State & Local DOGE Survival Guide: Navigating the Federal Funding Squeeze
At Esper, we partner with state and local governments every day to modernize how policies are drafted, approved, and maintained. In a moment when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is rapidly shifting responsibilities from Washington to the states, uncertainty can slow action and increase risk.
At Esper, we partner with state and local governments every day to modernize how policies are drafted, approved, and maintained. In a moment when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is rapidly shifting responsibilities from Washington to the states, uncertainty can slow action and increase risk. This guide distills what we’ve learned working on the front lines of policy modernization so your agency can respond quickly, keep services running, and update every rule and procedure affected by federal pullback—confidently and in one centralized, searchable place.
1. Conduct a Rapid Impact Assessment
What to Do: Map out all federal programs that intersect with your agency’s responsibilities. Catalog their scope, budget, personnel, and key services.Why It Matters: A clear, detailed picture of where federal cuts land allows for a data‑driven approach in deciding which services to preserve, modify, or phase out.Technology Angle: A centralized platform (e.g., a modern policy‑management system) can consolidate and update policy data in real time, preventing blind spots as federal guidelines evolve.
2. Pinpoint Critical Services and Set Priorities
What to Do: Identify which services are essential for public safety, health, or economic stability. Classify them by urgency and importance so you can quickly allocate resources.Why It Matters: Not all functions carry equal weight; limited budgets demand tough choices on what must be saved first.Proof Point: Pennsylvania earmarked $664 million for DCNR to assume maintenance of more than 2 million acres of parks and forests that had relied on federal staffing and grant programs [1][2].
Frequently Asked Questions
Esper’s Regulation & Code Management module is a platform that moves rulemaking and regulatory drafting out of disconnected tools (spreadsheets, emails, shared drives) and into a unified, auditable workflow. It supports collaborative drafting, version control, automated publishing, compliance deadlines, and AI-powered search across your regulations. Esper
Esper is primarily targeted at government agencies (state, local, regulatory bodies) that must manage, publish, and enforce rules, codes, or regulations. It helps modernize the regulatory process in a transparent, auditable fashion.
Some of the core features include:
- Collaborative drafting with versioning and redlines
- Workflow and approval routing (assign owners, set deadlines, send reminders)
- Automated publishing in appropriate formats
- AI-enabled search to quickly find portions of regulations with citation support
- Task management and visibility into bottlenecks
Esper maintains all drafts, redlines, and versions within a single system. That ensures every change is tracked, auditable, and tied to the appropriate approval steps, so stakeholders can always see “who changed what when.”
Every rulemaking task (e.g. drafting, review, public comment, approval) is assigned an owner and due date. The system sends reminders, tracks overdue items, and makes bottlenecks visible so leadership can intervene.
