In this episode of GovCon Unscripted, Chelsea sits down with Derek Hoyt, CEO of GovSignals AI, to explore how AI is transforming federal acquisition, collapsing procurement timelines, and reshaping compliance expectations across the DoD and government agencies.

Derek breaks down what true end-to-end AI-powered acquisition looks like, why most tools in the market fall short, and how GovSignals is addressing challenges like CMMC, FedRAMP, IL5, data silos, proposal automation, market research, contract management, and multi-portal fragmentation.

On this episode, we discuss:

• Why acquisition is really a linear data pipeline government never automated
• How AI accelerates capture, proposals, and post-award workflows
• How FedRAMP, CMMC, and IL5 differ and why misinterpretation creates risk
• Why disconnected systems force contractors into manual work
• How semantic search replaces keyword-based hunting
• Collapsing procurement timelines from months to minutes
• What GovSignals is doing with DIU and enterprise-level workflows
• The vision for a 10-minute transaction in federal contracting

Timestamps:

[00:00 ] – Welcome and introduction

[01:10 ] – What GovSignals AI is and who it serves

[04:10 ] – The limitations of today’s acquisition workflow

[06:45 ] – Why AI is an enabler, not the entire solution

[09:50 ] – Replacing legacy tech stacks in business development

[13:20 ] – Crawl-walk-run adoption and internal process maturity

[17:30 ] – Proposal, capture, and contract management as “projects”

[21:40 ] – DIU workflows, IL5 environments, and compliance foundations

[24:00 ] – FedRAMP vs CMMC: common industry misconceptions

[27:50 ] – Making WAWF/PIEE invoicing easier for contractors

[33:20 ] – The data management problem behind opportunity search

[36:45 ] – Semantic search, reasoning agents, and enrichment

[40:10 ] – Navigating data silos and IDIQ task orders

[44:30 ] – Solving entity resolution and historical linkage

[50:00 ] – Feature sets coming in 2026

[52:20 ] – The vision of a 10-minute procurement

[55:00 ] – How to reach Derek and learn more

Links & Resources:

• GovSignals AI

• Derek Hoyt on LinkedIn

• Chelsea Roberts on LinkedIn

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