States Test AI Agents to Speed Up Government Services

Several state governments plan to shift from using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to using agentic AI, according to a professional association representing state chief information officers and technology executives and managers.

This process is underway in several states, though it is likely to be gradual, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) said in a report released Tuesday (March 3).

“While states have started scaling GenAI relatively fast, giving AI agents autonomy is something that may need to happen more slowly,” the report said. “States are faced with the realities of governance, risk, legacy systems and workforce resistance to change.”

At the same time, states are “likely to find plenty of business cases for these advanced AI tools,” the report said. It noted that there are needs for agentic AI to help citizens navigate websites and to streamline government workers’ processes that are currently inefficient.

The report identified several examples of states that are in the process of adopting agentic AI solutions. Alaska is considering adding “dynamic form filling, document retrieval and eligibility checks” to the myAlaska portal; Tennessee is seeking an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution with agentic AI capabilities that can “detect anomalies in payroll, flag procurement bottlenecks, surface compliance risks or even identify potential fraud”; and the Texas Department of Transportation is piloting the integration of agentic capabilities with its complaint management system to improve case assignment, workload balancing and issue resolution, according to the report.

“Given the workforce shortages in state government around the retirements of the baby boomer generation, and the demands put on government as our population ages, augmenting state government work with agentic AI can be a real solution to working through backlogs and getting services in the hands of citizens faster,” NASCIO said in the report.

PYMNTS reported Tuesday that the federal government is steadily accelerating its adoption of AI use cases.

FedScoop reported that the most recent consolidated federal inventory publicly reported in 2024 documented 2,133 publicly reportable uses cases across 41 federal agencies.

Google Public Sector research found that nearly 90% of federal government IT leaders and influencers said their agencies are planning to use or are already using AI.

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