.
“Action for Development”: A Global Movement
Oklahoma’s groundbreaking success using powerful new process technology highlights an emerging global trend. Yesterday was among the more than 3,000 leaders who gathered CelosphereCeleones’ recent annual conference, to explore how business-context-driven AI by PI can deliver commercial profits as well as environmental and financial benefits around the world.
Vision: Action Intelligence as a foundation for public and societal progress.
This movement, like the one in Oklahoma, sees the combination of AI and PI as a powerful way to help governments and other organizations deliver better value for money, leading to better decisions and better informed policies. From procurement to juvenile justice to health care and the environment, a number of organizations are now getting their first look at the notoriously byzantine, opaque way of doing things.
For veteran financial leader Aubrey Vaughan — now vice president of strategy for the public sector at Ceylon and previously a top executive at a major financial software firm — the move to real process improvement has been a long time coming. He proudly testifies before Congress a few years ago about uncovering $10 billion in government malfeasance at his former company. Then, a senior government official pulled him aside and suggested he downplay the achievement.
The reason, he was told: "Vaughn says the next question he’s going to ask you is, ‘Why is this happening?’"
Across the United States and around the world, public agencies are tightening budgets. The desire to deploy AI to close the gap is colliding with a harsh reality: You can’t automate what you don’t understand. Here are three real-world examples of organizations using PI and AI for better results.
Oklahoma: Real-Time AI Spending Analysis Promotes Accountability
Within just 60 days of implementation, Salonis reviewed $29.4 billion worth of purchase order lines, identifying $8.48 billion of legally exempt purchases and flagging problematic transactions. The system now provides real-time feedback to shoppers within 15 minutes of purchase, allowing for immediate optimization.
The system revealed that agencies were purchasing from one vendor at prices 45% lower than the statewide contract, forcing renegotiations.
"Real-time AI analysis has increased accountability by providing key insights into spending patterns and streamlining contract usage," Yesterday explained.
Last year, Oklahoma adopted Salonis’ Copilot feature, which uses conversational AI to ask executives questions in plain language. Now, Morrow says, when a governor or cabinet member wonders about a deal, they get answers in seconds, not weeks. His group is expanding the technology to other agencies. It’s also exploring how emerging AI agent capabilities can automate compliance and cost analysis.
In Texas, uncovering a surprising hidden pattern among young offenders
In a marked change, Erin Espinosa’s work at a social research nonprofit is about good stewardship—not of taxpayer money, but of young lives.
Analyzing 400,000 data points from the juvenile justice and public health systems in Texas, the former probation officer’s Ph.D. A startling discovery was made: The degree to which young offenders received mental health treatment (or not) was a stronger predictor of incarceration than the seriousness of the crime that landed them in the system. Espinosa told the courts, legislatures, Congress. No one believed him.
Desperate, he partnered with William & Mary College professor Monica Cherini Tremblay. While traditional analysis showed correlation, Selonis Process Intelligence helped the pair reveal a clear, quantifiable cause: a fragmented mental health system was actively pushing children toward the worst outcomes. Further machine learning analysis also demonstrated that doubling the same intervention increased the likelihood of unwanted home placement for juvenile offenders.
Recently accepted for academic publication, the real-world findings represent both indictments and opportunities. Espinosa and Tremblay are planning to implement a pilot-based analysis of the 2026 pilot, bringing together social services, juvenile justice, mental health providers and education officials.
"It is a perfect intersection of business, social work, adolescent development, and community finance implications." Espinosa says.
They are now exploring how AI agent technologies can flag at-risk youth and trigger coordinated responses before they enter the sample.
A $1-trillion defense budget—which has never had a clean audit
The US Department of Defense is facing massive financial challenges. As acting secretary of the Army, Robert M. Spear hired a Big Three accounting firm to map out the service’s financial processes. Three years later, the analysis was obsolete – processes had changed dramatically.
So, when Speer first saw the genius of the process, he was really excited about his revelation. "”I can see not only the data,” he explained, “but where it’s coming from, the business process that delivers it.”"
Tom Stephens, former Deputy Chief Financial Officer of Defence, agrees: "There is clearly a missing piece in this puzzle." Both recently joined Ceylonese’s Public Sector Advisory Board. They see potential for AI agents to automate compliance monitoring in the DOD’s complex ecosystem.
The stakes are unimaginably huge. The Department of Defense will receive more than $1 trillion in funding in fiscal year 2026. It is also the only federal cabinet agency that has never passed a clean audit.
Beyond accounting, rapidly changing geopolitics and modern warfare demand a system as dynamic as the current warfare environment.
"We are talking about the ability to shift in real time," Spear says. "We know what happens on the battlefield, but we need something on the back end of those processes and systems to make sure it happens correctly."
The pair is working with defense leaders to demonstrate how process intelligence can form the foundation of transformation—enabling modeling and scenario planning that can support battlefield decisions with data-driven confidence rather than delayed, obsolete information.
Efforts to modernize and improve complex government systems and processes have recently received a major boost. Together with partner Knox Systems, Selonis earlier this year received FedRAMP authorization, the security certification required for federal cloud services.
"Knox powers the most secure and longest-running federal cloud," Notes CEO Irina Densenko, supports 15+ federal agencies. Authorization is in the position of technology "Government as the backbone of next-generation SaaS compliance."
Where the action serves the purpose
Early public sector adopters are proving what’s possible with process intelligence – from identifying billions in potential savings to uncovering why children enter the prison pipeline. Capacity is likely to expand wherever public funds create a public good: climate response, education, infrastructure, emergency services.
Lawyers often talk about the “development process” or "Action for Compassion" – Using transparency to change minds and hearts, not just policies.
Says Cherini Tremblay, who worked in Texas’ juvenile delinquency system: "We have to understand complex systems and make data-driven decisions, but the goal is always to improve outcomes for people."
This is not just an American movement. For example, in the UK, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust have deployed PI with dramatic effect. Director Andy Hardy used Selonis to analyze 244,000 outpatient cases, revealing wide variations in care delivery.
By improving appointment reminders four to 14 days from visits, the trust enabled earlier cancellations and saw 1,800 patients weekly. The waiting list fell by 5,300 patients in eight weeks.
Hardy concludes: "Comprehensible data for clinicians is as important as the skull."
Technology moves forward. At Cellosphere 2025, Celonis unveiled new offerings and platform updates for public and private sector organizations, including the Orchestration Engine, which integrates tasks into workflows involving AI agents, human tasks and legacy systems.
All Selonis processes are built on an intelligence graph, which creates "A living digital twin" of a business or public agency process. It is system-agnostic, working across disjointed systems for government operations—connecting decades-old mainframes and modernizing cloud applications together.
Agency heads and others note, however, that success requires more than software. For example, when Oklahoma reduced its oversight team from 13 to 5, resistance emerged. Mover’s team invested heavily in training and change management. Process intelligence reveals opportunities for improvement, but people implement solutions.
Ongoing, long-term education and cultural change are needed.
“Continuous operational improvement is a way of life,” says Salonis’ Vaughn. “You need a culture that wants to build better processes, better systems, more efficient systems.”
Tools are ready. The business case is proven. All that remains is the will to change – and the courage to see the system clearly to serve the public good.
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