Federal agencies are at a crossroads. With workforce turnover, retirements, and restructuring on the rise, the loss of experienced professionals—along with the vital institutional knowledge they carry—has become a pressing challenge. This "brain drain" threatens organizational efficiency, disrupts service delivery, and pushes government departments toward a steep slope in maintaining continuity.

Recent staffing reductions, such as the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) dismissal of over 9,500 employees from key agencies like Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs, underscore the scale of this issue. When institutional knowledge walks out the door, so does the foundation of expertise that organizations rely on to function and fulfill their missions.

However, solutions exist. Advances in AI, particularly with technologies like generative AI based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques, offer a lifeline for preserving and democratizing critical knowledge. By harnessing these tools, federal departments can safeguard their institutional memory while maintaining operational efficiency in times of transition.

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The high costs of institutional knowledge loss  

When seasoned employees leave, they take more than their personal belongings—they take decades of specialized expertise and insights that are often irreplaceable. For agencies managing multi-year, high-stakes projects, these losses are not just inconvenient—they’re debilitating.

The ripple effects of knowledge loss

• Disrupted continuity: Ongoing projects stall or fail due to halted decision-making and lost organizational memory.  

• Reduced productivity: Organizations that lose 10% of their workforce can see a 15–20% drop in productivity, with new hires taking 1–2 years to reach full efficiency.

• High replacement costs: Replacing employees costs between six to nine months of their salary, and much more for senior-level positions.

• Employee burnout: Remaining staff inherit additional responsibilities without the proper context or training to execute them effectively, leading to frustration and disengagement.

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Losing just 10% of a workforce can cause a 15–20% drop in productivity, with new hires taking 1–2 years to reach full efficiency.

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The result? Operational slowdowns, reduced effectiveness in serving citizens, and an uphill battle for new hires to gain traction. But with the right tools, departments can prevent these losses and build a resilient knowledge ecosystem.

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Introducing Pryon for institutional knowledge retention

Pryon's trusted and secure generative AI platform is purposefully designed to capture, retain, and deliver organizational knowledge. By combining content ingestion, retrieval, and generation into one seamless system, Pryon ensures employees have instant access to the answers they need.  

With its ability to handle data from diverse formats—including emails, policy papers, training materials, videos, and audio recordings—Pryon makes institutional knowledge easily accessible to newcomers, as well as decision-makers and team members across departments.  

Download the solution brief →

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How Pryon fights “brain drain”

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1. Capture expert knowledge before it’s too late

Pryon allows organizations to seamlessly capture SME knowledge through interviews, training materials, notes, and historical documents. Whether it’s a key policy decision or years of previously undocumented steps for complex workflows, Pryon saves it all.

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2. Integrate diverse knowledge artifacts into one source of truth

From emails to policy documents, training videos, and system archives, Pryon consolidates organizational knowledge into one searchable, secure platform. You can ingest materials like:

• Meeting notes, recordings, and transcripts

• SME interviews (videos, audio recordings, written transcripts)

• Documents and PDFs  

• Presentations

• Wiki pages

• Policy documents

• Historical documents that require OCR

AI-assisted content ingestion ensures every piece of knowledge is indexed and ready to be queried instantly.

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3. Retrieve answers instantly

Forget keyword searches. Pryon allows federal employees to ask natural-language questions and get precise, verified answers with links to source materials within seconds:

• Who authored this specific report, and when?

• What were the outcomes of the 2020 veterans' healthcare initiative?

• Which team handled cybersecurity protocols in the Health and Human Services division?

This accessibility empowers employees to act quickly without wasting hours digging through documents.

4. Simplify complex information and accelerate workflows

Pryon does more than retrieve knowledge—it transforms it. Whether you need to summarize a lengthy policy report or create a polished slide deck for a briefing, Pryon’s generative AI excels at turning complex, dense information into clear, concise outputs. It can process thousands of pages, delivering easy-to-digest summaries, presentation-ready slides, and comprehensive reports. The result: less time spent on tedious tasks and a significant boost in productivity.

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5. Iterate and improve continuously

As questions are asked and the Pryon platform provides admins with feedback on where knowledge gaps exist, additional data sources and content are gathered. This iterative process ensures the content and experience improves over time.

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6. Trust in enterprise-grade security  

Given the sensitive nature of federal operations, Pryon offers protection for sensitive information, with active deployments from IL2 to IL6+. Along with SOC 2 Type 2 and DISA STIG compliance, as well as enforcement of document-level access controls, Pryon meets strict confidentiality and data protection standards.  

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Learn more about Pryon’s enterprise-grade security

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The future of knowledge in federal agencies  

The abrupt departure of employees doesn’t have to mean the end of institutional expertise. With Pryon, federal agencies can preserve institutional knowledge, enable seamless transitions, and close the gap between incoming employees and critical information.

It’s time to stop the risk of brain drain and ensure your organization operates at full strength—no matter what changes come your way.

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