Reconciliation of public administration is ongoing. By unlearning the dominant derivatives of normative public administration and learning its collision with Artificial Intelligence (AI), we may collectively carve spaces to affirm possible futures of public service. In these ways, a shared public administration strength comes from remembering where we’ve been in order to see where we might go. This is different from what is often seen as a strength in public administration: to solve problems. However, reconciliation is not about solution. Reconciliation is about re-solution (seeking clarity by affirmation). Our course work requires public servants to respect the distinctly unique ways AI could possibly occur across place-based and community specific governments within the United States.
Course learning prompts will center on these 5 questions: 1) What does normative public service need to unlearn in order to learn what’s possible with AI? 2) How can we assess the benefits and risks of AI? 3) Why is it important to make unknowns known? 4) What will public servants hold at the center of AI? 5) How might public servants collectively prepare to cross the threshold of our conditioned limitations in order to imagine what’s possible with AI?
Learning is often linked to what we think we know. Our positions act on the knowledge we have about things. Consequently, knowledge is the product of a specific position that reflects particular places and spaces. Currently, normative public administration might not reflect spaces of struggle and survivance. Without unlearning and reconciliation, AI might reproduce normative public administration as it is rather than what it could be.
For example, AI could affirm that public service begins and ends with respect. AI could set goals for healing and establish models for reciprocity. Further, AI could affirm public service norms of equity and social justice ethics with models for remembering, connecting, protecting, restoring, and returning. AI could demonstrate for public servants how to engage in the active disruption of colonial practices that contribute to the (re)production of social inequities. To this end, AI could set the boundaries for legitimizing what is and who is valued.
This is the public service of what’s possible.