TL;DR 82% of constituents feel ignored by government digital services, largely because many departments are still running on 50-year-old legacy systems. This technical debt wastes roughly 30.6 million hours a week in the UK alone.
The Solution: Moving away from “siloed” tech to a Single Source of Truth. By using Slack as an Agentic Operating System, PubSec teams can use a conversational, mobile-friendly interface to manage everything from HR to IT without needing to raise constant support tickets.
The “Agent” Advantage: We leverage Agentforce technology to:
- Triage Case Work: Like identifying and scheduling pothole repairs via photo analysis and GPS.
- Manage Grants: Slashing processing times from months to weeks by automatically pulling data from multiple charities and trusts.
- Streamline Hiring: Using AI to surface the best candidates from thousands of applications, saving hundreds of hours for HR teams.
The Future: With only a small fraction of government entities currently on Salesforce, we expect a massive migration toward these AI-driven, “Agentic” models to meet modern constituent expectations.
The divide between public expectation and digital reality has reached a breaking point. According to the Salesforce Connected Government Report, a staggering 82% of constituents feel that their government does not prioritise the customer experience (Salesforce, 2024). While the private sector has spent the last decade perfecting frictionless, “one-click” interactions, the public sector (PubSec) is often found wading through a quagmire of legacy infrastructure.
In some departments, the core technology in use is often, let’s be honest, not shockingly over 50 years old. These “green-screen” systems and siloed databases do more than just slow down internal operations; they create a fundamental disconnect between the state and the citizen. When technology is this archaic, data stays trapped in departmental vacuums, leading to repetitive paperwork, long waiting times, and a general sense of frustration. To fix the experience for the constituent, we must first fix the operating system of the government.
What is Missing from PubSec?
The missing ingredient in modern public service is not just “new tech,” but connectivity. While connectivity is often dismissed as a corporate buzzword, in a PubSec context, it refers to the tangible benefits of an integrated “single source of truth.” When systems do not talk to one another, the cost is felt by everyone: the exhausted front-line team, the frustrated user, and the wider organisation struggling with budget cuts.
The scale of this inefficiency is quantifiable. It is estimated that 30.6 million hours a week are wasted across the UK public sector workforce due to systemic inefficiencies (Civil Service World, 2024). These hours are lost to manual data entry, “swivel-chairing” between incompatible software, and creating workarounds for legacy workflows that were never designed for the digital age.
Historically, government departments have attempted to bridge these gaps with rigid, monolithic Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. However, these often become “digital concrete” – hard to change, expensive to maintain, and requiring a formal IT support ticket for even the smallest adjustment. What PubSec truly needs is a secure, flexible operating system that empowers staff rather than hindering them.
The New Slack OS: The Command Centre for PubSec
The evolution of Slack from a messaging app to a comprehensive “Operating System” (OS) enhanced by Slack AI is a game-changer for the public sector. As Steve Hamrick, VP of Product Management at Salesforce, describes it, the goal is to make work “fast, easy and delightful” (Salesforce, 2025).
For a government worker, the Slack OS provides:
- Universal Accessibility: The ability to move seamlessly between mobile and desktop ensures that field workers, such as social workers or building inspectors, stay connected to the hub.
- Low-Code/No-Code Agility: Teams can build their own workflows. You no longer need to wait six months for a developer to automate a simple approval process.
- A Conversational Interface: Rather than navigating complex menus, users can simply ask Slack AI to find a policy document or summarise a long thread of case notes.
Slack is now being positioned as the “command centre” for Salesforce. By integrating these platforms, PubSec organisations can finally move away from fragmented tools and into a unified environment where all apps are connected in one conversational interface.
Expanding the Salesforce Ecosystem in Public Service
Salesforce has spent years refining a suite of products specifically tailored for the unique pressures of the public sector. This timeline of innovation has moved beyond simple CRM to include:
- Experience Cloud: Providing external engagement portals for citizens to track their own applications.
- Grant and Benefits Management: Streamlining the disbursement of vital funds.
- Public Health and Case Management: Ensuring vulnerable individuals do not fall through the cracks of a disjointed system.
- Facilities Ops and Licensing: Managing the physical and legal infrastructure of our cities with specialised AI for every task.
The Rise of the Agentic Organisation
The next frontier is the Agentic Organisation. This moves beyond simple automation to use “Agentforce” – autonomous digital agents capable of reasoning and executing complex tasks. At Performa, for example, we have developed specific accelerators for digital agents that are already transforming key service areas.For PubSec, these look like:
1. Case Triage: Road Maintenance
The state of UK roads is a frequent point of national contention; one might say our tarmac is crying out for a digital intervention. Imagine a constituent reporting a pothole. Instead of a static form, a Highway Agent engages them via Slack or a mobile portal:
- The Agent asks for a photograph and uses GPS coordinates to pinpoint the location.
- The reasoning engine analyses the image, comparing the pothole to the road’s centre lines to estimate size and depth.
- It then triages the report, automatically scheduling a repair crew based on priority and existing assignments, all while keeping the constituent updated in real-time.
2. Grant Management & Disbursements
Consider a healthcare trust identifying a patient who needs energy-saving home improvements. A Grants Agent can collect data from the trust, the non-profit, and third-party energy providers simultaneously. By using its reasoning engine to determine eligibility and priority, the Agent can allocate funds in weeks rather than months, removing the “paperwork wall” that often stops help from reaching those in need.
3. Candidate Qualification
Government entities often struggle with high staff turnover and a deluge of applications. An Agent can be deployed to surface only the most qualified candidates. In advanced stages, agents can even analyse unstructured data from applicant videos to identify the top five candidates based on job descriptions and call scripts. This saves hundreds of hours for underfunded HR teams, eliminating the need for expensive external consultancies.
A Future of Efficiency
All these processes can be overseen from the Agentic OS in Slack. There is no need to switch between dozens of tools; everything is handled within a conversational interface where knowledge is centralised.
We are on the cusp of a major shift. In the US, there are currently between 1,000 and 1,500 public-sector Salesforce (Salesforce, 2025) customers among nearly 100,000 total government entities (Census of Governments, 2026). However, as the “Agentic” model proves its worth, we predict these numbers will climb rapidly. The UK is set to mirror this trend as local and central government bodies seek to reclaim those 30.6 million wasted hours.
The transition from legacy “dead-end” tech to an Agentic Operating System is no longer a luxury – it is a necessity for a functioning modern democracy.
Are you ready to reclaim your team’s time and transform the constituent experience?
Book a call with our experts today to explore our PubSec accelerators.
References
Civil Service World (2024). The Productivity Gap: Measuring Inefficiency in the UK Public Sector. [online] Available at: https://www.civilserviceworld.com [Accessed 18 Mar. 2026].
Salesforce (2024). Connected Government Report: Global Trends in Public Sector Digitisation. 4th ed. San Francisco: Salesforce Research.
Salesforce (2025). The Future of the Slack OS: Insights from Steve Hamrick. [online] Salesforce Newsroom. Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/news [Accessed 19 Mar. 2026].
Salesforce (2026). Webinar: Reimagine Mission Delivery with an Agentic Operating System for Public Service. [online] Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/events/webinars/reimagine-mission-delivery-with-an-agentic-operating-system/.
U.S. Census Bureau (2026). 2026 Census of Governments: Preliminary Report on Digital Infrastructure. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.









