The public sector agentic era: Trading pilots for transformation

The agentic era marks a significant paradigm shift for the government. Technology leaders are no longer asking if AI can be implemented or what AI can do, but rather how fast it can be deployed to solve the nation’s most pressing challenges. From federal agency headquarters to local city halls, all levels of government are answering this question by using AI to transform critical operations. Use cases range from accelerating drug approval processes, to unifying previously siloed IT operations, to managing logistics and public safety as the City of Los Angeles prepares to host several major events over the next three years, to creating more personalized learning journeys for health care students. 

“Through our research, we’ve found that public sector organizations, in particular, have been early and ambitious adopters of AI and agents,” said Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector, at Google Cloud Next. “According to our Return on Investment of AI in the Public Sector report, 55% of public sector leaders say that their organizations are already using AI agents, 42% report that their organization has deployed more than 10 agents, and nearly half, 46%, say their productivity has at least doubled thanks to AI agents.” This measurable ROI is shifting the mission focus from simple task completion to delivering faster, more personalized and equitable outcomes for the public.

By embracing the agentic era and leveraging a purpose-built unified AI stack as a force multiplier — rather than the fragmented legacy ‘Gov clouds’ of the past — government leaders are gaining a commercial-grade path to innovation that ensures security and governance are built-in, not bolted on. 

AI as an accelerator

In 2025, the Trump Administration released its AI Action Plan emphasizing the importance of accelerating AI adoption in government. “Transformative use of AI,” the plan states, “can help deliver the highly responsive government the American people expect and deserve.” In practice, AI serves as an accelerator by automating the “administrative toil” that often slows public sector missions.

First, agencies are turning to AI to alleviate the burden of repetitive, low-level tasks, freeing employees for more advanced, higher-level thinking. In other words, AI helps the government workforce shift from being information or data gatherers to decision makers.

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), for example, manages the end-to-end U.S. defense global supply chain — a monumental lift in terms of scale and complexity. Partnering with Google Public Sector, the agency launched the DLA Enterprise Platform as a foundation for AI-driven modernization.

Now, with the help of AI, “You don't have to collect different spreadsheets like we did before, in terms of what is the Air Force ordering, what's been consumed,” said Adarryl Roberts, DLA Chief Information Officer. “We automated that … so that they can actually focus on the decision that has to be made based on that information versus spending hours, days or weeks gathering the information.” 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is similarly working to accelerate critical decision-making to as close to real time as possible. The agency’s vision, said Jeremy Walsh, the agency’s Chief AI Officer, is to transform the FDA into a “real-time regulatory environment.” As a document-based organization, drug approvals have typically taken around 10 years from start to finish, with a significant portion of time spent on tedious paperwork.

The timeline for filing review, for instance, is 60 days, and “it made sense when we had paper,” Walsh said. But now, with AI, “we’re going to get that down to a couple of hours.” Add together similar AI-powered time savings throughout the traditional decade-long approval process and suddenly 10 years is cut in half. 

“That's the story at the FDA,” Walsh summarized. “It's rapid utilization of AI to drive huge public health outcomes for the American public to be able to get things onto market faster … and to protect them when things do come on market.”

At the Department of Transportation (DOT), partnering with Google Public Sector has served as both an accelerator and a unifier. With numerous sub-departments within the agency, the DOT struggled with siloes causing inefficiencies. 

“The goal the secretary has mandated for us is to unify and strengthen the department. We call it OneDOT,” said Pavan Pidugu, DOT’s Chief Digital and Information Officer, of the effort to consolidate IT operations and infrastructure.  

In just 22 days, the DOT was able to deploy and migrate initial users to Google Workspace. Within 160 days, the entire department and 1 billion emails were migrated to the new environment, Pidugu said. 

“[Just] because we are the federal government doesn’t mean our projects have to be three to four years or longer,” Pidugu said. “We are the U.S. federal government, and why can’t we be the role models to the rest of the industry? … We ignited that spirit in the next project that we're working on, and the next project we're working on, to be able to beat that benchmark again.”

AI as a force multiplier

While many agencies use AI to compress timelines, the City of Los Angeles is using it to expand capacity. LA officials are preparing to host several major events in three years: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. Though the city already employs more than 27,500 people, scaling human capital to support these upcoming events simply isn’t feasible without technology.

“How do you empower 27,500 employees to handle this once-in-a-lifetime effort? The reality is, you need force multipliers,” said Ted Ross, Chief Information Officer for the City of Los Angeles. “You need tools like artificial intelligence, which don't replace our workforce, but amplify their ability to deliver.”

Leading up to the Olympics, LA is turning to AI to meet three preparedness goals: 

1. Get stuff built. While LA is a no-build host in terms of net-new buildings and infrastructure, the city will still be retrofitting and modifying existing venues. AI is a critical tool for smart construction planning, code compliance monitoring and more. 
2. Get stuff done. AI-powered tools act as connective tissue across the city’s enterprise, bridging the gap between disparate data and entrenched legacy processes. AI agents can manage entire business process workflows, simplifying complex tasks and enhancing the workforce’s ability to communicate with residents and visitors in multiple languages.
3. Get stuff moving. With massive crowds descending upon the city — spectators, media, officials from other nations — LA will use AI for real-time traffic optimization, public transit safety and autonomous fleet orchestration.

The City of Los Angeles is using AI to translate messages into multiple languages to better serve residents, and to build the technological foundation for future events during a highly complex and historically significant period of time.

“I can’t hire 15,000 more people. I need the tools to be able to facilitate [these] efforts,” Ross said. “That’s how we get LA built for the Olympics.” 

Building an AI-forward culture

Turning AI into a cornerstone of public sector operations is about people just as much as tools and solutions. AI success is built on workforce preparedness — do they know how to use new tools? Do they have access to training? Most importantly, are they open to and permitted to experiment?

“The technology really wasn’t the hard part,” said Sean Maday, Co-Founder and CTO of Game Plan Tech. “The harder part is that this is really a behavioral change inside the organization.” 

Such a change requires a “permission structure” that flows from the top down. When the workforce sees executive leadership embracing a new technology, it validates both its importance and their license to use it.

“Because of the intense pressure of what we're doing day to day [in the DLA], lives being maintained, particularly in our agency, folks don't like to trust something that they haven't seen,” Roberts said. “Part of this is creating that safe space, that decision space, where you allow some grace and allow that decision to fail early, learn and make that part of the process.”

Experimenting begins with evaluating the status quo, identifying areas for improvement and developing a plan. AI integration is an opportunity to prioritize business process improvement across an organization. If AI agents are intended to accelerate workflows, those workflows first need to be optimized. There’s little value in turbocharging an inefficient workflow.

“We started to do Lean Six Sigma training across our organizations, so people aren't just taking a tool and trying to hyper speed a Rube Goldberg 80-step complex process,” Ross said. “Let's sit down. Let's reevaluate it. Let's clean things up before we start to introduce advanced technologies.”

At Covista, the nation’s largest healthcare educator, AI training isn’t just part of workforce training — it’s being baked directly into the academic journey. The organization is partnering with Google Cloud to launch a comprehensive AI credentials program for healthcare students and practicing clinicians. In just the first week, 3,500 students signed up for the new AI credentials program, according to Camilla Sullivan, Vice President of Innovation and AI at Covista.

For both Covista staff and students, “this is a hands-on learning situation,” Sullivan said. “Every little thing we can do to support the student journey and increase their chance of success, AI gives us the opportunities to do things you couldn't even imagine just a few years ago.”

Ultimately, an AI-first culture hinges upon collaboration. Whether working across departments and agencies or with industry partners, the most effective path to successfully embracing the agentic era is collaborative. 

"AI is a 'go-as-a-group' conversation. You can run out there on your own, and then you'll have no organizational support, and your workforce hasn't made the change,” Ross said. “The real benefits are cross workforce." Simply stated, with AI, if you want to go far, go as a group.

Learn more about how Google Public Sector is bringing government organizations at all levels into the agentic era.