Salesforce Agentforce for Public Sector woos government users

In recent days, Salesforce released Agentforce for Public Sector for government users and testing tools and benchmarks for all customers to use when developing AI agents.

Agentforce for Public Sector customizes Salesforce's AI agent platform to take on everyday tasks for state, local and federal governments. Those tasks might include automating permit applications, enforcing compliance, recruiting talent and fielding complaints from the public.

The city of Kyle, Texas, was an early adopter of Agentforce for Public Sector, using it to set up a 311 agent for constituents to report to the municipality non-emergency public hazards or nuisances, including downed signs, graffiti and potholes.

The Austin suburb, which claims to be the birthplace of the fajita, has had a hard time keeping up with population growth in recent years as tech companies such as Oracle, Tesla, Apple and others establish campuses in the area. Its population has nearly tripled since 2010 to more than 73,000 residents in 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S., along with its Austin neighbors Georgetown and Leander.

The city decided to use agentic AI tools to help handle the growing 311 service desk, partly because it could scale along with the population, said Jesse Elizondo, Kyle's assistant city manager.

"I think a lot of small and midsize cities don't really think about -- as they continue to grow -- are you buying a system that works just for today, or are you buying a system that can keep up with you when your population doubles?" Elizondo said. "And not just keep up with what you bought it to do, but [also] keep up with modern technology [such as] AI."

The rollout of agentic AI features in Agentforce for Public Sector has begun, and Salesforce plans to release more features through October. Eventually, agents will support the streamlining of government hiring by scheduling interviews with job candidates, summarizing interview notes, creating offer letters and automating other processes that presently consume "a lot of calories," said Nasi Jazayeri, Salesforce executive vice president and general manager of Public Sector, Industries Cloud.

Salesforce's government customers want to keep humans in the loop, especially during critical processes such as hiring. The agents are designed to assist from initial recruitment to hiring but will remain under tight supervision as they perform actions.

"From phase one all the way to the offer letter … in the [hiring] journey, we try to make sure that agents are involved [but] the humans can look at it and tell the agent to take the next step, take the actions," Jazayeri said.