EPURAI 2024: Enhancing a Citizen-Centric Public Sector with AI

Date: Friday, 6 December 2024, 9am - 5pm

Location: Campus WU Vienna, Executive Academy Foyer

Organisation: WU Vienna and World Bank

EPURAI Workshop Programme

  
Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have opened up a broad range of possibilities for innovation in the public sector. These transformative technologies have the potential to radically alter decision-making, enhance service delivery, increase citizen engagement, and improve internal organizational efficiency. The third edition of Ethical Public Robots and Artificial Intelligence (EPURAI), organized jointly by WU Vienna (Institute for Public Management and Governance, Institute for Digital Ecosystems) and the World Bank’s GovTech and Public Sector Innovation team, seeks to bring together theoretical and empirical perspectives on how robots and AI shape societies, economies, governments, and are in turn shaped by the people and environments within which they are deployed. The workshop will provide a forum for the discussion of these issues between scholars from diverse scientific fields, including administrative sciences, informatics, economics, management, mechanical engineering and psychology, as well as practitioners from industry, governmental and non-governmental institutions within the GovTech and Public Sector Innovation policy field.

This one-day workshop will be organised into themed sessions consisting of academic-style presentations and lightning talks. Breakout sessions will be built into the programme to allow for participant networking on topics of common interest. A roundtable of academics and practitioners will be held at the end of the workshop, bringing together its major themes and outlining a roadmap for future research and action.

The workshop consists of talks that critically explore issues related to the ethical adoption and use of artificial intelligence in global public service contexts. Topics of focus and interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Impact of AI and robotics on public service provision

• Future role of LLMs in public service provision

• Deployment and adoption of AI in core governments systems (e.g. public procurement, public financial management, human resources management systems)

• Accountability, integrity and anti-corruption

• Justice and Rule of Law

• Alliances and coalitions for sound AI Governance

• Fairness, Equity, Inequality, Bias and discrimination

• AI for Development and Poverty Alleviation

• Regulation of AI

• AI literacy, skills and training

• Transparency, Explainability, Interpretability

Organising Committee

Shefali Virkar, WU Vienna
Verena Dorner, WU Vienna
Jurgen Willems, WU Vienna
Ali Özkes, SKEMA Business School
João Ricardo Vasconcelos, World Bank
Philip McGrath, World Bank

Preliminary programme

Lightning talks:

Ali Özkes, SKEMA Business School
Christina Schamp, WU Vienna
Clemens Denner, Federal Chancellery
David Lansky, EY-Parthenon
Ilkin Temocin, UNIQA
Jan Maly, WU Vienna
Kai Kaiser, World Bank
Oliver Bernecker, KnowCenter
Tobias Polzer, WU Vienna
Fajar Ekaputra (WU Vienna)

Registration

EPURAI Workshop Programme

contact the organising team