The implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in public settings is not a new topic. However, only recently it gained momentum, and practitioners started investigating the potentialities of this technology also within the public boundaries. On the opposite scholars rarely focus on AI, leaving an urgent gap to fill. Moreover the current body of literature is muddleheaded and scholars fatigue in disentangling and clarifying the various domains and fields of analysis. This paper aims at providing an overview of the state-of-the-art of AI applications, in order to explore the trends and identify promising paths for future research. For doing that it relies on an original and up-to-date study of existing AI projects worldwide.
Public sector plays a pivotal role in AI development both considering legislation advancement [
As primary source for the census, we considered news articles from sector-specialized journals. To gather these information, we tracked the news adopting an automated system of keyword alerts and we daily monitored the articles that mentioned one of the settled keywords. Only the articles related to the public sector have been select-ed. Once the project was identified as eligible for the census the first two authors started analyzing it to extract the main data related to AI application. The final goal was to fill the database (an Excel file) with all the information reported in the figure below: we developed a taxonomy based on dimensions considered relevant by both academics and practitioners. The taxonomy was itself one of the results of this study. The output of this analysis is a sample of 215 initiatives, selected from January 2018 to December 2020.
215 AI projects were identified. Data shows that the implementation of AI solutions in the public sector has grown over the last three years: from 45 in 2018 to 123 in 2020. Moreover, considering their level of maturity the majority of the cases are in a pilot testing phase (81 projects; 38%). Considering the geographical distribution of the AI initiatives, the highest number of projects was found in America (113; 53%), followed by Europe (64; 30%) and Asia (30; 14%). The remaining 8 projects (3%) are spread among Oceania and Africa. To identify the actors involved in the implementation of AI within the public sector, the analysis focus-es on the main actor engaged in each project: Central Public Organizations are the institutions which show the highest rate of AI projects (98 cases; 46%), followed by Local Public Organizations (61 cases; 28%). As regards the classes of AI solutions implement-ed, data highlights that AI projects are mainly based on Computer Vision solutions (62 projects; 29%), hence projects that support actors to extract information and elaborate patterns from images. The highest explored application area is the health sector, with 67 cases (31%): this is not surprising as, due to the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the request of AI solutions in this domain has increased. Considering instead the process distribution, the majority of the AI projects are implemented to support public decision makers in the empowering of existing processes and in the prioritization of activities (66 cases; 31%). Data confirm the impressive trend in the development of AI applications in the public sector, highlighting how public organizations are going fast, or even rushing in the usage of AI. Thus, scholars are called to follow this trend also in academic research. [2] G. Misuraca and C. van Noordt, “Overview of the use and impact of AI in public services in the EU,” 2020. [3] OECD, Artificial Intelligence in Society. 2019. [5] Y. K. Dwivedi et al., “Artificial Intelligence (AI): Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy,” Int. J. Inf. Manage., no. April, p. 101994, 2021. [6]
M. J. Ahn and Y.-C. Chen, “Artificial Intelligence in Government: Potentials, Challenges, and the Future,” in 21st Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2020, pp. 243–252. W. G. de Sousa, E. R. P. de Melo, P. H. D. S. Bermejo, R. A. S. Farias, and A. O. Gomes, “How and where is artificial intelligence in the public sector going? A literature review and research agenda,” Gov. Inf. Q., vol. 36, no. 4, p. 101392, 2019.
About the Authors
Giulia Maragno is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Management, Economic and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano. Her PhD research focuses on how the adoption of digital technologies is modifying government internal processes and the way in which public entities provide services. Since 2019 she has been collaborating with the Digital Agenda Observatory of Politecnico di Milano, a practitioner-oriented research initiative aimed at investigating the adoption of digital technologies within the public sector.
Luca Tangi is a project officer at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. He earned a PhD in Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano. His doctoral work focused on understanding how ICTs are affecting public service delivery and transforming the way public organisations are structured and organised. Since June 2021, he collaborates with the JRC carrying out research on the introduction of new, cutting-edge technologies and in particular Artificial Intelligence in public settings.
Luca Gastaldi, PhD, is associate professor at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano where he teaches “Organization Design”, “Business Process Management” and “Leadership and Innovation”. His research interests are in the fields of digital innovation, smart working and design thinking, with a peculiar emphasis on public entities. He is board member of CINet, an international research network on continuous innovation. He is also co-Director of “Digital Agenda” and “Design Thinking for Business” Observatories at Politecnico di Milano. Over the years, he promoted research and consulting projects in the area of digital innovation, with a peculiar emphasis on public entities.
Michele Benedetti is a research fellow and lecturer at the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano. Since 2001 he has carried out research on digital innovation, studying the role and impact of digital on Public Administration organization and management and deepening new models enabled by ICT technologies for the provision of public services. He also gained almost twenty years of experience in managing complex projects of digital transformation in the PA in collaboration with Municipalities, Provinces, Regions and Ministries. Since 2009 he has been director of the eGovernment Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano and since 2017 also of the Digital Agenda Observatory.