Stop Doing What Doesn’t Work: How the Shutdown Could Spark a Federal Transformation Revolution

November 10, 2025

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When federal operations come to a halt during a government shutdown, many see disruption, uncertainty, and frustration. But Gundeep Ahluwalia, former Chief Information Officer at the Department of Labor and now Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at NuAxis Innovations, chooses to see something different — opportunity.

In his conversation with Francis Rose on Fed Gov Today, Ahluwalia explains that while shutdowns are deeply unsettling for federal employees and contractors, they also create a rare moment for reflection and recalibration. When the usual day-to-day activity slows down, leaders have the chance to pause and ask important questions: What are we working toward? Are our projects truly driving the outcomes we want?

Ahluwalia believes great program delivery starts with clarity about the desired outcomes. Before agencies can talk about milestones, systems, or modernization, they must first define what success looks like. Once those outcomes are clear, every project, task, and output must tie directly back to them. “If your project-level outputs aren’t connected to outcomes,” he says, “you need to stop doing those projects or change them.”

He encourages federal leaders to use the downtime during a shutdown to “look at the forest from the trees.” Instead of focusing solely on deadlines and deliverables, they can step back to see the bigger picture. This is a moment to take stock of existing work, examine what’s working and what isn’t, and reconstruct projects to be “built right, built for purpose, built for mission outcomes, built for the future.”

Ahluwalia doesn’t downplay the real impacts of a shutdown — the financial stress, the delays, the uncertainty. But he also points out that when agencies restart operations, they have a chance to build better. The transition back to normal work can be more than just resuming old projects; it can be a reset. Leaders can use that moment to realign their portfolios, ensure that every effort adds value, and identify initiatives that no longer serve their missions.

He also sees a cultural shift underway within government. According to Ahluwalia, there’s now a stronger appetite among agency leaders to stop doing things that no longer make sense. “There seems to be a great appetite to stop doing things that don’t appear to be necessary,” he notes. This gives career employees the “air cover” they need to speak up and propose smarter, more efficient ways of working.

Looking ahead, Ahluwalia envisions federal IT and program management organizations becoming more agile and outcome-driven. He believes future CIO offices will rely more on specialized expertise, contract partnerships, and collaborative approaches. He encourages CIOs to build teams that blend government and contractor talent seamlessly, ensuring that every contributor understands how their work connects to mission results.

Finally, Ahluwalia emphasizes the importance of co-creation — breaking down barriers between IT and program offices. When program staff and technologists work together, agencies can innovate faster and deliver more responsive citizen services. By empowering program teams to experiment, drag and drop, and build small solutions themselves, the government can reduce bottlenecks and create a more flexible, modern culture of delivery.