Holly and 17A Win $1.1 Million National Grant to Design the AI-Ready Workforce for State Governments

Public Benefit Innovation Fund and Recoding America Fund fund Holly and 17A to help Oklahoma and Virginia ready their workforce for AI

NEW YORK, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Holly, the AI-powered workforce platform for government agencies, today announced that its joint proposal with 17A, a government consulting and technology firm, has been awarded a $1.1 million grant from the Public Benefit Innovation Fund (PBIF), part of the Center for Civic Futures, and the Recoding America Fund (RAF). Holly and 17A will help Oklahoma and Virginia's government agencies to identify how AI will change government work, define the skills employees will need, and modernize job classifications to better align hiring and compensation.

The 18-month project, "Designing the AI-Ready Government Workforce," will develop and test a repeatable approach to organizational design and workforce planning that other states can adopt. The partners will publish the methodology and an open-source tool, giving government HR teams a way to review and update roles as AI capabilities evolve. The award was made under PBIF's Priority 3 track, Modernize Tech Infrastructure, which the Recoding America Fund co-funds to support projects that strengthen the technical and organizational foundations of government service delivery.

State governments are starting to introduce AI into their operations, but their job descriptions and hiring processes often reflect how work was done years ago. To keep up with constantly changing classification and compensation structures, HR leaders need a way to determine which roles should expand, which need to change and how to prepare for future staffing needs within civil-service rules and bargaining agreements.

"Governments' ability to deliver depends on the people doing the work," said Brendan Hellweg, co-founder of Holly. "States are investing in AI, and this project will help them better understand and update the roles and skills needed for the AI economy, so they can make informed decisions about where to hire and invest."

The project will begin by examining how the nature of work will evolve in the coming years, and focus on identifying the skills and capabilities each job function will need as part of that evolution. In Oklahoma, the project will serve the Office of Management and Enterprise Services' (OMES) central IT organization, while in Virginia, the project will support the Department of Administration, which oversees IT, HR, and other management functions for the state.

The partners are members of the PBIF 2026 Spring cohort and were selected from a national pool of over 300 applicants. Holly will lead the technology and data analysis, drawing on its experience helping government agencies modernize classification, compensation and labor relations. 17A will lead the future-state capabilities and organizational design, development of the new skills taxonomy, and support for transition planning. All partners will heavily engage leadership and staff throughout the project.

"State and local leaders are on an AI-transformation journey for the next several years whether they choose it or not. Our hope is to support leaders and state employees to feel prepared and enabled by AI through this work." said Annie Rittgers, Founder of 17A.

A central deliverable will be VOKA, an open-source tool that compares a state's job classifications with a public library of future workforce skills. Alongside the tool, the partners will publish guidance, templates and evaluation criteria so other states can conduct their own reviews without contracting with either firm. The name comes from the two states engaged as partners in this work.

The award is Holly's largest contract to date and marks the company's entry into state government. The platform has grown rapidly, from under 10 to nearly 100 agency partners over the last 12 months. In August 2026, following its expansion into Marin County, Holly announced that its California customer footprint represented nearly 50% of the state's 40 million residents.

With this award, Holly can continue building on its work helping city and county agencies modernize classification, compensation, hiring and regulatory compliance. By partnering with Oklahoma and Virginia, Holly will now be supporting over 35 million residents across the United States.

About Holly
Holly is an AI-native workforce modernization platform helping governments build the workforce capacity needed to serve their communities. The company streamlines workforce planning, compensation analysis, labor operations, hiring, and organizational decision-making through AI-powered software and data infrastructure. Founded by former public servants and civic technology leaders out of the Harvard Innovation Lab, Holly believes government capacity starts with workforce capacity. The company's platform enables agencies to operate more efficiently, make data-driven decisions, and deliver better outcomes for the millions of residents they serve. Holly currently serves agencies across 12 states, supporting workforce operations for more than 200,000 public sector employees and helping organizations that collectively serve approximately 10% of the U.S. population. Learn more at www.hollygov.com.

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