In June 2026 I left Dell Technologies to join Salesforce as a Senior Account Executive for Public Administration. This is the story of that change, and why I believe AI is about to change how governments serve citizens.

Introduction

For most of my career I have built foundations.

As an engineer, I designed networks and data centres. At Dell Technologies, I spent four years helping the Italian Public Administration buy and modernise the backbone of its digital services: servers, storage, hyperconverged infrastructure, cloud, and cyber recovery. Through tenders, framework agreements, and long contracts, I helped make sure that when a citizen opened a public portal, something solid was running behind it.

It was important work. But there was one thing I kept noticing: the citizen never saw any of it.

In June 2026 I joined Salesforce as a Senior Account Executive for Public Administration. My role changed from infrastructure builder to AI enabler. Instead of helping institutions decide where their data lives, I now help them decide what their data can do for the people they serve.

This article explains why I made that choice, what I see changing, and why I believe Salesforce is one of the few companies that can really help public institutions use AI at scale.

What Infrastructure Taught Me

Years of working on infrastructure for the public sector left me with three convictions.

1. Foundations matter, but they are not the goal

A modern data centre, a resilient storage platform, a tested recovery plan: all of these are necessary. None of them, on their own, shortens a queue at a public office or answers a citizen's question at 11 p.m.

2. Public data is incredibly valuable, and incredibly fragmented

Every institution I worked with had huge amounts of data, spread across departments, applications, and decades of legacy systems. The data existed. It just didn't talk to itself.

3. Trust is not optional

In the public sector, security, sovereignty, and compliance are not features. They are preconditions. Any technology that touches citizens' data must earn trust before it can create value.

These three lessons are exactly why the move to AI felt natural. AI is the layer that finally turns foundations into experiences, but only if it is built on unified data and real trust.

How AI Is Changing Public Administration

For decades, interacting with a public institution has meant forms, opening hours, phone trees, and waiting. AI agents are changing that relationship in a way I have not seen in any previous technology wave.

From office hours to always available

Citizens' needs don't follow office hours. AI agents can answer questions, guide people through procedures, and open requests 24/7, then hand over to a human when judgement is needed.

From phone trees to conversations

Instead of "press 1 for…, press 2 for…", people simply explain what they need, in their own words and in their own language.

From reactive to proactive

When data is unified, institutions can tell citizens what is happening with their request before they have to call and ask.

From repetitive work to meaningful work

This is the part I care about most. AI agents don't replace public servants. They take on repetitive requests so people can focus on the cases that need empathy, judgement, and authority.

What It Looks Like in Practice: The Italian Public Administration

There is a common belief that digital innovation in Italian public services always arrives late. The stories below tell a different story. Italian institutions have already built the most important foundation for AI: a unified relationship with the citizen. (Figures are as reported in Salesforce's published customer stories; quotes are translated from Italian.)

Comune di Genova: from 80 days to 4 days

Genoa started with SegnalaCi, the portal where citizens report issues in the city. In 2022 it launched a Citizen Relationship Management (CzRM) project on Salesforce, with a clear goal: move from a service-centric model, with hundreds of separate applications, to a citizen-centric one.

Today Salesforce is the single access point for reports and requests arriving by email, phone, the institutional website, the Fascicolo del Cittadino, and SegnalaCi.

  • Around 500 operators work on the platform, from department directors to local police officers
  • About 30,000 citizens served and 56,000+ requests processed since 2020
  • Response times to citizens cut from 80 to 4 days in one year

What I find most powerful is the lesson the team shared: "It wasn't enough to adopt the best technology; we had to rethink the organisation to solve thousands of problems." And the next step they describe is exactly where AI comes in: using artificial intelligence to automate responses and move toward proactive management of interventions based on the data collected.

(Comune di Genova customer story)

Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali: answers without waiting

The Ministry of Labour built a citizen support service on Salesforce, with a public knowledge base of more than 1,000 articles and a platform to submit requests when the answer isn't there.

  • Live in less than two months, with an IT partner and minimal customisation
  • Around 40% of website visitors (over 20,000 people a month out of about 53,000) find the answer on their own

This is self-service done right: citizens get answers immediately, and staff can focus on the cases that need them. Here too, the Ministry pointed to AI-powered responses as a natural next step.

(Ministero del Lavoro customer story)

INPS: serving citizens and employees at national scale

INPS, the National Institute for Social Security, touches the life of almost every Italian. It has selected Salesforce as a technology provider to deliver more efficient services for citizens and employees alike. Few institutions show the scale of the opportunity better: every improvement in a single interaction is multiplied by millions of people.

(Salesforce announcement, June 2026)

Roma Capitale, ISTAT and LAZIOcrea: putting the citizen first

At FORUM PA, three more Salesforce customers shared their journeys. ISTAT uses the platform to manage multichannel interaction with citizens during its surveys. LAZIOcrea stressed that real change starts from organisational models and user experience. And Roma Capitale summarised the vision in one sentence that I love:

"We want to be an Administration that anticipates the needs of Romans, not one that chases them."

(FORUM PA recap)

The common thread

None of these institutions started with AI. They started with the citizen: unifying channels, unifying data, rethinking processes. That is exactly why they are now ready for the next step. AI agents perform best on top of a clean, connected, citizen-centric foundation, and Italy has been building that foundation for years.

Why Salesforce

Many companies talk about AI for government. Very few can bring together everything a public institution needs to use it responsibly and at scale. This is why I chose Salesforce.

Trust built into the platform

The Einstein Trust Layer was designed for exactly the concerns public institutions have: grounding answers in approved data, zero data retention with the language model providers, and toxicity detection. Agents work within defined guardrails, and humans stay in control.

Compliance across the world

Agentforce for Public Sector meets demanding government standards such as FedRAMP High in the United States, Protected B in Canada, and IRAP in Australia. In Europe, the Hyperforce EU Operating Zone gives public and private organisations the option to store and process their data within the EU, with in-region support.

Built for public sector work

Agentforce for Public Sector comes with ready-made capabilities for common government processes: complaint management, compliance and inspections, benefits applications, and recruitment. Institutions don't have to start from a blank page.

Data that finally talks to itself

With Data 360 and MuleSoft, AI agents can be grounded in data from many systems, including legacy ones, without moving everything at once. As someone who spent years on the infrastructure side, I find this especially powerful: it means existing investments become more valuable, not obsolete.

Low-code, so institutions own their agents

Public teams can configure and adapt agents with natural language and low-code tools. Innovation doesn't depend only on scarce developer resources.

A global ecosystem

From system integrators to cloud partners, Salesforce works with a broad network of partners. That matters in the public sector, where projects succeed thanks to strong local implementation partners.

What Doesn't Change

After 15 years in enterprise technology, I have learned to be careful with big promises. AI in Public Administration will only succeed if we respect a few principles:

  • Start from the citizen outcome, not from the technology.
  • Fix the data first. AI on top of fragmented data creates faster confusion, not better service.
  • Rethink the organisation, not just the tools. Genoa's experience proves it.
  • Keep humans in the loop for every decision that requires judgement, empathy, or legal authority.
  • Invest in people. Public servants need training and trust to work alongside AI agents.
  • Be transparent. Citizens should know when they are talking to an AI and how their data is used, especially in a European context shaped by GDPR and the EU AI Act.

Technology changes fast. Trust is built slowly.

The Opportunity in Italy

Italian public institutions have made big investments in digital infrastructure and cloud in recent years. I saw many of them first-hand. And as the stories above show, many have already put the citizen at the centre of their digital services.

Now comes the next step: turning that foundation into services that citizens actually feel. Shorter waits. Clear answers at any hour. Requests that don't get lost between departments. Public servants who spend their time on what matters.

The timing feels right. In June 2026, the same month I joined, Salesforce announced a $1 billion investment in Italy over five years, including new roles in agentic AI and deployment engineering to support Italian organisations and public administrations. Italian companies such as Telepass and Trenitalia are already running Agentforce at scale. The public sector is next.

That is the work I want to do.

Conclusion

For years, I helped build the roads. Now I want to help shape the journeys that travel on them.

Infrastructure makes digital government possible. AI makes it personal.

I am grateful for everything I learned at Dell Technologies, and excited to bring that experience into this new chapter at Salesforce, helping Public Administration use AI to serve citizens better, faster, and with the trust they deserve.

If you work in the public sector and you are thinking about what AI could mean for your institution, I would be happy to talk.

The views expressed in this article are my own. Customer results are as reported in publicly available Salesforce customer stories.

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