Singapore tasks agentic AI for trusted and improved government services

As governments worldwide struggle to meet rising citizen expectations, Singapore is exploring Agentic AI (artificial intelligence) to deliver faster, smarter, and more responsive public services, all while safeguarding public trust. 
 
“Singapore is using technology not for technology’s sake, but to help communities, families, and individuals thrive and prosper,” said ServiceNow’s Vice President of Global Public Sector, Casey Coleman.  

She was speaking to GovInsider on the sidelines of the ServiceNow Public Sector Forum in Singapore, where more than 400 government leaders gathered to explore how Agentic AI could close the gap between citizen expectations and service delivery. 

Coleman noted that Agentic AI must be seen through the lens of rising citizen expectations.  

“Both the opportunities and challenges in public service with Agentic AI is going to help us in every way, to accelerate the delivery of services, unlock value from legacy data systems, and reduce manual processes to deliver on the expectations of the public,” she said. 

Breaking down silos through cross agency collaboration 

Citizens just want seamless services from the government. Yet the reality falls short: the average citizen query still takes nearly five days to resolve. 

ServiceNow reserach reveals that nearly half of Singapore citizens (47 per cent) say “serve me quickly” is their top demand, while 45 per cent want to avoid being transferred, and 32 per cent want frontline officers empowered to resolve their issue.  

Coleman points to Agentic AI filling this persistent gap between expectations and reality. 

However, she highlights that a major hurdle in Agentic AI deployment was the “enormous complexity” of different data systems, standards, and rules across the administration. 

“Everything in government is done in consensus so that makes it very complex. The ability to cut across that, reduce complexity, and speed up the time to reach decisions and deliver services is what we are seeking to help to do,” she explained.  

In Singapore, the push towards agentic AI is being tested in practical ways to reimagine how citizens engage with government services. ServiceNow has introduced the AI Control Tower, a central intelligence hub that connects various AI initiatives within an organisation to its core services and technology.  

Taking the journey of a jobseeker, the AI Control Tower could automatically surface complementary employment services from different public agencies – like benefits and grants – within a single, seamless, employment portal powered by Agentic AI. 

Drawing on her experience as a former Chief Information Officer of the General Services Administration agency in the United States, Coleman expounds on the agility of commercial AI platforms to be updated, thus circumventing the challenges associated with maintaining legacy systems. 

“Our role is about ultimately improving the employee and citizen experience with tools that automate workflows and connect different siloed data sources, to help give people time back to do their best work,” she explained. 

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Unlocking intelligent workflows 

Coleman sees the friction in government workflows as one of the biggest opportunities for Agentic AI. By automating repetitive tasks and surfacing insights instantly, AI agents can free public servants to focus on higher value tasks. 

ServiceNow’s VP and GM for Global Public Sector & Regulated Markets, Andrej Danko, argued that this shift requires not only technology but also change management processes to help governments redesign processes end-to-end.  

“Who wants to wait for information or service to be delivered? It can be delivered autonomously, and agentic is the way we can reimagine the service delivery now,” Danko said. 

Referencing work permit applications in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), he raised the complexity of automating such processes that involved numerous interdependencies and data access. 
 
“It's up to the government organisations to architect and test an agentic workflow to eventually deliver the service in a seamless fashion... But it's the change management that needs to go from todays to tomorrow's world that we need to think through together,” he explained. 

Coleman agreed and added that the public sector is still in the “early days” of intelligent automation, and that would take government service delivery on an unprecedented “curve of improvement”. 

“It's hard for us to even think about a world where it's just workflows but that's really what we're going to be moving towards. It's going to be intelligent workflows that have data right at hand and are not tied to the old way of doing things,” she said. 

Building secure and trusted systems 

Even as governments look to harness Agentic AI for efficiency, trust remains the currency of adoption. Coleman warned that without robust security and governance, AI adoption risks eroding public trust. Security must be designed into every layer – from code base to data handling to employee awareness – with a human always in the loop. 

However, the pressure to innovate often collides with governance requirements. Many agencies lack a centralised AI authority, making it difficult to balance scale with oversight. In fact, a recent ServiceNow study found that Singaporean enterprise leaders are most likely to cite an AI governance deficit (15 per cent) as their top barrier to getting value from AI.  

To help address this, ServiceNow offers its AI CoE (Centre of Excellence) solution that helps public agencies bridge these gaps between scaling and risks across five domains – inventory, strategy, governance, implementation, and value. 

“Any agency leveraging the ServiceNow AI platform is able to connect with any AI [providers]... That is our vision to help organisations, especially those who are involved in driving transformation, to be able to have a stranglehold of all things AI that happens in your respective agency,” said James Fong, Solution Manager at ServiceNow. 

Coleman closed with a reminder for public sector leaders in Singapore, where she reinforced the role of public trust as one of the most important factors of successful government service.  

“The key thing that public servants are responsible for is protecting and safeguarding the public trust and what the public expects of them. That's a key value for ServiceNow at the centre of the work that we do.” 

By combining intelligent workflows with robust trust frameworks, Singapore can show how Agentic AI can enable governments to meet rising citizen expectations for speed, clarity, and empowerment, while preserving public confidence.