Build transformation, not just technology.
After a decade of watching revolutionary civictech die in procurement, I stopped asking "why won't government adopt better solutions?" and started asking "what would it take for better to become inevitable?"
That shift reframed the problem, and the opportunity.
From Frustration to Framework
Paul Salama - Urban planner, technologist, transformation practitioner.
Every failed implementation taught me the same lesson: You can't solve institutional problems with technical solutions. You need transformation propositions that reimagine the entire system.
My transformation propositions rejected business-as-usual. Where others saw constraints, I saw system architecture that could be reconfigured. Where others accepted "that's how government works," I asked "what would make government work differently?":
Digital Road Pricing instead of legacy toll infrastructure
Real-time zoning visualization instead of months-long turnaround
Automated reviews instead of digitized waterfalls
Dynamic scenarios instead of consulting five years too late
Each challenged the status quo premise, not just the process. But breakthrough demonstrations weren't enough. The institutions and larger systems remained glacially resistant, quick to pick apart innovations and discount grander visions.
That pattern led me to develop the Digital Transformation 5-Phase Framework—a systematic approach to decoding public sector technology and innovation efforts, and why true transformation is so rare.
The Transformation Practice
That pattern—breakthrough demos unable to shift defaults—revealed the necessary work.
Government doesn’t need another tech translator or even the “right” solution. It needs someone who can embed technology into institutional conditions where transformation becomes inevitable, not exceptional.
Through Civic Transformation Advisors, I apply lessons from building urban technologies, working with/for governments, and leading startups to help organizations escape technology hype cycles and pilots-to-nowhere, instead delivering real transformation. I diagnose which of the five transformation phases you're actually in (versus where vendors claim you are), then co-design pathways using the right transformation types.
The goal isn't technology adoption. It's making transformation permanent by reconfiguring the rules, incentives, and structures that determine how government operates. Only then do better outcomes become institutional defaults.