The Open Policy Agent (OPA) is a general-purpose policy engine that enables organizations to define policies in code, leveraging a high-level declarative language called Rego. OPA allows for uniform policy definitions and enforcement across disparate services and environments, reducing the need for duplicated logic and improving compliance governance. By implementing policies and enforcing them in the developer's workflow, organizations can stop violations as they are created, rather than relying on late-stage auditing or manual reviews.