Gartner: Governments to Adopt AI Agents
Gartner forecasts that by 2028 at least 80% of governments worldwide will deploy AI agents to automate routine decision‑making—covering not just citizen chatbots but internal triage, documentation and knowledge transfer. That projection implies rapid shifts in staffing models, training needs, and the tooling that makes institutional knowledge accessible. (it-online.co.za)
Gartner’s projection is backed by a survey of 138 respondents from government organisations conducted between July and September 2025, which found 41% reporting siloed strategies and 31% citing legacy systems as primary barriers to digital adoption. (gartner.com) The firm calls for a governance shift “from models to decisions,” promoting decision intelligence (DI) that governs how decisions are designed, executed, monitored and audited rather than focusing only on models, data and algorithms. (gartner.com) Gartner reports that 39% of survey respondents identified improved service and citizen satisfaction as the primary reason to invest in mechanisms that build decision trust and explainability. (gartner.com) The research predicts that by 2029, 70% of government agencies will require explainable AI (XAI) and human‑in‑the‑loop (HITL) controls for all automated decisions that affect citizen service delivery. (gartner.com) Daniel Nieto, Gartner senior director analyst, highlights the rise of multimodal, conversational and agentic systems as expanding the scope of what public organisations can automate and anticipate, while explicitly warning that fragmentation remains a persistent barrier. (gartner.com) Gartner frames the move to decision‑centric operating models as a governance and operational change—stressing that DI must make decision pathways “explicit and auditable,” a requirement that predicates investment in auditable workflows and decision‑monitoring controls. (gartner.com)
