Tom Amburgey served as CIO for two Florida municipalities before spending two decades on the vendor side of govtech. Today he leads Euna Solutions, a platform managing hundreds of billions in public funds across 3,600+ government organizations in the US and Canada. In this conversation, Robin and Tom dig into the broken government procurement problem, the AI tool that reviews RFPs before they go live, what vendors get wrong about selling to government, and why some agencies were still running on spreadsheets while managing $600 billion in public funds.
$600 billion in public funds managed through software that governments depend on every single day. And some of them were still running on spreadsheets.
Tom Amburgey is the CEO of Euna Solutions, a North American govtech platform serving more than 3,600 public sector organizations across the US and Canada. He spent years as CIO inside two Florida municipalities before crossing to the vendor side, meaning he has literally sat in the chair his customers sit in today.
In this episode, Robin and Tom discuss:
The full-circle story of being a customer of his own products before running the company that built them
What a community actually looks like when Euna is running well
How Canada and the US differ as public sector buyers, and why Euna stays out of Quebec
The broken procurement problem: 90 hours per RFP, two to five bids in return
Solicitation Advisor, the AI tool that reviews draft RFPs before they go public and catches vague requirements, conflicting criteria, and mismatched evaluation criteria
How the AI model is trained using publicly available government data
Data sovereignty, data residency, and operating across the Canadian and American border
What vendors get wrong about selling to government, and why lowest price does not always win
Balancing private equity ownership with a mission-driven community focus
A direct message to public servants who are still struggling with outdated tools
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/slwlNbfbNRI
Connect with Tom Amburgey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/twamburgey/
Learn more about Euna Solutions: https://eunasolutions.com
Connect with Robin Ayoub on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinayoub
Visit N49Networks: https://www.n49networks.com
Read the blog post and show notes: https://www.robinayoub.blog
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