Summit applies deep experience in economics, predictive modeling, automation, and analytics to implement quantitative solutions for a wide range of clients, including federal agencies seeking to streamline credit operations and increase efficiency. Our mission is centered on delivering data-driven solutions to help make government effective for the public good.
Summit remains dedicated to staying ahead of the curve in federal lending by leveraging the expertise of our finance and data science professionals. We are constantly exploring new ways to drive efficiency, reduce risk, and deliver smarter, faster solutions through new technologies. With a focus on continuous improvement, we’re the trusted partner you need to provide solutions for your challenges. Learn more about us on our website.
Summit Welcomes New Board Member Ian McCulloh, AI Portfolio Director for Johns Hopkins University
Ian McCulloh, PhD, joined the Summit advisory board in February 2025. McCulloh has more than 35 years of experience across government, academia, and industry with a focus on artificial intelligence, data science, and statistical consulting. He is the AI portfolio director for Johns Hopkins University continuing and executive education and holds joint faculty positions in computer science and public health. Learn more about McCulloh on the Summit website.
Transitions: Managing Change While Maintaining Stability
Across government, people are constantly working to implement change on a massive scale. Government leadership transitions often make these efforts only more challenging and complex. Teams must ensure the continuity of government programs and services while simultaneously supporting new leaders and adapting organizations to new policy priorities.
We can help prepare for inevitable transitions by balancing the desire for stability and belonging with the mandate for change. While transition requires leaders to guide change and help teams implement new and different policies, leaders must also focus on team stability, the psychological foundation for high performance. Read more on the Summit blog.
Sarah Cunningham, a partner at Summit, shares her insights on navigating policy changes, reflecting on her extensive experience across the federal, state, and local levels. She emphasizes the importance of effective change management—highlighting the need for clear communication, collaboration, and continuous feedback to successfully implement new policies.
Samuel Seong, a newly appointed partner at Summit, discusses key trends and challenges in the federal credit landscape. With ongoing attention to administrative costs and efficiency, Seong shares his insights on how programs can streamline operations while maintaining their impact.
Missed an episode? Listen to past Federal Credit Fridays here.
About Federal Credit Fridays: The U.S. government is one of the largest lenders and credit guarantors on earth. Its portfolio is estimated at over $3.6 trillion, as measured by loan assets and the face value of loan guarantees. The government uses credit for a wide variety of policy missions, including housing, higher education, small businesses, rural and urban economic development, infrastructure, and export promotion, among others. This podcast will familiarize you with the vast world of federal credit, and we hope that you’ll learn about similarities and differences between these programs as well as the importance of their work to achieving policy missions within the framework of public-private collaboration.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) was engaged in a multiyear effort to modernize and consolidate its systems for administering grant and loan programs when new requirements created an urgency to enhance and extend the solution. Summit’s team performed an assessment of the processes, practices, and resources that enabled the product owners supporting IT modernization within RUS to identify and remove impediments to the consistent execution of product owner duties program-wide.
Government-sponsored enterprises are using software from third-party vendors more often these days. This software can contain artificial intelligence or machine learning models with similar, but different, risks than models evaluated by traditional model risk management (MRM) practices. With the support of the Summit team, the MRM team established a process to quickly understand risks associated with AI/ML models contained within third-party software.
Survey data quality is crucial for any agency responsible for official statistics. At the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), improving survey data quality required hundreds of NASS analysts to spend hours hand-correcting survey responses and filling in missing data for more than 200 annual surveys. Summit designed, developed, and implemented Imputation, Deterministic Edits, And Logic (IDEAL), an enterprise-wide application that automates the editing and imputation of survey responses as part of a once-in-a-generation modernization effort.
Curious about our other case studies? See more here.
❄️Summit Week 2025 and Holiday Party❄️
At the end of January, Summiteers from across the United States gathered at our headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a week of in-person collaboration, team building, and training. (There was also time for a little fun!) The week was capped off with a gorgeous holiday party overlooking the Potomac, where everyone dressed to impress.
Spotlight on:
Federal Infrastructure Finance and Loans and Grants
Summit’s team of professionals have experience in infrastructure, financing, and financial assistance, delivering data-driven solutions to help customers at all stages of a program’s life cycle. Summit provides the data-driven intelligence our clients need to develop, assess, and manage their programs. From infrastructure financing to mortgage finance and recovery grant programs to mission-oriented finance, our team offers quantitative and qualitative analyses and tools to federal agencies to deploy and effectively manage billions of dollars in federal assistance in alignment with their intended policy purpose. Learn more here.
Summit Named to OrangeSlices AI Vanguard FedCiv 250
We’re excited to be part of the 2025 OrangeSlices AI Vanguard FedCiv 250, celebrating firms that excel in securing and executing federal contracts. Summit founding partner Albert Lee had a wonderful time at the FedCiv 250 event. Socializing with so many forward-thinking professionals and thought leaders in the federal space was a great way to start 2025.
The discussions on emerging trends and opportunities for FY 2025 were both insightful and energizing, leaving us motivated to continue refining and enhancing our services. Here’s to more meaningful conversations and collaborations as we shape the future of federal work!
Spotlight on:
Data Science
Summit’s team of data scientists, econometricians, and statisticians provide clients with the information they need to make informed decisions. To ensure that these decisions are data-driven to the core, we utilize a variety of tools, such as data processing systems, econometric models, and tailored business intelligence programs.
The client-oriented solutions we provide with these tools rely squarely on the diverse expertise of our team in areas like econometrics, interactive data visualization, economic and statistical modeling, and web-based dashboards. Innovative technologies such as the R programming language and the React web development stack serve to further the possibilities of our solutions, allowing us to provide services that are highly analytic and accessible.
Summit offers policymakers a full range of data solutions. We build infrastructures that integrate data, design models with stochastics and simulation capabilities, harness the speed and security of cloud-based storage and computing environments, and review results from web applications with dashboarding capabilities. Learn more here.
White Paper: Fair Value Accounting in Federal Credit
In 2025, the need for accurate and transparent financial reporting is more critical than ever. The Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 established present value cost estimates for credit programs in the federal budget, with a goal to better reflect the lifetime cost of loans and guarantees and improve policymakers’ allocation of budgetary resources.
In today’s environment, with more than $36.5 trillion in federal debt and over 14% of the annual budget going to interest costs, people are looking very closely at all aspects of federal spending. The question of fair value accounting practices for federal credit has become prevalent once again, driven by the demand for greater accountability and precision in the management of public funds. Download the full paper on the Summit blog.
Spotlight on:
Risk Analytics, Modeling, and Statistics
Summit applies cutting-edge statistical and econometric techniques to solve our clients’ most complex challenges in a variety of topic areas. Examples include forecasting mortgage delinquency, prepayment, loss, and associated net present value under different economic scenarios; implementing econometric and statistical matching techniques used to evaluate potential disparate treatment in loan pricing, credit decisions, redlining, and property valuation; and identifying and mitigating spurious or missing data, including imputation methods that allow for analysis even with incomplete datasets.
Our team of industry leaders, economists, data scientists, and statisticians work in close collaboration with our clients every step of the way. We routinely collaborate with leading academics to provide technical expertise in cutting-edge statistical methods and subject-matter expertise in key topic areas. Learn more here.
Conferences & Partnerships
Summit Partner Speaks at AGA National Leadership Training 2025
On February 19, Summit partner Sarah Cunningham spoke at a session called “New Administration Brings New Budgeting.” Cunningham also moderated a panel later that day featuring Nick Hart of Data Foundation and Jon Stehle of AGA.
Optimizing Federal Lending Programs for Cost-Efficiency and Resilience
Cutting waste in federal spending is big news lately. The new administration’s focus on efficiency and cost control is impacting every program across the government, including federal lending programs for energy dominance, infrastructure, and supply chain near-shoring. However, federal loan programs that serve these missions have considerable flexibility to modify their loan terms and achieve real cost savings without having to shut their programs down entirely. Read more on the Summit blog.
Spotlight on:
Qualitative Research
Qualitative methods are a crucial component of our work to deliver data-driven intelligence to our clients. Our experienced qualitative researchers are experts at analyzing and codifying qualitative information and presenting it to clients in a clear, concise manner to help them evaluate and improve their policies and programs. Areas of expertise include interviews and focus groups to collect information firsthand from relevant populations, providing detailed, nuanced answers to research questions; environmental scans and literature reviews to glean an understanding of the current state of the field, best practices, and common challenges to inform our recommendations; and process maps, logic models, and consumer experience maps to identify challenges and pain points in current processes or desired outcomes. Learn more here.
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