ACUS recommends strategies for more effective collaboration between levels of government.
When federal agencies administer federal programs, they rarely act alone. Across a wide range of policy areas—from environmental protection and financial regulation, to health care and homeland security—federal statutes create administrative partnerships between federal agencies and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments (SLTTGs).
For example, the U.S. Army collaborates with state and local environmental agencies when constructing water navigation projects. Under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation serves as the primary federal supervisor of the state-chartered banks and savings institutions that are not members of the Federal Reserve System. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration pursues enforcement under the Controlled Substances Act with hundreds of state and local task forces whose members can be deputized as federal agents and may share in forfeited drug proceeds.
Partnerships between federal agencies and SLTTGs not only are a routine feature of modern governance, they also frequently generate national headlines during disaster recovery efforts, public health emergencies, infrastructure failures, and immigration enforcement disputes. Despite the importance of these government-to-government relationships, there has been little systematic study of just how prolific federal-SLTTG partnerships are or how they work in practice.
In a report to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), we explored how federal agencies collaborate with SLTTGs. We examined the extent to which current statutory law provides for federal-SLTTG partnerships and conducted extensive qualitative analyses to understand how federal agencies and their SLTTG partners navigate their statutory responsibilities on a daily basis. Using the insights from our report, we worked with ACUS to develop Recommendation 2026-4, adopted on January 21, 2026, to provide a general framework for federal agencies to collaborate more effectively with SLTTGs in a broad range of contexts.
Our work highlights several underappreciated aspects of federal administration. Statutory law often requires federal agencies to engage simultaneously with multiple SLTTG actors—sometimes within the same program and sometimes across overlapping programs. These layered partnerships complicate policy implementation in ways that are not immediately apparent from the statutes themselves, particularly when different partners operate under different legal authorities and institutional rules. Both federal agencies and SLTTGs the importance of people and not just the law—in facilitating collaboration during federal program implementation. In practice, successful collaboration often turns as much on trust, communication, and institutional relationships as it does on formal legal mandates.
To understand the scope of statutorily constructed federal–SLTTG collaboration, we conducted a full-text analysis of the U.S. Code, examining more than 3.7 million sentences across the Code’s 53 titles. We found statutory provisions structuring partnerships with SLTTGs throughout the Code and across a wide range of partners and policy areas.
Our analysis revealed that federal agencies manage portfolios of government-to-government relationships across regulatory, enforcement, benefits, and infrastructure programs. About 60 percent of statutory directives involve federal-state partnerships, 30 percent localities, 12 percent tribal governments, and the remainder territories. Federal statutes assign a wide range of responsibilities to these partnerships, including administering programs, sharing information, implementing regulatory requirements, and distributing federal funds.
These findings illustrate that government-to-government collaboration is a routine requirement for federal administration rather than an exceptional one. This underappreciated aspect of governance adds complexity to the already monumental task federal agencies face when balancing legal responsibilities, organizational goals, and accountability in the administrative process. Federal agencies must think of their partnerships with SLTTGs as part of an integrated system. Because legal frameworks rarely contemplate this integration, however, federal agencies and their SLTTG partners face growing frustrations in their good-faith efforts to administer statutes in a fair, efficient, and effective manner.
To understand these frustrations, we conducted more than 60 interviews with federal agencies, SLTTGs, and those who represent them; administered a survey of agency officials; hosted a listening session for tribal governments; and published a request for information in the Federal Register. Our qualitative research revealed three commonalities across all programs that involve federal–SLTTG collaboration: misunderstandings, perfunctory engagement, and tacit partnership practices generate frustrations in implementation.
A profound misunderstanding persists about the role and status of federal–SLTTG partnerships across both the legal and policy domains. Rather than viewing these relationships as government-to-government collaboration across a portfolio of programs and agencies, federal agencies and their SLTTG partners often approach them as conditional arrangements tied to individual programs or policy initiatives.
As a result, federal–SLTTG engagement often occurs only after partners have already made decisions independently about how they will implement their statutory duties. Interactions between the partners thus become a series of “box-checking” exercises often tied to funding, compliance, or procedural requirements, which can result in agencies’ failure to adapt to their environments and, ultimately, hinder implementation.
These misunderstandings and perfunctory engagement affect federal–SLTTG collaboration. Key aspects of the policy process—including who has decisional authority, what information partners can share, and how partners will adapt to changing legal, political, institutional, and policy environments—often remain unarticulated. As a result, federal agencies and their SLTTG partners operate based on unwritten norms and evolving practices, making administrative consistency difficult—if not impossible—even within the same federal program.
These commonalities paint a bleak picture. Yet our qualitative research revealed that successful collaborations were just as prevalent as dysfunctional ones. Drawing on these successes, as well as scholarship on partnerships and intergovernmental programs, we identified several practices that help agencies collaborate more effectively with SLTTGs.
Across partnerships involving vastly different federal agencies, SLTTGs, and policy missions, the most successful federal-SLTTG collaborations exhibit the same traits.
The most successful collaborations bridge differential perspectives by identifying common objectives, strategically planning together to achieve them, and investing in communication strategies to build mutual understanding. Doing so requires personal engagement and relationship building between federal and SLTTG administrators, as well as identified points of contact and clear delineation of responsibilities across all stages of the administrative process.
Ultimately, successful collaboration depends on federal agencies and their SLTTG partners holding each other accountable for the execution of their responsibilities. In particular, this collaboration requires transparent—and sometimes formal—agreement on processes for determining success, evaluating performance, and resolving disputes.
In sum, federal administration is increasingly interdependent. Federal agencies operate within a networked governance system in which SLTTGs serve as critical implementation partners whose decisions shape the effectiveness of federal programs. Our study and ACUS’s recommendations offer agencies a structured way to think about collaboration with SLTTGs—one that acknowledges legal constraints while promoting communication, transparency, and mutual accountability—to help ensure that federal programs are implemented fairly, consistently, and effectively across diverse jurisdictions.
As federal statutes continue to rely on shared governance arrangements, developing intentional and well-structured approaches to intergovernmental collaboration will remain essential to effective federal administration.
The views expressed in this essay are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Administrative Conference of the United States or the federal government.
This essay is part of a series titled, “Advancing Best Practices in Federal Administration.”
