Public Sector Digital Services release notes

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 5 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Public Sector Digital Services release notes - Australia Release

    The ServiceNow® Public Sector Digital Services application supports government agencies in delivering key services such as public records, licenses, permits, and social services to citizens, businesses, and other agencies. The Australia release introduces significant enhancements to improve grant management workflows, investigative case handling, AI-driven assistance, and user interface design, all tailored to public sector needs.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • Rolling Grant Approvals: Grant Program Managers can now submit funding and decline recommendations incrementally for any scored subset of proposals using the new Funding Allocation Request record. This allows continuous funding decisions without waiting for the entire portfolio review. Grant Program Directors can approve or reject these batches, with rejected proposals returning to the working queue for future consideration.
    • Release Result Letters Per Proposal: Award, decline, or ineligibility letters are issued individually as Funding Allocation Requests are approved, enabling rolling notifications instead of waiting for program-wide completion.
    • Investigative Case Management: Consolidates case narratives, evidence, entities, team assignments, tasks, and related cases into a single page. Features include:
      • Entity Management: Manage persons, property, vehicles, organizations, locations, and specialized entities with detailed metadata and relationships.
      • Evidence Management: Track physical and digital evidence with structured metadata, chain of custody documentation, and links to related entities.
      • Case Summarization: Synthesizes narratives, evidence, entities, and activity history into structured summaries.
    • Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS): Includes generative AI skills such as:
      • Case Narrative Refinement AI Agent: Enhances clarity, structure, tone, and completeness of case narratives with AI suggestions.
      • Document Screening AI Skill: Validates and highlights key details in large volumes of uploaded documents to support case agents, especially in social benefits scenarios.
    • Granular Admin Roles: Introduces finer-grained administrative roles to assign specific permissions without granting full admin rights, enhancing security and role management.
    • UI Enhancements:
      • Updated Coral theme with improved color gradients, accessible design, better dark mode, and animated AI feature highlights.
      • Enhanced Constituent Service Portals with standardized CSM Configurable Widgets for improved usability, dynamic data rendering, and advanced filtering.
    • Support for GOV.UK Developer Toolkit: Allows governments to create citizen-facing portals compliant with UK Government Digital Service guidelines using reusable widgets.
    • ServiceNow AI Platform Licensing Tiers: Three tiers (Foundation, Advanced, Prime) offer varying AI capabilities, from basic insights to autonomous AI workflows.

    Important Upgrade and Activation Notes

    • After upgrading, some public sector menu labels in the CSM Configurable Workspace revert to default CSM names; admins can manually relabel these via Constituent Service Guided Setup.
    • The Public Sector Digital Services application is available through the ServiceNow Store and requires installation requests via the store.

    Related ServiceNow Applications

    • Customer Service Management (CSM): Facilitates collaboration and issue resolution for government customer service teams.
    • CSM Configurable Workspace: Provides government agents with tools for researching information and resolving cases efficiently.
    • Now Assist: Uses generative AI to improve productivity through conversational and proactive user experiences.

    The ServiceNow® Public Sector Digital Services application enables government agencies to provide citizens, businesses, and other agencies with important services such as public records, licenses, permits, and social services. Public Sector Digital Services was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.

    Public Sector Digital Services highlights for the Australia release

    • Enable other governments to launch citizen-facing services using the GOV.UK Developer Toolkit, a library of reusable portal widgets that follow UK GDS guidelines, enabling ServiceNow developers to build compliant service portals for UK government customers.

    • Consolidate the case narrative, evidence, entities, team assignments, investigative tasks, and related cases into a single record page with Investigative Case Management Foundation.
    • Manage persons, property, vehicles, organizations, locations, and events, including specialized entity types like firearms with detailed identification, specifications, origin, and ballistic information, and link them to cases and to each other with Investigative Case Management Entity Management.
    • Manage physical and digital evidence tied to investigative cases, with structure fields for collection details, source and context, security classification, and links to related entities such as persons, vehicles, locations, and organizations using Investigative Case Management Evidence Management.
    • Create Chain of custody documentation in every evidence record, capturing each transfer from the moment of collection.
    • Synthesize narratives, entities, evidence, and activity history into a structured summary using Investigative Case Management Case Summarization.
    • Validate large volumes of uploaded documents, verify information, flag issues, and highlight key details for case agents with the Document Screening Al Skill, used with Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS).

    See Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS) for more information.

    Important:
    Public Sector Digital Services is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

    Important information for upgrading Public Sector Digital Services to Australia

    After the upgrade, certain public sector menus and menu items in CSM Configurable Workspace revert to their original CSM label names. You can relabel these items for public sector use by updating the labels for the Customer, Accounts, and Service Organizations UX list category records. For more details on relabeling, navigate to All > Constituent Service > Administration > Guided Setup, and select Configurable Workspace for Public Sector Digital Services > Customize Workspace Labels Manually.

    New in the Australia release

    Investigative Case Management
    Create an investigative case using Investigative Case Management. Investigative Case Management guides investigators through the process of organizing, tracking, and resolving investigations, ​developing case details,​ assigning investigators and team members​, and track evidence with logging and metadata. The following features are available as part of Investigative Case Management:
    • Entity Management
    • Evidence Management
    With Entity Management, investigators can create investigative tasks and workflows for investigative activities with automated metadata capture (time, source, entities, classification)​, as well as define processing with teams and attorneys and collaborate across agencies/divisions. With Evidence Management, investigators can log and triage evidence metadata (digital, physical, testimonial)​ and maintain an audit trail (Chain of Custody logging), as well as draft, review, and create reports with supporting evidence​​.
    Use Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS) Skills to create case narratives and screen documents
    Complete case narratives and make refinements to investigative case records using Now Assist for PSDS Gen-AI skills. Investigators can streamline case narrative refinement by editing content, adjusting tone, and regenerating the narrative for clarity and completeness.
    Use the Case Narrative Refinement AI Agent to refine case narratives in Investigative Case Management
    Produce clear, accurate, and well-structured case narratives using the Case narrative refinement AI agent, embedded within the case record page. This AI agent analyzes existing narratives and related case data to suggest improvements in clarity, structure, tone, and completeness, and highlighting gaps and inconsistencies.
    Document Screening AI Skill for Social Benefits Playbook
    Validate large volumes of uploaded documents, verify information, flag issues, and highlight key details for case agents using the Social Benefits Playbook with the Document Screening Al Skill, part of Now Assist for Public Sector Digital Services (PSDS).
    Granular configuration admin roles
    Several new granular admin roles enable admins to complete administrative configuration tasks on the Public Sector Digital Services platform without requiring the full admin role. These granular access roles enable a high-level administrator to define and assign custom roles that contain only the specific permissions a user needs, decreasing the number of users with full administrative power over the instance. For more information on granular admin roles, see Granular admin roles.

    UI changes

    Updated Coral theme
    The Coral theme has been improved to enhance usability across web, mobile, and portal experiences that use Next Experience and Core UI:
    • A fully overhauled color system for smoother gradients and better contrast.
    • Softer outlines and more rounded components for a new, accessible look.
    • A significantly improved dark mode with deeper blue tones for reduced eye strain.
    • New AI gradient styles and subtle animations to highlight intelligent features.
    • Smarter focus behavior that reduces visual clutter for mouse users.
    Enhancements to Constituent Service Portals
    UI Enhancements have been made to all Public Sector Digital Services constituent portals by replacing legacy widgets (for example, portal banners, data lists) with standardized, CSM Configurable Widgets and components. The update verifies backward compatibility, migration guidance, usage analytics, and provide training for admins, and also enables dynamic data rendering, and better filtering across service flows.

    Changed in this release

    ServiceNow product tiers
    The ServiceNow AI Platform now brings you a new AI experience with three licensing tiers available:
    • Foundation: AI basics to deliver insights
    • Advanced: AI to boost productivity across relevant use cases
    • Prime: Act autonomously with all AI assets and create your own

    Depending on your entitlements, you will have access to certain application features, generative AI skills, agentic workflows, and AI agents.

    Activation information

    Install Public Sector Digital Services by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

    Related ServiceNow applications and features

    Customer Service Management
    The ServiceNow®Customer Service Management application enables customer service organizations and service operations to collaborate and resolve customer problems.
    CSM Configurable Workspace
    The ServiceNow®CSM Configurable Workspace application provides government agents with the tools to research information, respond to questions from the public, and resolve cases.
    Now Assist
    The ServiceNow®Now Assist application uses generative AI to enhance user productivity and efficiency through conversation and proactive experiences.