Brandon Card, founder and CEO of Terzo, published an op-ed in RealClearPolicy on August 3, 2026, arguing that federal agencies should manage contracts as financial assets rather than as legal or administrative paperwork. The piece, titled "Government Contracts Are a Financial Asset," points to the Department of Defense's approximately $445 billion in annual contract obligations across roughly 226,000 active contracts, and its eight consecutive failed audits, as evidence that agencies lack real-time visibility into what their contracts commit them to.
"No team, regardless of experience or size, can manually understand millions of contracts on a continuous basis," Card wrote. He argues that AI-assisted contract analysis could give federal agencies the same kind of financial visibility into contractual obligations that Terzo's platform provides to enterprise customers, extending the case for contract intelligence from the private sector into public-sector accountability and audit readiness.
In the private sector, that visibility runs through Document AI, which extracts obligations, pricing, and terms from contracts and purchase orders, and Contract Analytics, which turns that extracted data into spend, compliance, and risk dashboards. Those are the categories of tooling Card's op-ed points to as a model for how agencies could track obligations across large contract portfolios.
The implications for the Long Beach and broader Los Angeles area are significant, given the region's dense concentration of aerospace, defense, and logistics contractors that rely heavily on federal awards. If agencies adopt contract intelligence tools, local suppliers could face new expectations for data transparency and compliance reporting. At the same time, improved federal visibility could reduce payment delays and disputed obligations, benefiting contractors that depend on predictable cash flow from government work.
For the GovTech and enterprise software industry, Card's argument signals a potential expansion of the contract intelligence market beyond chief financial officers and procurement teams into public-sector financial management. Vendors that already serve commercial enterprises may find a new addressable market in federal agencies seeking audit readiness and real-time obligation tracking. The full op-ed is available on RealClearPolicy.
Terzo is an AI financial intelligence platform that finds money enterprises lose across their third-party and supplier spend ecosystem, including contracts, invoices, purchase orders, and renewals. Founded in 2020, Terzo operates in the United States, Canada, and India.
