AI’s Role in Reshaping Public Administration Professions
New technologies are changing work life, expert work, science, and art. This change brings both excitement and concerns. Many companies and organizations are now considering how to anticipate changes in work and experiment with new solutions.
Kela (The Social Insurance Institution of Finland) is exploring this phenomenon together with other public administration actors. This way, we can envision different possible futures and solve challenges related to the transformation of expert work. At the same time, we can gather information about what changes to prepare for and how.
For Kela to maintain a human touch, it’s essential to understand the interaction between humans and “Assistive AI”. We need to consider what changes in our work and customer interactions, and why. Along with opportunities, we must also consider digital inequality and factors affecting the meaningfulness of work.
Phenomenon-based Innovation at Kela
As expert work in public administration has changed significantly, flexibility and the ability to anticipate future needs have become increasingly important. Phenomenon-based* innovation helps reduce uncertainty by strengthening Kela’s resilience and future sustainability. Challenges are increasingly approached from a phenomenon and human-centric perspective, not just from a technological standpoint. This helps us keep up with rapid changes in the outside world.
During spring 2024, we interviewed experts from both public and private sectors. Through these interviews, we wanted to map out where the organizations’ greatest expectations and pressures for change lie, what the current situation is (honestly), their desired futures, and what lessons and challenges have been identified in these organizations.
Key takeaways from our expert interviews:
- The use of AI is currently focused mainly on enhancing the work of individual experts. However, the greatest impact is expected to arise when AI can be utilized in broader processes and teamwork. This integration requires investments and change management.
- The ethical questions of AI use are largely unresolved. Although principles have been established, practical boundaries are still unclear. Concerns include information security and data protection. In the public sector, the challenge is the assumption of “completely error-free service”.
- Ecosystem-like cooperation is crucial for improving and enhancing work, but interpretations of the EU’s AI regulation may complicate collaboration in practice.
- Different industries are changing at different paces, and the division between private and public sectors is not clear-cut. In public discourse, we encounter the inefficiency of the public sector. Attitudes and assumptions strongly influence how the future of AI is seen: whether it brings benefits mainly in administrative tasks or if the benefits extend deeper into the core of work. The change is seen as significant in any case, and it requires identifying impactful use cases and experiments in public administration. This change and its understanding cannot be outsourced only to the private sector. The role of management in supporting and inspiring change is of paramount importance.
Future Prospects: Expert Work in Public Administration in the 2030s
We don’t have that famous crystal ball to see into the future. And just as in the present, multiple and partly contradictory realities can be true at the same time in the future. However, during our phenomenon work, we have identified a few recurring themes with experts. These themes relate to AI development, secure utilization of information, changes in expert work, managing information overload, and the role of management in a changing operational environment. Although the future cannot be predicted with certainty, examining these themes can help outline possible developments and prepare for them.
Here are our thoughts on how these themes might affect expert work in public administration in the future.
Specialized AI — Specific Use Cases
In the future, public administration may increasingly utilize AI tailored for specific purposes. These AIs can assist experts in data analysis, report preparation, or decision support. Specialized AIs can speed up work processes and improve work quality.
Secure Utilization of Information and Monitored Processes
As the use of AI increases, the importance of information security is further emphasized. Public administration must ensure that sensitive information is handled securely and that the use of AI is closely monitored. This may mean creating new information security practices and processes, as well as training staff on information security and AI ethics.
Unique and Flexible Job Descriptions for Experts
The proliferation of AI can enable more individualized and flexible job descriptions for experts. As routine tasks are automated, experts can focus more on creative problem-solving and strategic thinking. The spread of remote work and flexible working hours can also increase work flexibility.
Utilizing AI in Managing Information Overload
The continuous growth of information can lead to information overload, making it difficult to distinguish relevant information. AI can help in managing this “noise” by filtering and prioritizing information and identifying meaningful connections between different information sources. This allows experts to focus on the most essential matters and make better decisions.
The Role and Place of Management
With the adoption of AI, the role of management may become more strategic and coaching-oriented. Management’s task is to ensure that AI is utilized ethically and effectively to achieve organizational goals. This requires management’s own understanding of AI and the ability to lead change and support staff in adopting new technologies. At the same time, management must ensure that the human perspective is maintained in decision-making.
Next Steps in our Phenomenon Work: AI Easing Information Deluge
Our phenomenon work will next focus on the challenge of explosive growth of information. This problem is worth solving because experts have a growing need to manage and interpret large amounts of information effectively in public administration. At the same time, the increase in ecosystem work requires an even better ability to quickly and reliably form overall pictures of complex issues. Kela’s own staff barometer has also revealed that experts feel the amount of information to be absorbed is excessive.
Our goal is to develop solution hypothesis and test them out quickly. Concrete experiments will begin soon. By solving the problem in practice, we increase our understanding of AI and our ability to utilize it at Kela.
*Phenomenon-based approach perceives things systemically, as part of a larger system and a complex issue, not just as separate individual parts. Phenomenon-based innovation is a way to anticipate and address broad societal, technological, or cultural phenomena. This approach is simultaneously a way to design future solutions for challenging systemic problems.
