The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has expanded its initiative to embed Salesforce in its digital transformation, as the vendor continues to work with federal government agencies to modernize services.
The USDOT is already working with Salesforce to modernize core functions through real-time, interstate data sharing and simplify the management of billions of dollars in federal grants.
The agency will now also Agentforce, the vendor’s AI agent platform, to handle routine tasks, offer around-the-clock customer support and generate immediate alerts with proposed optimal mitigation strategies for traffic and infrastructure incidents.
USDOT oversees an interconnected system spanning air travel, freight and passenger rail, commercial motor carriers, roads, ports, and emerging technologies. The department’s work has been slowed by duplicative systems, siloed data and administrative overload, which has hampered operations and the speed of infrastructure and transportation projects. It has opted to use AI to address that, said Pavan Pidugu, Chief Digital & Information Officer of USDOT:
“To deliver on our mission of building a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system, we have to start with making technology our biggest asset. We needed to make a strategic shift to deliver on our mission: adding AI at the core of everything we’re doing.”
Government agencies are facing growing expectations that federal agencies provide the same immediacy and consistency that citizens experience in the private sector.
USDOT Turns to Agentforce in Productivity Drive
The adoption of Agentforce marks USDOT’s pivot to an operating model where autonomous AI agents take on routine or time-critical tasks that previously consumed human capacity.
According to Pidugu, the projected productivity lift is substantial:
“It’s mind-blowing what the number of actual days of work is that we can save by doing this.”
Within USDOT, Agentforce will support staff across several key areas.
AI agents will run 24/7 to respond to customers with answers to routine questions, guide them through services and help route more complex issues to human experts. Faster interactions and reduced wait times should translate directly into better experience across the department’s many touchpoints.
By autonomously scanning weather patterns, traffic data and historical datasets, agents will generate real-time alerts and propose mitigation strategies to help reduce accidents.
USDOT manages billions in grants annually. AI agents will pre-check applications, identify missing or inconsistent information and draft recommendations for human staff. By unifying more than 10 legacy systems, the agency will be able to shorten the path from submission to funding.
The aim is to deliver more responsive services for citizens and state partners and more time for human employees to focus on complex safety decisions, investigative work and strategic program design.
The introduction of AI agents is part of a consolidation of the USDOT’s broader modernization efforts. The agency is moving to the Agentforce 360 Platform and bringing together disparate data sources through Data 360 (previously known as Data Cloud) on Salesforce Government Cloud. It is also using government-specific capabilities from Agentforce Public Sector, which was previously called Public Sector Solutions.
This unification aims to streamline critical processes including complaint management and investigations, inspection and safety enforcement as well as grantmaking.
New consumer-facing portals for airline and commercial motor vehicle complaints give citizens a clearer, more streamlined way to report issues. On the back end, staff get a single workspace to manage and resolve cases more efficiently, supported by AI-powered contact center capabilities.
Using MuleSoft, the department can now more easily share commercial driver, carrier and roadside inspection data across all 50 states. This unlocks faster identification of dangerous drivers and more consistent compliance enforcement through the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Salesforce’s Public Sector Push
The USDOT expansion follows a series of recent Salesforce announcements focused on public sector modernization, including enhancements to its Government Cloud portfolio and new AI-forward capabilities tailored to high-compliance environments.
The Salesforce received Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High Authorization in June for Agentforce alongside Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Tableau Next, and launched Agentforce for Public Sector in August to provide government agencies and local authorities with tailored, pre-built agents.
Last month, the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) said it will use Agentforce to handle tasks like generating case summaries and searching data to reduce the time it takes to handle customer interactions.
These moves aim to position the company as a key player in the U.S. federal government’s data-driven service delivery and workflow transformation.
Kendall Collins, CEO of Government Cloud at Salesforce, framed USDOT’s modernization as a model for other agencies:
“Agentforce is fueling a new era of government modernization, and USDOT offers a clear blueprint for how agents can improve productivity and accelerate citizen processes.”
Public sector agencies are increasingly under pressure to modernize their operations and improve service delivery while balancing tight budgets and growing compliance requirements. Salesforce offers federal departments a secure platform tailored to these needs, applying AI to support employees with intelligent insights, helping them deliver faster, more personalized services to citizens.
USDOT’s initiative is also part of Salesforce’s push to bring AI agents from pilot programs to enterprise-level deployments. This marks a shift from experimentation to operational redesign, where automation, unified data and human-AI collaboration change how services are delivered to customers.
