Ten years ago, our founders incorporated as Nava Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) with the goal of making government services simple and effective by solving technology problems at their core, rather than putting out fires. Addressing the root causes of modernization problems, they reasoned, would help government build long-term solutions that people can trust. 

Much has changed about Nava in the last decade. With over 600 staff and 30 times more projects across state and federal government, we’re no longer a scrappy team of young technologists. But despite growing and maturing as a company, our objective to build durable solutions as quickly as possible hasn’t changed. In fact, we’ve only become more determined to deliver critical benefits at scale to millions in need.

The environment we’re operating in has also changed drastically over the past decade. We’re facing a moment of unprecedented fracture in our country, and trust in public institutions continues to decline. As civic technologists, we must recognize our role in this history. That means acknowledging and learning from our successes, and more importantly, our failures. In brutal self-awareness, we can use this moment to spur positive change. 

At Nava, we see the current moment as an opportunity to prioritize outcomes over process, hold vendors accountable, and provide government agencies with sufficient resources to meet the public’s urgent needs. We advocate for building government capacity so agencies can meet the moment, ensuring government can hire top talent, and building better operating and funding models to deliver excellent services. We also see great value in partnering with think tanks, academia, and government to close the gap between policy and implementation. These are the ingredients of building long-term momentum for effective government services. 

Our annual Public Benefit Report focuses on how we’ve steadily been working toward this vision, tuning our approach to meet each environment. This year, we leveraged agile methodology to rapidly implement high-impact solutions — this was our strategy as we helped the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) modernize Grants.gov. Notably, HHS’s new software is open source, which prevents vendor lock-in and promotes transparency. We continued years-long efforts to achieve positive outcomes — work we began in 2020 spurred our research on how states can collaborate to share technology and funding. Through it all, we hired and retained top talent, which directly contributed to becoming one of the country's premier paid family and medical leave vendors. 

Our scale and breadth of experience across programs is enabling us to break the cycle of wasteful government spending and failed delivery. Nava quickly responded to the passage of H.R. 1 — significant federal legislation that impacts how states deliver benefits — with an open-source solution that helps states implement legislative changes while continuing to deliver excellent experiences. Our approach stands in stark contrast to traditional industry models that lock agencies into costly vendor relationships and inflexible technology. This contributes to enduring program success long after a contract ends, and it helps our partners continually earn trust by responding to the public’s changing needs. 

Now more than ever, government must deliver critical programs with a ruthless eye on effectiveness. This moment will test all of us, but if we approach it as an opportunity to break free from old habits and ways of working, we can deliver change that’s truly transformative.

Ten years in, we’re staying committed to our mission of building simple and effective government services. 

Ten years in, we are ready to meet this moment.