Eight hundred Department of Agriculture staff are to move to a former military barracks at Ballykelly in Co Londonderry.
The headquarters will shift from Dundonald House at Stormont by 2015, minister Michelle O'Neill said.
The 700-acre site at Shackleton base has been gifted to the Northern Ireland Executive by the Ministry of Defence.
Ms O'Neill said: "The relocation will stimulate the local economy through increased local spending, provision of high quality and well-paid public sector jobs and potentially jobs associated with the construction and ongoing servicing of the new HQ.
"The relocation will also help to share wealth across the wider economy and contribute to better-balanced economic growth, by starting to address disparities in the distribution of public sector jobs in the north of Ireland."
The agriculture minister announced on May 17 that she had tasked the chief executive of the Forest Service with starting the process of looking for locations in Co Fermanagh for a new Forest Service headquarters.
She said: "The relocation programme is an important first step to relocate a significant share of public sector jobs to rural areas as recommended by George Bain in his 2008 report into the location of public sector jobs across the north.
"To relocate my department's HQ to a rural area is a key target in the Executive's Programme for Government 2011-15 and I am therefore pleased to be able to announce this significant step towards achieving this target."
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