Leveraging AI in Public Services: Opportunities, Risks and Implications for Governance and Accountability

Éditeurs invités

• Wei Qian, Adelaide University
• Cherrie Yang, Massey University
• Pawan Adhikari, University of Essex
• Ataur Belal, The University of Birmingham

Synthèse

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming how public sector organisations deliver services and demonstrate accountability. While AI offers opportunities to improve efficiency, it presents significant governance challenges including obscured responsibility, reproduced biases, and gaps in existing accountability arrangements.

The special issue addresses AI as a socio-organisational phenomenon reshaping public sector accounting and governance. It welcomes interdisciplinary research from diverse contexts, particularly developing countries and perspectives challenging Western-centric approaches. Research should explore how AI impacts budgeting, professional identities, algorithmic bias, citizen co-production of accountability, and locally adapted practices, especially regarding responsibility when AI-informed decisions harm marginalised communities.

Thèmes proposés

• AI transforming public service accounting and public value generation
• AI reshaping public budgeting and resource allocation
• Skills and professional identities in AI-enabled public services
• Governance and measurement tools through predictive analytics and automated decision systems
• AI and demand-side versus plural forms of public accountability
• Accountability relationships reconfigured by AI
• Citizens and beneficiaries co-producing accountability with AI
• Responsibility and accountability for adverse AI-informed outcomes
• Algorithmic bias and data inequalities in public accountability
• AI governance and institutional power relations in public service accounting
• Locally developed or adapted AI practices and alternative understandings of public value
• AI risks to local communities and marginalised constituents