The global journey toward digital transformation in public administration continues to accelerate on a large scale.

Less than a week after Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot Grok sparked outrage by sharing sensitive content on social media, Musk’s company made a surprising announcement: it has signed a contract worth nearly \$200 million with the U.S. Department of Defense. This marks a major step in deploying AI tools across defense, intelligence, and public administration sectors.

xAI isn’t the only company involved—Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, other major players in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, have also secured similar contracts, each with a ceiling of up to \$200 million. These agreements are part of a broader strategy by the U.S. Department of Defense and the General Services Administration to expand AI integration across the federal government system.

Dr. Doug Matty, Chief Digital and AI Officer of the United States, emphasized the importance of integrating available commercial tools into the nation’s defense capabilities, helping to accelerate the deployment of core missions.

Meanwhile, xAI has launched the “Grok For Government” initiative with the ambition to provide customized AI applications for federal, state, and local agencies. The goal of this initiative is to use artificial intelligence to optimize public services and tackle major challenges in healthcare, security, and science and technology.

As many countries actively integrate AI into their public administration systems, Vietnam is also keeping pace with this global trend. In particular, the current restructuring of administrative units at district and commune levels has posed major challenges for handling administrative procedures. Changes in jurisdiction boundaries, new names, and updated regulations have caused confusion among citizens and businesses, while civil servants are overwhelmed—learning new procedures while dealing with a sudden spike in paperwork.

In response, Vietnam’s VNPT Group has developed a series of AI-powered solutions to streamline administrative processes. Notably, the “Virtual Assistant for Citizens and Businesses” platform uses natural language processing technology to help people look up information, answer questions about jurisdiction changes, required documents, and guide them through specific procedures. The AI system can even auto-fill parts of application forms using data from national databases, saving time and reducing errors.