Progress on Global AI Governance: The CAIDP AI Index and Implications for the Public Sector

The 2026 CAIDP AI Index, ranking AI policy commitments across 90 countries, shows that while most governments now agree on core governance principles, the real divide lies in implementation. Many are ...

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Research Radar: AI as a Multiplier for Evidence-Informed Policy

A new WHO discussion paper explores how AI can accelerate research synthesis and keep evidence continuously up to date. Elana Banin welcomes the push to use AI to strengthen the evidence-to-policy pip...

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Who Gets to Define the AI Debate? A Youth Perspective

A high school journalist reflects on who is shaping the public conversation about AI. While headlines focus on risk and disruption, everyday uses of AI are already helping families access benefits, st...

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Governing with Others: The Basque Country Turns Collaboration into Rule of Law

As the Basque Government moves to pass a new Transparency Law this May, it is redefining what transparency means. No longer just about access to information, the law embeds collaborative governance in...

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Before you engage, listen: a framework for citizen participation across the policy cycle

A mayor presents a plan, residents push back, and everyone leaves frustrated, not because people weren’t heard, but because listening and engagement happened at the wrong moment. This piece reframes p...

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A Dozen Interns on Cocaine: What One of the Longest-Running Civic Tech Projects Reveals About AI in Government

What happens when governments rely on systems that sound right instead of being right? Drawing on OpenFisca’s spread from France to governments across Europe, Africa, and Oceania, Beth Simone Noveck’s...

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How we used AI to lift the voices of California state employees

Using AI to analyze over 2,400 employee comments, California’s Engaged California team found that the challenge wasn’t the scale of the data, but making sense of complex, layered input without oversim...

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What AI Governance Documents Actually Cover and What They Don’t

AI governance is expanding fast, but not evenly. A new analysis from MIT and Georgetown’s CSET maps over 1,000 governance documents to show that while policies are proliferating, they cluster around f...

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But Grok Said So! How AI is Enabling Political Polarization

Across contexts like India, where author Anirudh Dinesh’s family lives, AI chatbots such as xAI’s Grok are increasingly used not to inform but to generate arguments that reinforce existing political v...

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Designing Democratic Engagement in the AI Era: Three Hard Choices

Designing a one-hour course on democratic engagement and AI means confronting genuinely hard questions about representativeness, political framing, and audience, where thoughtful experts disagree, and...

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The Next Frontier: AI, Equity, and the Future of Public Benefits

Millions of Americans miss out on health and food assistance benefits due to fragmented systems and complex enrollment processes. This piece explores how Link Health, in partnership with the AI for Im...

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The AI Agents are Here: A Technical Blueprint for Governments

AI agents are reshaping how systems operate across sectors. This piece argues that the imminent challenge to address is autonomy, including how agents act, interact, and scale in open environments. It...

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From Access to Opportunity: How Governments Can Build Inclusive AI

Growing up in Kakuma refugee camp, Nhial Deng experienced what it means to be excluded from opportunities. Returning years later, he saw young people using AI not as aid, but as a tool to build skills...

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Reducing Friction in Federal Funding: How Massachusetts Built GrantWell

Massachusetts municipalities are eligible for an estimated $17.5 billion in federal funding, but accessing it is often harder than securing it. In partnership with the Massachusetts Federal Funds and ...

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Finding the "True Thing": Lessons in Storytelling, Trust, and Institutional Brand

In this post, Eileen Twiggs draws on lessons from the InnovateUS workshop "Effective Use of Social Media: Storytelling, Trust, and Institutional Brand" to explore how public servants can move beyond r...

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Built Against Its People: Iran’s AI Infrastructure of Control

Dr. Sara Bazoobandi examines how Iran’s doctrine of “knowledge jihad” shaped the development of its digital and AI infrastructure, transforming technology into an instrument of state control. The piec...

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What We Learned from 50 Experts About Designing Democratic Engagement in the AI Era

More than 50 practitioners, researchers, and civic technologists from 24 countries reviewed the draft curriculum for Designing Democratic Engagement for the AI Era, providing over 300 comments and sug...

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The Case for Civic AI Compacts with Higher Education

Cities often treat nearby universities as occasional partners rather than strategic collaborators. But as artificial intelligence reshapes local economies and public services, that relationship may ne...

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Can AI help save us bureaucrats from our bureaucracy?

InnovateUS and the Center for Civic Futures are launching a new series exploring how AI can help human services agencies reduce administrative burden and improve benefits delivery. Drawing on Robert A...

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South Australia needs its own sovereign AI capability

In this commentary, originally published by InDaily South Australia, Matt Ryan argues that artificial intelligence can help governments deliver more effective, human-centered services, but only if it ...

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Assembly Required: A Conversation with Lorelei Kelly on Deliberative Technology and Congressional Reform

In this conversation with Elana Banin, Lorelei Kelly argues that rebuilding democratic resilience requires redesigning the institutional infrastructure connecting citizens to Congress. Drawing on cons...

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Building an “Agentic Middleware” for the City Government: Boston’s Experiment with Model Context Protocol

Boston is preparing for a future where AI agents increasingly interact with government systems. In this interview, Boston's Chief Information Officer Santiago Garces explains how the city is experimen...

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Using AI to Help States Break Down Barriers to Skills-Based Hiring

Artificial intelligence is often portrayed as a force that will destroy jobs. In this essay, Seth Harris argues that it can also expand opportunity. By using AI to identify and remove unnecessary coll...

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Who Will Shape AI in the Public Interest

The current controversy over the Pentagon’s AI contracts reveals a deeper issue: governments are shaping the AI market through procurement in the wrong ways or not at all, failing to make demands that...

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