Governments worldwide have been working to provide better digital services to citizens. In Brazil, this initiative is ongoing since the 2000’s with the aim create better digital solutions that provide access to government information, improvements in public services, and increase social participation. One of the strategies for developing digital solutions – i.e. software solutions – is the adoption of agile software development (ASD) methods, which are forms of software processes that enable delivering working software in a timely manner to respond to customer needs. While industry surveys are performed annually to understand ASD adoption in companies, little is known about the adoption of ASD in Brazilian government organizations and which are the challenges faced by these organizations. The goal of this study is thus to describe agile software development adoption in the Brazilian public sector, by showing the characteristics for adoption and challenges. We conducted a survey with practitioners of government-based organizations in Brazil and statistically analyzed data. Out of the 167 responses, we learned that ASD projects are mostly successful and, on their majority, they are conducted combined with other software development approaches. Also, accelerating product delivery and increasing productivity are ranked as the main reasons for agile adoption, followed by cultural change and resistance to change as the main challenges still faced by Brazilian government IT organizations in the use of ASD.