Digital Agency Opens AI Agent Tools to 180,000 Government Staff

An environment in which government employees can hand off work to AI simply by conversing with it is moving beyond experiments in a few departments and spreading to about 180,000 staff across ministries and agencies. On October 20, the Digital Agency announced that it would begin offering two types of environments for using AI agents through its "Government AI Gennai" generative AI platform. AI agents are AI systems that carry out multiple tasks autonomously in response to instructions.

Gennai is a generative AI platform developed in-house by the Digital Agency. It was first put into use within the agency in May 2025. In May 2026, a large-scale trial involving about 180,000 staff across all ministries and agencies began. Employees use it for tasks such as researching legal systems and drafting support for Diet answers. The trial period is scheduled to run until March 2027. The latest announcement comes after that trial.

Two environments are being added. Agent Chat, which lets users build and run AI agents through dialogue, will be rolled out to ministries and agencies from the same day. The more advanced Gennai Workshop has functions equivalent to "AI coding agents" that, when given instructions in natural language, autonomously write and modify programs, handle files, and check operations. It is targeted for deployment by around December. Employees can build AI agents suited to their work and improve them as they use them. The Digital Agency says it hopes this will drive reforms led by frontline staff, improve efficiency, and develop people who can apply AI.

According to the agency's research, rolling out a government-wide platform of this scale for general staff to use in their daily work is a world first. However, AI agents are more capable than conventional functions and can carry out a wider range of tasks. For that reason, the agency also published the "Gennai Standards," a set of rules for staff to use them safely, on the same day. Prepared with the cooperation of the AI Safety Institute (AISI), which evaluates AI safety, the standards set out responsibilities and compliance requirements for users, administrators, and developers in each role.

Minister Toshiharu Furukawa told a press conference that local governments and private companies considering introducing AI agents could also refer to the Gennai Standards when controlling AI within their organizations. Agent Chat and Gennai Workshop will be released as "Gennai OSS Ver.2.0," which anyone can use, modify, and redistribute, with a target release of around February 2027. Private organizations will be able to use the same environment only after that point. The minister said, "Using AI agents will raise risks somewhat," and argued that it is significant for the government to take the lead.