A landmark global study by IDC, commissioned by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA, has confirmed what many in government circles have long suspected: agentic AI is no longer on the horizon — it is becoming the primary engine of public sector digital transformation. Titled Building a Sovereign AI Foundation for Government, the report surveyed over 250 senior decision-makers across North America, EMEA, APJ and LATAM, revealing an industry at a decisive inflection point.
From Experimentation to Full-Scale Implementation
The research signals a clear and accelerating shift in government thinking. A striking 71% of government executives believe that agentic systems will significantly accelerate AI adoption within their organisations. More concretely, 51% of leaders plan to invest in agentic AI within the next 12 to 18 months — marking a transition from cautious pilot programmes to decisive, organisation-wide deployment.
This momentum reflects growing confidence that autonomous AI agents can address long-standing operational challenges in government — from processing high volumes of citizen requests to streamlining complex, multi-step administrative workflows that have historically required significant human intervention.
"Governments worldwide are no longer asking whether to adopt AI — they're asking how to do it at scale, securely and on their own terms."— Nicole Jefferson, Vice President of Global Government Affairs, Dell Technologies
The Skills Gap: Agentic AI as a Workforce Multiplier
A key driver behind government urgency is the widening gap between the speed of technological change and the capacity of public sector workforces to keep pace. According to the study, 66% of public sector organisations report that this divide is growing. Technology is evolving faster than hiring, training, and upskilling programmes can address.
This has reframed how governments perceive agentic AI — not as a luxury or an efficiency upgrade, but as a necessary workforce multiplier. Autonomous agents can handle repeatable, high-volume tasks — processing permits, responding to citizen queries, analysing procurement documents — freeing skilled human staff to focus on complex judgement-driven work. In environments where headcount growth is politically and fiscally constrained, this multiplier effect carries profound strategic value.
Public-Private Collaboration: A Non-Negotiable
Navigating the complexity of large-scale AI deployment is not something governments can do alone. The IDC report makes this unambiguous: nearly 80% of respondents agree that public-private collaboration is essential for successful implementation. Government agencies are partnering with industry leaders like Dell Technologies and NVIDIA to deploy scalable, secure AI infrastructure capable of handling mission-critical workloads.
These partnerships are not simply vendor relationships — they represent a co-development model where private sector expertise in AI infrastructure, model deployment, and data security is paired with the domain knowledge and accountability structures that only governments possess. The result is AI deployment that is both technically robust and institutionally trusted.
"Governments will only move at scale if they have confidence in the security and infrastructure foundations underpinning these systems."— Alan Webber, Program Vice President, National Security, Defence & Intelligence, IDC
What This Means for the Future of Government Services
The implications of widespread agentic AI adoption in government are substantial. For citizens, it means faster, more personalised service delivery — eligibility determinations made in real time, permit applications processed without days-long waits, and multilingual communication that removes barriers for non-native speakers. For government operations, it means the ability to deliver more targeted, outcome-driven services at lower unit cost.
Crucially, the transition is not simply about automating existing processes faster. As the broader discourse around public sector AI makes clear, the goal is to redesign services around citizen outcomes — not to replicate analogue bureaucracy in digital form. Agentic AI, by operating across departmental silos and managing end-to-end workflows, enables precisely this kind of structural reinvention.
The IDC findings represent not just a snapshot of intent, but a signal of irreversible direction. Governments that move decisively — investing in sovereign infrastructure, forging the right industry partnerships, and deploying agents responsibly — will be positioned to lead in the next era of public administration.