Celonis wins 2026 AGA Innovation Challenge

At the 2026 Association of Government Accountants (AGA) Technology & Transformation Summit in Washington, D.C., Celonis took home the top prize in the Innovation Challenge for an audit acceleration and control monitoring solution. The award was decided by a panel of expert judges and a live vote of more than 1,000 in-person and online attendees.

The Innovation Challenge highlights solutions that can scale across government and deliver measurable results in transparency, accountability, and efficiency. Finalists are evaluated on three criteria: broad applicability, real-world feasibility, and the size of the impact they can deliver. The Celonis solution hits all three because it tackles a problem nearly every federal agency wrestles with, audit findings that arrive too late to prevent the underlying issue.

Photo from right to left: Michael Benjamin, Lead Value Engineer; Chris Conlan, Senior Value Engineer; Sairah Ijaz, Managing Director U.S. Federal Civilian, Ann Ebberts, Chief Executive Officer, 2026 Association of Government Accountants, at the AGA Technology & Transformation Summit.

A persistent problem in government financial management

Most agencies still rely on retrospective audit and control processes. Reviewers pull samples, trace transactions across systems, and flag issues weeks or months after they happen. By the time a finding is documented, the improper payment has already gone out, the control gap has already been exploited, and the cost of cleanup is higher than the cost of prevention would have been.

It is a cycle that looks busy but rarely changes outcomes. Auditors close findings on last year’s transactions while the same conditions continue to produce new findings this year. Compliance teams spend their time reporting on problems instead of catching them.

A different approach: Continuous control monitoring

Celonis’ audit acceleration and control monitoring solution moves agencies from reactive remediation to proactive control monitoring. Built on the Celonis Platform, it continuously analyzes transactional data across the systems that drive financial operations. That gives audit, internal control, and program teams a centralized view of how processes actually run, not how they are documented or assumed to run.

With that view in place, agencies can:

• Monitor control performance in near real time
• Detect control violations and anomalies as they occur
• Identify root causes of audit findings across processes such as procure to pay
• Prioritize high risk transactions for faster intervention

The initial focus is accounts payable, where the concentration of improper payment risk tends to be highest. The same approach extends to grants, travel, time and labor, and other financial and operational workflows.

Strengthening the second line of defense

The solution is grounded in a familiar internal controls concept: the three lines of defense. The first line owns and runs the controls. The second line oversees and monitors them. The third line, internal audit, provides independent assurance.

In most agencies, the second line is the weakest, in part because it has historically had to rely on the same retrospective sampling and reporting as audit itself. Celonis changes that math. When the second line can see how transactions actually flow through systems and where controls are followed or skipped, it can intervene earlier. Audit teams get cleaner data and clearer leads. Program leaders get a defensible view of where their risk actually sits.

Learn more: Celonis and Deloitte Launch New Solution to Modernize SOX and Internal Controls

Why the win matters

Agencies face steady pressure to reduce improper payments, modernize legacy systems, and show measurable returns on technology spend. Federal priorities shift, but the core ask is consistent. It is to deliver more with less, and prove it.

“The Innovation Challenge is about recognizing solutions that can scale across government and deliver real results,” said Ann Ebberts, AGA CEO. “Celonis demonstrated a clear ability to help agencies simplify complex audit challenges and strengthen accountability, by moving from a reactive posture to a proactive approach to addressing improper payments and fraud.”

The recognition also reinforces a point Celonis has been making across the federal community this year; operational context is the critical layer for Enterprise AI in government. Without the ground truth of an organization’s operational reality — no AI agent can be trusted to make reliable real-time decisions and take actions that effectively drive business outcomes.

When processes are messy or invisible, AI inherits the mess. When processes are visible and measurable, AI has something to act on. That is what makes audit and controls a strong place to start. The transactional data is already there, the outcomes already get measured by oversight bodies, and the wins show up in weeks rather than budget cycles.

“Thank you to AGA for the opportunity to present at TTS and showcase this work. We are excited to continue sharing an approach that we believe can make a meaningful difference for government,” said Sairah Ijaz, Managing Director, U.S. Federal Civilian at Celonis. “Having served as a CIO in government, I understand firsthand the challenges agencies face and the need for solutions that deliver meaningful impact.”

Where to start

Agencies do not need a new strategy or a new budget cycle to begin. The most useful first step is to pick one workflow with known control concerns, often accounts payable, grants disbursement, or travel, and stand up a digital twin of operations using the agency’s own data. From there, the work becomes specific. You reroute exceptions, drain old backlogs, monitor the controls that matter, and let audit teams focus on the cases that need human judgment.

Context is the difference between AI as a productivity hack and real, game-changing Enterprise AI. Our 2026 AGA Innovation Challenge win is one more sign that government financial management is embracing that idea.