NewDigital Transformation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: From strategy to public value

Dates:

• 16 - 20 November 2026

• 9 - 13 August 2027 

• 15 - 19  November 2027

Course Outline

Over the past decades, digital technologies have been transforming economies and societies, and public administrations are increasingly expected to keep pace. Today, Artificial Intelligence is becoming the new frontier of digital transformation, opening up new possibilities to redesign services and internal processes. As technologies keep evolving, public authorities have an opportunity to move beyond digitisation and accelerate a more ambitious phase of transformation, improving how government works and how it interacts with citizens and businesses.

Potentially, digital transformation and AI can deliver substantial benefits for governments worldwide. Fully realised, these benefits can touch every area of the public sector, improving administrative efficiency while also generating social, economic and environmental value for governments, industry and communities. At the same time, digital transformation and AI are not only technical upgrades: they involve legal and regulatory choices, organisational design, data governance, workforce skills, and change management. In practice, these broader dimensions often determine whether an initiative succeeds or underdelivers.

Because many administrations are still in an early phase, there is a real opportunity to co-create end-user-centred solutions by engaging citizens and businesses through service design from the outset. Yet the objective is not efficiency alone: digital transformation and AI enable a new working paradigm, focused on cost-effectiveness, measurable public value, and better outcomes for citizens, businesses and communities. The ultimate goal of this workshop is to help public administrations adopt flexible, responsible and cost-effective digital and AI-enabled strategies.

Specifically, the workshop will focus on how digital transformation and AI solutions can strengthen decision-making and service delivery at all levels of government, supporting better value and outcomes for citizens and businesses.

Within this perspective, AI will not be treated as a standalone technology but as an integral component of the wider digital transformation of public administrations. The workshop will start from policy objectives and user needs rather than from the tools themselves, examining how AI can be embedded in redesigned processes, data ecosystems, organisational structures and workforce skills, where it can generate measurable public value. AI security and governance will be addressed as essential foundations for responsible adoption, helping administrations to manage risks proportionately and to safeguard public trust throughout the AI lifecycle.

Who is the workshop for?

This workshop is designed for policymakers and decision-makers who plan, implement, manage, or evaluate how to turn digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence into practical strategies, governance choices and delivery plans that genuinely transform the way public sector organisations work, creating added value for citizens, businesses, and communities. While the workshop includes some technical content drawing on IT, engineering, economics, and political science, no prior specialist expertise in these fields is required.

How partcipants will benefit:

The workshop will enable you to:

• Understand the principles and management practices for transforming decision-making and public service delivery.
• Make critical judgements about the challenges, bottlenecks, and enabling factors involved in adopting disruptive technologies, including AI, and delivering digital transformation strategies.
• Build knowledge of best practices and leading examples (“champions”) in the field.
• Procure, oversee, and manage digital transformation solutions and services, including AI, efficiently and effectively.
• Mentor colleagues on the benefits of digital transformation and on how to implement digital and AI-enabled solutions in practice.
• Design proportionate AI governance and security arrangements that ensure accountability, human oversight and public trust across digital transformation initiatives.

What the workshop will cover?

The workshop focuses on digital transformation and AI strategies and technologies, and on the full lifecycle of procuring, adopting, implementing, and evaluating them. It also provides practical guidelines and recommendations to help decision-makers apply the learning in their day-to-day work.

The workshop also considers how different regulatory approaches, from the European Union’s risk-based AI Act to the innovation-oriented federal guidance of the United States and China’s layered, state-led regulatory model, shape the responsible and secure governance of AI in the public sector, from procurement to deployment and ongoing assurance.

During the week, the workshop will develop your understanding of:

• The benefits of digitally disrupting traditional public administration.
• Key drivers and enabling conditions for digital transformation and AI.
• Data governance, quality and interoperability as foundations for connected, AI-ready public services.
• Existing solutions, best practices, and proven approaches.
• Data-driven decision support, including analytics, visualisation and AI-enabled tools.
• Common challenges and risks associated with digital transformation and AI.
• Enablers and mitigation actions to reduce delivery and adoption risks.
• AI governance roles, decision rights and human oversight.
• AI risk classification, testing, data protection and model security.
• Transparency, supplier assurance, monitoring and incident response across the AI lifecycle.
• Business case development.
• Stakeholder engagement and onboarding.
• Workforce skills, leadership and organisational change management.
• Building implementation and delivery plans.
• How to evaluate digital transformation plans and the implementation of digital and AI-enabled solutions in public administrations. 

The workshop has been designed to be flexible so that it can be adjusted wherever possible to meet your particular requirements and those of your organisation. You will be invited to give an informal presentation on possible applications of digital transformation and AI in your country.