Addressing critical questions at the nexus of AI advancements, governance and development.
As artificial intelligence continues to permeate every facet of modern life, it brings significant promise and risks. While the power of AI and its potential implications are widely discussed, less attention is given to its impact on the public sector and citizens’ well-being. Rooted in ISE’s commitment to strengthen citizen-centered governance, this initiative explores how AI can be harnessed to improve outcomes for citizens and the state-citizen compact while addressing the risks it poses.
For governments and communities, the central challenge is not simply whether or how quickly to adopt AI. It is how to determine where AI can address meaningful opportunities; negotiate effectively with technology and infrastructure providers; and develop the institutions, workforce, and governance arrangements needed to use it responsibly.
Much of the work at the AI-and-governance nexus focuses on dialogue, principles and emerging risks. ISE brings a different vantage point: experience working within government reform processes and a distinctive toolkit—including the Ten Functions of the State, Reform Sequencing Tracker, Open Moments Framework and Critical Stakeholder Inquiry—for helping institutions sequence and prioritize change under uncertainty. This initiative applies that operational expertise to AI, to support communities, governments and firms navigate transformation in practice.
Develop a contextual understanding of AI and future technologies and anticipate key issues for society, governance and economic outcomes through a citizen-centered lens. Goal: Identify emerging policy issues and address the big questions related to AI’s impact on society
ISE’s Women in AI & Future Technology Council brings together senior women leaders with experience across key sectors to examine how AI is being applied in practice, where it is creating value, and where new risks and constraints are emerging. Through collective sense-making, sector deep-dives, site visits and field engagement, the Council will explore areas including healthcare, education and skills, infrastructure and economic competitiveness, while drawing out wider lessons on issues such as cybersecurity, governance and workforce change.
Building off ISE’s Renegotiating the Terms of Aid program, this program aims to help governments and communities shape the rules, investments, partnerships, and institutional arrangements governing AI adoption. Countries are making consequential decisions about data, digital and energy infrastructure, cloud services, procurement, intellectual property, technology partnerships, workforce commitments, and governance standards. These choices are frequently made separately, under time pressure, or without a clear understanding of how their cumulative effects will shape national development, institutional autonomy, and citizen well-being.
ISE will explore how AI is reshaping economies, institutions and citizens’ lives, including its potential to strengthen productivity, entrepreneurship and public-service delivery. The program will examine the implications of job displacement, skills obsolescence, wage pressures and widening income inequality, and consider where established expectations and systems—around work, education, social protection, economic participation and the role of the state—may need to be recast.
ISE will use the AI version of its ten functions course to brief policy makers and corporate leaders and boards on opportunities, risks and governance options for building greater accountability and governance oversight to AI deployment across different sectors.