Public sector organizations are beginning to move AI beyond pilots and into operational environments, with early deployments focusing on frontline support, citizen engagement, and workforce productivity.
Speaking during a panel at the opening of Salesforce’s new London AI Center, representatives from policing and the National Trust discussed how agentic AI is being applied in public-facing and public-benefit services, while also acknowledging the need for human oversight and governance.
The discussion comes as Salesforce positions its Agentforce platform as a way for organizations to deploy AI agents across customer, employee and citizen service workflows. However, the public sector use cases highlighted during the panel suggest that adoption is not simply a matter of automating processes. Leaders need to carefully define where AI can support staff with improved access to information while maintaining consistent service standards.
AI as a Support Tool for Frontline Policing
One of the clearest examples came from Claire Hammond, Temp Detective Chief Superintendent at the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection (NCVPP), who discussed the development of “Ask Em”, an AI agent designed to support frontline officers dealing with violence against women and girls and public protection cases.
Hammond said the challenge for policing was how to make specialist knowledge available to officers at the point of need, particularly when they may be working alone or outside regular hours.
“What you find in policing is at 3 o’clock in the morning when you’re sat in a lonely room… you’re faced with a problem and there’s no one to ask,” she said.
Ask Em is intended to act as a source of guidance, giving officers access to the right information and language when dealing with victims. “Ask Em has become that person,” Hammond said.
“We’re putting in all of the tools that they need, the frontline officers, but in an empathetic language, so that they get the right language back for how to speak to a victim and what they should do.”
For Hammond, the purpose is to improve consistency across forces and situations.
“Victims can expect a level of service for all points, and no matter what time of day it is, or which station you go to, you get the same answer.”
That consistency is a central challenge for public services, where outcomes can depend on the experience, confidence, or availability of individual staff members. AI agents, when carefully constrained and governed, may help reduce those gaps by making approved guidance easier to access.
Human Oversight Remains Central
Hammond was clear that policing remains cautious about where AI should and should not be used, particularly where decisions may be scrutinized in court or have safeguarding implications.
“In policing we’re culturally quite risk-averse. We very much like a human to make that final decision.”
That is especially important in public protection, where decisions can involve risk and vulnerability.
“We work on something called the National Decision Making Model, so that process will never be replaced in the sense of there’s always going to be a human… at the center of that.”
Hammond said the assurance model for Ask Em depends on controlling the information the system can draw from, adding that the system can help gather and compare information, but should not take over decisions that require human judgment.
“We’re not going to get it to make risk decisions. And we’re not going to get it to make safeguarding decisions, because people need to see the wider picture.”
That distinction is likely to become increasingly important as public sector organizations consider agentic AI. The strongest early use cases may be where it supports workers with information, consistency and process navigation.
The National Trust Explores AI for Personalization and Public Engagement
Jon Townsend, Chief Information Officer for the National Trust, also discussed how AI could support large-scale engagement with members, visitors and the wider public.
Although the National Trust is not a government body, it operates in a public-benefit context, managing heritage, environmental, and cultural assets.
“The challenge that we have is, to reach all of those people and audiences… that involves us needing to think about how do we deliver that sort of hyper-personalized messaging for people at scale,” Townsend said.
Agentic AI is expected to play a role in that engagement, particularly where people want to interact with the organization in a more conversational way.