Brandon Card, founder and CEO of Terzo, published an op-ed in RealClearPolicy 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,” highlights 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 their contractual commitments.
In the op-ed, Card wrote, “No team, regardless of experience or size, can manually understand millions of contracts on a continuous basis.” He contends that AI-assisted contract analysis could provide federal agencies with the same financial visibility that Terzo’s platform delivers to enterprise customers, extending contract intelligence from the private sector into public-sector accountability and audit readiness.
The private-sector model Card references relies on tools like Document AI, which extracts obligations, pricing, and terms from contracts and purchase orders, and Contract Analytics, which transforms that extracted data into spend, compliance, and risk dashboards. Card suggests these categories of tooling could help agencies track obligations across large contract portfolios.
The implications of Card’s argument are significant. With the Defense Department failing eight consecutive audits, the lack of real-time contract visibility represents a major financial and accountability gap. Treating contracts as financial assets would require agencies to adopt continuous monitoring and analysis, potentially preventing waste, improving compliance, and enabling more accurate financial reporting. The full op-ed is available on RealClearPolicy.
Terzo, founded in 2020, 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. The company operates in the United States, Canada, and India. Card’s push for contract intelligence in government builds on Terzo’s existing work with enterprise clients, where similar tools help organizations recover lost funds and maintain oversight.
If federal agencies were to adopt such an approach, it could mark a shift in how public funds are managed, moving from manual, periodic review to automated, continuous analysis of contractual obligations. That shift could enhance audit readiness and provide taxpayers with greater assurance that government spending is tracked effectively.
