Regulatory modernization
Engaging proposals that change how agencies write, review, or retire rules.
Texas Government Affairs Specialty
Government Efficiency & Regulatory Reform in Texas
Modernizing government often requires changing statutes, budgets, procurement, agency processes, and technology at the same time. Em Dash Strategies provides Texas lobbying and government affairs representation for organizations affected by that kind of change — or trying to help the state make it.
Work
How Em Dash Helps
Agency accountability
Reporting, performance, fraud-waste-and-abuse, and oversight structures that alter an agency’s day.
Process and procurement
When “efficiency” is actually a purchasing, contracting, or workflow problem.
Technology as reform
AI, cloud, websites, and modernization funds used as instruments of government performance.
Consumer and business impacts
Right-to-repair and similar files where efficiency talk meets a private market.
Legislative strategy
The unglamorous work of aligning a statute, a budget instruction, and an agency that has to live with both.
Institutional background
Experience that informs the work
As Committee Director of the House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency, Katy’s work included AI, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, IT modernization, quantum computing, digital assets, regulatory reform, and fraud, waste, and abuse — the actual stack of a modern efficiency agenda.
Committee Director
House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency
February 2025 – August 2026
Committee Director
House Committee on Appropriations
January 2020 – January 2021
Chief of Staff / Capitol Director
Representative Giovanni Capriglione
November 2014 – August 2026
Record
Selected legislative & policy experience
Standardized government reporting
Improved reporting efficiency by standardizing jail data submission — small-sounding, operationally large.
Cloud-ready systems
Cloud-ready requirements for state technology, a modernization mandate written as procurement and architecture policy.
IT modernization governance
Funding and oversight for technology improvement and modernization.
AI and code transformation
A DIR function using generative AI to modernize state technology and code.
Texas Right to Repair Act
Competition, consumer access, and regulatory policy in a file that is not only a technology bill.
State website modernization
Accessibility and navigation of state websites — efficiency as experienced by the public.
Telework and performance
State telework policies and performance monitoring.
Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office
Agency rulemaking oversight — a structural approach to regulatory reform rather than a one-off repeal.
Landscape
Navigating government efficiency and regulatory reform in Texas
Efficiency bills fail in two opposite ways. Some are so broad they frighten every agency and pass nothing operational. Some are so narrow they modernize a form and leave the underlying statute untouched. The useful ones usually do four jobs at once: they name the process to be changed, give an agency or office the authority to change it, fund or staff the change, and create a way to see whether it worked.
That is why this specialty sits next to appropriations, AI, cybersecurity, and digital infrastructure. A Regulatory Efficiency Office is a rulemaking story. A DIR code-transformation function is an AI story. A website bill is a public-experience story. A telework statute is a workforce-and-performance story. Clients who care about only one of those still have to understand the committee that hears them together.
For a regulated business, the question is often simpler: will this proposal reduce friction, create a new reporting duty, or both? Honest government affairs answers that before anyone drafts a one-pager.
Organizations
Who we help
Regulated companies
Businesses living under agency rules that the Legislature may rewrite or double.
Technology vendors to government
Firms whose products are being asked to deliver an efficiency result.
Consumer and repair markets
Organizations affected by right-to-repair and similar competition statutes.
Professional and trade groups
Associations whose members feel rulemaking changes before they feel a headline.
Public-interest partners
Organizations trying to make government services more usable without pretending the politics are simple.
Agencies’ counterparties
Anyone whose contract, license, or reporting duty moves when an agency’s process moves.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What does government efficiency policy involve in Texas?
It involves more than cutting a line item. Texas efficiency debates have included standardized reporting, cloud-ready technology, IT modernization governance, AI-enabled code transformation, state website accessibility, telework and performance monitoring, right-to-repair rules, and a Regulatory Efficiency Office overseeing agency rulemaking. The practical work is to change how an agency operates without breaking the service it still has to deliver.
Who handles regulatory reform lobbying in Texas?
Em Dash Strategies works on regulatory and efficiency issues as Texas government affairs, not as a slogan. Katy Aldredge served as Committee Director of the House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency from February 2025 to August 2026. The firm helps companies and organizations that are writing, facing, or trying to modernize state rules — including technology, procurement, and accountability proposals that look like efficiency bills.
What experience does Katy Aldredge have with Texas government efficiency initiatives?
She directed the House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency. That committee’s work included artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, IT modernization, quantum computing, digital assets, regulatory reform, and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse. Earlier staff work included government reporting efficiency, cloud-ready systems, IT modernization funding, and open-government measures. The later Regulatory Efficiency Office legislation sits in the same family of accountability tools.
Can Em Dash help a company affected by state agency regulations?
Yes. A company can be affected as a regulated party, as a vendor, or as a competitor of a process the state is rewriting. The firm helps map which agency writes the rule, which statute authorizes it, whether the Legislature is about to change that authority, and how to engage without turning a technical file into an accidental political fight.
How can technology and AI affect government efficiency policy?
Directly. HB 2818’s AI and code-transformation work at DIR, website modernization, telework-and-performance statutes, and cybersecurity programs are all efficiency tools as much as they are technology files. The risk is treating them as gadgets. The opportunity is using them to change process. Government affairs in this space has to keep both in view.
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