Artificial Intelligence in Public Administration: Innovations and Challenges

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing public administration through increasing efficiency, precision, and accessibility of services provided by the state. Today, AI is increasingly used in the area of tax administration, health care planning, transportation, cybersecurity, disaster management, and service provision in general (Government Accountability Office, 2021). However, all these innovations bring numerous ethical, legal, and democratic challenges, such as algorithmic discrimination, lack of transparency, privacy issues, cybersecurity threats, and accountability ambiguity (UNESCO, 2021; NIST, 2023). The current paper explores the following research problem: How can governments use artificial intelligence in public administration without compromising democracy and people's rights? A qualitative literature review and policy comparison help to evaluate the OECD, NIST, UNESCO, U.S. GAO, and EU reports and frameworks on the problem. Also, the paper makes a comparison of the policies of AI governance in Estonia, Singapore, the EU, and the USA. According to the analysis, artificial intelligence is able to significantly improve public administration, provided that there is transparent governance, human control, auditing, privacy guarantees, and workforce training involved (OECD, 2019; NIST, 2023; UNESCO, 2021).