Use agentic AI in Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS)

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Use agentic AI in Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS)

    ServiceNow’s Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS) enables administrators to configure and manage standalone AI agents through the AI Agent Studio. These agents automate specific tasks, such as fee estimation and handling information requests, improving efficiency in public sector workflows. The AI Agent Studio allows natural language configuration and testing of these agents and is accessible as part of the PSDS offering.

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    Key Features

    • Agentic AI Use Cases: Example includes estimating fee breakdowns for information requests, providing subtotal fee estimates, fee waiver recommendations, and total fee calculations.
    • Supported Large Language Models (LLMs): Now Assist supports multiple AI model providers including Now LLM Service, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude on AWS. Configuration of LLM use is managed through AI Control Tower and the Now Assist Admin console.
    • Security and Access Controls: AI agents and workflows execute actions based on Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities, with Run As capabilities to act dynamically as users or AI users. Role masking controls user access to agents, and specific security roles included in the Now Assist applications must be configured for access management.
    • Autonomous AI Agent Operation: To run agents autonomously, duplicate and activate the agentic workflow and its agents, then activate a unique trigger for automatic invocation. Manual invocation is also supported without activating triggers.
    • Standalone AI Agents: Some AI agents are installed but not part of agentic workflows. Administrators can view and manage these standalone agents separately.

    Key Outcomes

    • Automated, precise fee estimations and recommendations reduce manual workload for government service agents.
    • Flexible AI model integration enables tailored AI performance aligned with organizational preferences and compliance requirements.
    • Robust security frameworks ensure controlled AI agent execution respecting user roles and organizational policies.
    • Configurable autonomous workflows allow seamless automation of repetitive tasks, improving operational efficiency.
    • Visibility and management of both workflow-integrated and standalone AI agents provide comprehensive control over AI-powered services.

    Use standalone agents to achieve specific automated outcomes with the Public Sector Digital Services AI Agent Collection application. ​

    AI Agents are configurable through the AI Agent Studio. The AI Agent Studio is available to administrators as part of the Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS) offering. The AI Agent Studio allows admins to configure, test, and manage AI agents using natural language and prebuilt workflows. These agents can automate tasks like fee estimation and information request handling.

    This table describes the use cases in Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS).
    Table 1. Use cases powered by Agentic AI in Public Sector Digital Services
    Use case Description
    Estimate fee breakdown for an information request Helps government service agents determine the fee breakdown for an information request by working to arrive at a subtotal fee estimate, a recommendation for whether a fee waiver request should be approved or rejected, including reasons for any rejection, and a total fee estimate, with the fee waiver, if applicable.

    Find information such as the Large Language Models (LLM) supported in Now Assist and security controls that are important considerations for using agentic AI.

    Supported Large Language Models

    Note:

    Security implementation considerations

    Enable security implementation to execute AI agents and agentic workflows through Access Control Lists (ACLs) and user identities. ACLs provide the Run As capability to let agents and agentic workflows execute actions either as a dynamic user or as an AI user. For more information, see Implement access control in Now Assist AI agents

    Agentic workflows and their AI agents use role masking to determine which users can access them. Ones installed with Now Assist applications have specific roles that come included with the application. If you select Users with specific roles for user access, you must configure the security controls to include these roles. For the instructions to change the security controls, see Define security controls for an agentic workflow.

    AI agents use role masking to determine which users can access them. Ones installed with Now Assist applications have specific roles that come included with the application. If you select Users with specific roles for user access, you must configure the security controls to include these roles. For the instructions to change the security controls, see Define security controls for an AI agent.

    Considerations for running the autonomous AI Agents

    Important:
    By default, all agent workflow and AI agent records are read-only.

    To run the AI agents autonomously, you must first duplicate the agentic workflow, and then proceed with the following steps:

    • Activate the agentic workflow.
    • Activate all agents within the agentic workflow.
    • Activate the trigger to invoke the agentic workflow automatically. The triggers for each agentic workflow must be unique. If you prefer to invoke it manually, activating the trigger isn’t necessary.
    • Azure OpenAI is recommended for ITSM agentic workflows. For information on Large Language Models (LLMs) for AI agents and agentic workflows, see Large language models on the ServiceNow AI Platform®.

    Standalone AI agents

    There might be AI agents installed with the Now Assist application that are not used in agentic workflows. To learn how to see all agents that are available to you, see Find AI agents.

    For information on the standalone Public Sector Digital Services AI agents, see Standalone AI Agents in Public Sector Digital Services.