Charles Lyons-Burt 
As federal agencies accelerate artificial intelligence adoption, governance is no longer a back-office compliance exercise. It is becoming a frontline enabler of speed, trust and mission scale. In his Executive Spotlight debut, Nick Dunn, CEO of PCI Government Services, outlines why AI demands a fundamentally different approach than prior technology waves such as cloud, mobile and cybersecurity.
Dunn brings more than 18 years of federal contracting experience to the conversation, overseeing a $100 million-plus portfolio of prime contracts supporting mission-critical agencies across the Department of War and the Department of Homeland Security. Before joining PCI Federal, he founded Integrated Federal Solutions and scaled the company from a solo startup into a $100M-plus 8(a) prime contractor. His background also includes service as a contracts legal specialist with the U.S. Army and advisory roles focused on pricing, compliance and risk across federal programs.
In the Spotlight, Dunn explains why AI’s probabilistic nature introduces governance challenges that legacy institutions were never designed to handle, how human oversight must evolve from operator to governor and where readiness gaps in data, policy and leadership are slowing real-world deployment. He also weighs in on GovCon purchasing consolidation and why bridging innovation to production will be critical to sustaining a healthy federal industrial base.
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ExecutiveBiz: There have been executive orders about AI in both the Biden and Trump administrations. How do you think the recent focus on AI compares to the government’s response to tech in different eras? Are we becoming more agile?
Nick Dunn: In prior tech eras—cloud, mobile, cyber—the challenge was primarily digitizing workflows. We were moving human-led processes to faster infrastructure. AI is fundamentally different because it is our first encounter with a technology that exhibits agency. We aren’t just buying a deterministic tool that does what we program; we are deploying a probabilistic system that learns and authors its own outputs.
This shift explains the sustained focus from both the Biden and Trump administrations. While the initial frameworks focused on guardrails, the July 2025 ‘winning the race’ AI Action Plan and the recent December 2025 EO on national AI frameworks have pivoted toward acceleration and federal preemption. We are moving toward a common sense federal standard to avoid a patchwork of state-level regulations.
Are we more agile? I’d argue that agility is the wrong metric. Our governance lag is structural: our institutions were designed for technologies that evolve on human timescales, while AI evolves on machine timescales. The real success in 2025 isn’t just moving faster; it’s building a certain continuance assurance. We are moving from ‘compliance after the fact’ to ‘constraints by design’—turning governance into code so we can move at machine speed without sacrificing public trust.
EBiz: Can you envision a post-human-on-the-loop future? What are the upsides and downsides of this?
Dunn: The human-on-the-loop metaphor is becoming a bottleneck in environments like real-time cyber-defense. I envision a transition from human-as-operator to human-as-governor. Instead of acting as a ‘joystick’ operator approving every action, humans must become the architects of the environment—setting the strategic objectives, ethical boundaries and escalation triggers within which autonomous agents operate.
The upside is the ability to operate at a scale and speed impossible for human cognition. However, the downside is the risk of institutional amnesia. When machines make the decisions, organizations can forget the why behind those choices. Five years from now, an agency must still be able to explain its reasoning to Congress. At PCI, we focus on creating the evidence trail—a reconstructable chain of logic that connects automated actions back to human-defined intent and legal frameworks. If you can’t trace the ‘why,’ you haven’t achieved bounded autonomy; you’ve achieved opaque risk.
EBiz: Where are you seeing opportunities for expansion in PCI’s portfolio? What new capabilities or markets are you eyeing?
Dunn: We see a significant readiness gap in the market. There’s enormous pressure on agencies to deploy AI, but most aren’t asking the prerequisite questions: Is our data actually ready for AI consumption? Do we have governance frameworks that can scale? Does leadership understand what they’re authorizing when they approve an AI deployment?
PCI is focused on closing that gap. Specifically:
Data readiness: Not just clean data, but documented, traceable data with clear lineage and legal authorization for AI use. Many agencies have data that works fine for reporting but isn’t fit for training or inference. We help them understand that gap and close it.
Governance foundations: Before you can govern AI at scale, you need the basics: policies, roles, accountability structures, escalation paths. Most agencies have AI policies on paper but no operational governance to implement them. We help build that connective tissue between policy and practice.
Leadership enablement: Executives are being asked to make AI decisions without the background to evaluate them. We provide strategic translation, helping leadership understand what questions to ask, what risks to weigh, and what ‘good’ looks like before they commit resources.
Our thesis is simple: trust before speed. The agencies that invest in these foundations won’t just avoid failure—they’ll actually move faster when they’re ready to scale, because they won’t be fixing foundational problems mid-flight. The bottleneck to AI adoption isn’t technology; it’s institutional readiness. That’s where we’ve chosen to focus, and that’s where we see the greatest opportunity to deliver lasting value.
EBiz: What’s the most impactful trend you’re currently seeing in the GovCon market besides AI? How are you seeing GovCon organizations respond to that trend?
Dunn: The trend I’m watching most closely is purchasing consolidation—the aggressive expansion of best-in-class, or BIC, contracts and massive IDIQs. While the intent is to leverage federal buying power, we are inadvertently trading short-term efficiency for long-term strategic risk.
The danger is a bifurcated market. We’ve successfully opened innovation pathways (like other transaction agreements) for fresh ideas, but these remain disconnected from the production pathways where the bulk of sustainment and scale work occurs. This creates a ‘valley of death’ where successful prototypes stall because there is no clear bridge to a production contract. Furthermore, commercial-first only works if those solutions can be integrated. Often, non-traditional companies must sub to traditional primes just to navigate the compliance thicket, meaning the ‘innovation premium’ is eaten up by the friction of legacy systems.
How PCI Federal Is Responding
At PCI Federal, we view our role as the bridge across this valley. As a tribally-owned entity, we aren’t just looking at the next quarter; we are built for long-horizon mission support. We are positioning our portfolio to serve as the integration layer—helping agencies take those ‘fresh thinking’ commercial capabilities and operationalizing them within the complex security and compliance frameworks of a production environment.
We help our clients avoid the so-called interoperability paradox by ensuring that new innovations don’t become isolated islands of excellence. By pairing our deep understanding of federal governance with agile commercial tech, we ensure that the innovation premium actually reaches the mission rather than being lost to administrative friction.
I am not arguing against consolidation; I am arguing for connectedness. A healthy industrial base requires competition across the full lifecycle—from pilot to platform. The goal for 2026 shouldn’t just be to buy faster; it should be to build a functional bridge from innovation to production, ensuring our most innovative ideas have a clear, sustainable path to mission scale.
Who Is Nick Dunn?
Nick Dunn is CEO of PCI Government Services and a federal contracting executive with more than 18 years of experience supporting U.S. government agencies. He oversees strategic growth and delivery across a $100M-plus portfolio of prime federal contracts and previously founded Integrated Federal Solutions, growing it into a $100M-plus 8(a) contractor.
What Is PCI Government Services?
PCI Government Services is part of the PCI Federal enterprise, a tribally owned organization delivering professional services and IT solutions to U.S. government agencies. The company focuses on governance, compliance and enterprise IT capabilities that help agencies operationalize innovation within secure, mission-ready environments.
