Canada’s public sector is at an inflection point. Rising citizen expectations, fiscal constraints, and the accelerating pace of technological change are forcing governments to rethink how services are delivered. Core to successfully delivering public services in the future is increasing productivity, driven by the application of AI, and the next wave of reinvention will be powered by Agentic AI—autonomous, decision-making systems that can transform government operations from the inside out. These themes will be reinforced at the AWS Public Sector Symposium Ottawa 2025, where experts from across the globe will gather to share experiences on digital transformation in government.
Unlike earlier digital transformations that moved paper-based processes online, Agentic AI enables a deeper redesign of work itself. Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, has noted that AI isn’t just a technological evolution, but a paradigm shift, calling it a “Gutenberg moment”. For governments, it has the potential to re-engineer operations, reshape the workforce, and redefine the role of public servants. For those willing to act decisively, the opportunities are profound: increased efficiency, competitiveness, greater transparency, and a renewed sense of trust between institutions and citizens. Prime Minister Mark Carney has made this point in his mandate letter to his Cabinet.
From Incremental Change to Reinvention
Accenture research shows that 46% of work time in Canada’s public sector could be significantly impacted by generative AI. This isn’t about incremental automation; it’s about fundamentally rethinking how services are structured and delivered. Social services, for example, could see transformative changes in areas such as case management, registration, and contact centers, as these domains handle high-volume, repetitive work that is especially well-suited for automation.
Accenture and AWS are collaborating on solutions that use generative AI to both accelerate employee learning—cutting training time by more than 50% and reducing escalations by 40%—and streamline regulatory authoring, with early results showing a 40–45% reduction in document creation time.
Through the Connected Customer Experience solution, the partnership is also transforming how organizations, including governments, deliver services—showing how predictive insights and AI-powered interactions can elevate citizen experience, workforce effectiveness, and trust in public services, and our vision for GenAI-assisted government.
The benefits extend beyond cost savings. When routine tasks are streamlined, public servants can be redeployed into roles that demand empathy, critical thinking, and judgment—skills that matter most in citizen-facing services. This shift makes government work more meaningful while improving outcomes for Canadians.
Reshaping the Workforce
AI’s most significant impact will not be on the number of jobs, but on the tasks within them. For example, as current skills relating to document review, data entry, and data analysis become less future relevant, skills relating to bias awareness, data literacy, and decision making become more future relevant. This creates both opportunity and responsibility. Governments must integrate talent strategies alongside their AI investments, since workforce planning is essential not only for effective adoption, but also to sustain progress and thrive in the future of work.
Yet today, while two-thirds of Canadian workers say they want to develop AI skills, only 5% of organizations are reskilling their people. Unless governments act with urgency, they risk missing the benefits of AI due to widening skills gaps
Building Trust Through Responsible AI
For AI adoption to succeed, governments must engage openly with workers, address their concerns about job displacement, and demonstrate how new technologies can enhance, not undermine, career opportunities.
A teach-to-learn culture, where employees actively participate in mapping how their tasks evolve with AI, can foster trust and transparency. This approach also builds alignment between leadership and the workforce, ensuring that transformation is something done with employees, not to them.
Cloud as the Foundation
Agentic AI cannot flourish in isolation. To be effective, it must run on modern, scalable infrastructure. Canada’s transition away from legacy data centers toward cloud platforms is a critical enabler of this transformation. Cloud not only provides the computational capacity needed for advanced AI, but also enhances resilience, security, and agility across government services.
The Opportunity Ahead
Generative and Agentic AI together could add as much as $187 billion to Canada’s economy by 2030. For the public sector, the stakes are even higher than economic growth. Governments have the chance to reinvent themselves in ways that directly improve the daily lives of citizens with faster benefit payments, shorter wait times, and more responsive service delivery.
But the hard part lies ahead. Plugging in new technology is only the first step. True reinvention requires leadership willing to set a bold vision, invest in workforce skills, and nurture a culture of continuous change.
Canada’s public sector has long been a cornerstone of national prosperity. With Agentic AI, it now has the tools to reinvent itself for a new era—one where governments are more agile, more productive, and more connected to the needs of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Laura Clements is Managing Director Canada Public Sector Talent & Organization, Accenture