- Direction:
- GovTech
The Agentic State: Why Europe Must Act Now
- Authors
- Valeriya Ionan
- Publication date and time:
- Reading time:
- 3 min
A column for Friends of Europe by Valeriya Ionan, Advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine
Countries that built the most advanced digital governments may now be the least prepared for what comes next. This paradox is becoming increasingly visible as governments confront the shift to agentic AI.
For over two decades, states have invested in building digital systems — training civil servants, adapting processes, and establishing trust with citizens. These systems work. But they were built for a different model. And today, those same strengths can become constraints.
Agentic AI challenges how governments operate. Previous technologies improved access to services. Agentic AI changes how those services are actually delivered.
These systems can plan, act, and coordinate. They force governments to question whether existing processes should exist at all. Most importantly, they expand the ability to manage complexity and decision-making at a scale no workforce can match.
I saw this firsthand during my six years as Deputy Minister for Digital Transformation in Ukraine. We constantly rethought how government should work — starting from user needs rather than legacy systems.
This ability to continuously rethink is exactly what the shift to agentic AI requires. More mature governments, by contrast, often need to unlearn existing approaches before they can move forward.
This transformation is already underway.
In procurement, agentic systems can identify suppliers, manage compliance, and detect risks at scale. In anti-corruption, they enable continuous monitoring instead of periodic audits.
For citizens, this means something equally significant: agents can navigate complex systems on their behalf, removing the need to understand bureaucratic structures.
Ukraine’s experience in this transition is distinct — not only because of the war, but because of its ability to adapt under pressure.
During the full-scale invasion in 2022, resilience came from speed and adaptability: relocating critical systems to the cloud within days, reconfiguring institutions, and maintaining state functions under conditions no continuity plan had anticipated.
This is operational sovereignty — the ability to adapt continuously as conditions change.
For European governments, this transition requires both central capacity and distributed capability.
A strong core is needed to build shared platforms, governance frameworks, and standards that can scale across the state.
At the same time, institutions must develop hands-on experience to become informed and demanding users of these technologies.
Governments must also define clear boundaries: what they build themselves, what they open to the market, and what they regulate.
Failing to do so risks leaving these decisions to external platforms whose incentives may not align with the public interest.
Treating agentic AI as just another upgrade is a strategic mistake.
The consequence is a gradual erosion of trust, as the gap widens between what citizens experience in the private sector and what they expect from the state.
Digital leaders have built something real. The question now is whether they can use it as a foundation to move forward — or whether it becomes a constraint.
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