Across the world, public sector institutions are under pressure to deliver faster, more citizen-centric services—without compromising public trust, security, or compliance. Generative AI (GenAI) promises to accelerate this transformation, but Gartner® in the recent report entitled “The Impact of Generative AI on Productivity Outcomes in Government,” says, “Despite strong potential for productivity gains from GenAI, a number of barriers remain in the way of realizing further productivity gains.”
I believe that the promise is real for the public sector, but that the precondition is explicit: Governments must master their data before GenAI can master their outcomes.
From Curiosity to Capability: Where Public Sector AI Stands Today
In the same report, Gartner references another report, saying, “The 2024 Gartner Worker Productivity Survey included managers from a variety of functions in government. While conventional definitions of productivity tend to predominantly consider output relative to input, this survey opted to utilize a number of qualitative metrics. Specifically, this survey utilized a more holistic definition that considered the outcome, impact and relative scope of the relevant work being done.”
I believe that these observations highlight the sharp divide between ambition and readiness in public institutions. While use cases for GenAI in content generation, virtual assistants, and citizen support services are emerging quickly, I believe that most public agencies still lack the foundational data infrastructure and governance controls required for safe, scalable deployment.
Agencies face significant challenges:
- Data fragmentation across ministries, systems, and jurisdictions
- Compliance pressures (GDPR, LGPD, CSRD, FOIA, and more)
- Low data maturity in key domains
- AI model hallucination and explainability gaps
Without trusted, governed, and real-time data, GenAI risks becoming a source of misinformation rather than insight.
What Denodo Delivers
I would like to propose five critical steps for public sector GenAI success:
- Establish AI governance frameworks
- Provide data privacy and bias mitigation
- Upgrade legacy infrastructure beyond traditional, data-replication-based approaches
- Define mission-aligned GenAI use cases
- Prioritize public trust and explainability
The third bullet is where the Denodo Platform excels. Unlike traditional approaches that require massive data replication or long migration projects, Denodo provides:
- A virtual data layer that unifies semantics, as well as structured and unstructured data, across sources
- Fine-grained, “zero-trust” access control, aligned to any regulation
- Support for AI-ready data products that fuel dashboards, large language model (LLM) prompts, APIs, and more
- Lineage and audit trails, so every AI insight is traceable and explainable
In short, Denodo enables governments to govern their data before they govern AI.
Unlocking What Others Can’t: The Denodo Advantage
While traditional platforms struggle with fragmented architectures and inaccessible silos, Denodo brings a fundamental shift in how public sector organizations can access, govern, and activate data. The platform’s logical data management capabilities extend to previously inaccessible sources, including legacy systems, secure domains, hybrid environments, and third-party platforms, without requiring replication or disruption.
This is where Denodo’s value shines in three critical public sector domains:
1. Trusted Data Collaboration: Government agencies are under pressure to collaborate across ministries, local authorities, and even national borders, yet data is scattered across legacy systems, file shares, outdated APIs, and siloed applications. Conventional data integration methods simply can’t unify this fast enough or with enough security.
Denodo enables secure, real-time data access from all these sources, without having to first move or duplicate the data. This enables public sector institutions to deliver ethical AI and data transparency with full governance, for added cross-agency trust and confidence. Whether forsocial care coordination or multi-agency safeguarding, Denodo enables the unified, ethical collaboration that today’s governments demand.
2. Secure Compliance and Safeguarding: Safeguarding the public is no longer the sole domain of firewalls and reactive compliance checks. Real-world threats, like knife crime, cyberattacks, and cross-border trafficking, require rapid coordination between police, healthcare, and intelligence agencies.
However, the sensitive data involved is often buried in isolated operational systems, each with its own privacy requirements. Denodo overcomes these barriers by exposing only the correct data to the right stakeholders at the right time, with dynamic, policy-driven governance, masking, encryption, and full auditability.
Such features make Denodo a unique enabler of real-time safeguarding use cases such as joint investigations, emergency response coordination, and cross-border risk profiling—while enabling governments to stay fully compliant with privacy laws like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD), which translates to “General Data Protection Law” in English.
3. Intelligent Citizen Services: From smart cities to personalized healthcare, modern public services need AI-ready data, yet most AI systems today are only as good as the data they can access. Often, this means they are limited to centralized data lakes or recent digitization efforts, leaving vast troves of valid but hard-to-access data behind.
Denodo connects to both modern and legacy systems, enabling holistic, real-time views across education, healthcare, justice, transport, and environmental domains. These unified views fuel AI-driven services like personalized citizen dashboards, chatbots, predictive maintenance, and targeted welfare programs, all while enabling strong data governance and explainability.
Why Now?
GenAI is no longer optional—it’s inevitable. But its value depends on trust, ethics, and control.
Denodo helps the public sector get there faster—by making the data trustworthy first. Before building the prompt, build the foundation.
What’s Next?
Want to see how governments are turning policy into action?
See how trusted data enables smarter responses, faster investigations, and GenAI that does good.
Talk to a Denodo expert about preparing your agency for responsible GenAI.
Gartner, The Impact of Generative AI on Productivity Outcomes in Government, 8 April 2025, Todd Kimbriel
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
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