II Digital Governance and Public Administration: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

The Laboratory Academic Supervisor Eran Vigoda-Gadot and Laboratory Head Evgeny Styrin acted as moderators of the two days conference. The International Laboratory for Digital Transformation in Public Administration members Senior Research Fellow Evgeny Diskin and Senior Research Fellow Maria Yudina actively participated in discussions. Short summary of all presentations is below.

First session summary

Professor Tao Chen from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China) presented on the topic «AI-Driven Digital Transformation in Chinese Government Services: a Case Study of DeepSeek, Opportunities, Challenges, and Enablers». He provided examples of AI applications in various countries, including Australia, Singapore, and the UK, and introduced a five-level model of AI integration in public services. Professor talked about the emergence of competitive Chinese AI models, comparing them to those from the United States. He highlighted several leading Chinese technology firms developing AI language models, including Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, and Tencent. Then Tao Chen focused on the DeepSeek, a young company that has gained attention for its open-source AI model, which is more cost-effective and efficient than proprietary alternatives. He explained how open-source AI could democratize access to AI technology and potentially changes the market dynamics. 

Assistant Professor in University of Macau, Macau SAR (China) Boyuan Zhao focused on using data from Boston's e-government platform to assess whether cash incentives can reduce syringe litter. He emphasized that while the study relates to public health, his expertise lies in e-government platforms, which provided the data source for the policy analysis in public administration. Boyuan Zhao presented research on the effectiveness of a cash buyback program for discarded needles in Boston, aimed at addressing the opioid crisis and public health hazards. The study compares this program with the city's existing Mobile Sharps team that collects needles based on resident reports. The cash buyback program is effective in reducing needle pickups and service requests, but only within a half-mile radius of the collection center. The effect decays rapidly over distance but remains consistent over time. While the program shows promise in addressing public health concerns, its cost-effectiveness remains unclear due to broader implications that are difficult to measure.

Senior Research Manager in the Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa) Krish Chetty presented on the topic «Harnessing AI for Digital Governance: Strengthening Transparency and Public Trust in the Era of Smart Administration». He told participants about the potential of AI to combat corruption in South Africa, highlighted the dangers faced by whistleblowers, including assassinations and character attacks, which discourage people from reporting corruption. The unchecked corruption hinders economic growth, investor confidence, and exacerbates inequality by diverting resources away from those in need. Given these challenges, Krish Chetty presented his research on how AI can enhance organizational governance in South Africa, particularly in detecting fraud and addressing corruption. Presenter highlighted AI's potential as a knowledge multiplier and democratizing force for analytical capabilities in the Global South. 

Krish Chetty outlined challenges in AI implementation, such as the capability gap and data quality issues, and emphasized the need for visionary leadership, strategic investments, and ethical frameworks to successfully leverage AI in the public sector. The lack of necessary infrastructure is also a challenge in implementing AI in the public sector, particularly in healthcare and education. Krish Chetty highlighted the dependence on cloud-based computing services and the need for local data protection. He also mentioned the potential of smaller, more efficient AI models from China, but noted that without proper infrastructure, these cannot be easily adopted. Professor Chen responded to that by describing China's combined approach of using both local government data centers and cloud services from companies like Huawei and Alibaba. The discussion then shifted to the importance of AI governance and supervision, with both speakers expressing interest in collaboration on this topic.

HSE University Research Fellow (Russia) Irina Dvoretskaya presented on the topic «Digital Transformation as a Public Process: Infrastructure, Access, and Transparency of Access to Data in Education». The main hypothesis behind implementing ICT in education is to achieve better educational results, both in subject knowledge and 21st century skills. However, a monitoring study revealed that most schools are still at an early stage of informatization, with only episodic use of digital content. Irina Dvoretskaya told about different scenarios of schooling and how digital tools can support each of them. She highlighted challenges in data-driven management in education, including issues with data collection, analysis, and infrastructure. Irina Dvoretskaya also mentioned alternative approaches to top-down monitoring and the potential of open data sets to provide insights into digital tool usage in schools, despite limitations. 

Second session summary

Professor Eran Vigoda-Gadot from University of Haifa (Israel) presented on the topic «Intelligent Governance 3.0: The triple-pillar foundations of modern governance». He showed a conceptual framework on intelligent governance, defining it as a triple-layered system with three pillars: political, administrative, and societal intelligence. He explored the meaning and dimensions of intelligence, distinguishing between rational and emotional intelligence. Eran Vigoda-Gadot presented a comprehensive model of governance intelligence that integrates human, institutional, artificial, social, human-machine interaction, and business intelligence components. He explained how these different types of intelligence interact and contribute to effective government policy-making and service delivery. Speaker emphasized that intelligent government requires integrating all these components, as each one alone is insufficient. Eran Vigoda-Gadot emphasized the importance of feedback and continuous improvement in developing his framework, inviting others to challenge and refine his ideas. He also discussed with participants the potential of technology to revolutionize governance, particularly in crises, and outlined three directions for future research: theoretical, methodological, and analytical. 

Professor Manuel Bonduki Senior Policy Specialist at Ministry of Education and lecturer at Insper (Brazil) presented his speech on the topic «Digital Public Infrastructures as Mechanisms of Policy Coordination in Federations». Manuel Bonduki explained how federations face a tension between integration needs and local autonomy, and presented his analytical framework of coordination instruments and mechanisms, including hierarchies, markets, networks, and platforms. Effective coordination can occur even without hierarchical mechanisms, challenging the common belief that strong incentives are necessary for subnational government alignment. Speaker presented findings from a comparative case study analyzing coordination between Brazilian subnational states and the federal government, focusing on digital government maturity and compliance. He selected four states representing different levels of coordination and found that the federal government used primarily soft instruments like shared solutions and capacity building rather than hierarchical mandates. The study showed that while soft coordination was slower, it was effective in improving or maintaining coordination in all cases, with both bureaucratic alignment and political leadership playing significant roles in the process. Manuel Bonduki presented on digital public infrastructure (DPI) as a coordination instrument, explaining how non-rival goods like shared login systems can promote interoperability and coordination among Brazilian states, municipalities, and the federal government. 

Associate Professor of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia) Alexandra Sidorova presented on the topic «Organizational Ambidexterity: An Enabler of Efficient Digital Transformation in Public Administration». She highlighted the challenges faced by public agencies in adopting ambidextrous approaches due to limited tolerance for failure and the need to balance risk-averse compliance with innovation. Alexandra Sidorova mentioned Russian Govtech platform as a successful example of implementing both basic and incremental innovations in the public sector, facilitating both explorative and exploitative innovations through a platform-based approach. The Govtech is a mechanism for implementing organizational agility in the public sector. 

Third session summary

Ph.D. Candidate of the City University of Hong Kong (China) Ni Yifeng made presentation on the topic «Bridging the theory-practice divide in public administration: A virtuous pragmatic approach of Wang Yangming and William James». His research was on bridging the theory-practice divide in public administration using a virtual pragmatic approach based on works of philosophies Wang Yangming and William James. Ni Yifeng outlined the problem of the divide between researchers and practitioners in the field, both in Western countries and China. Speaker proposed a new framework that combines Eastern and Western philosophical concepts to address this divide. He talked about origins of the divide, existing approaches to bridging it, and introduced his virtual pragmatic approach as a novel solution. The presentation covered the theoretical background, philosophical foundations, and aims to develop a research-practice framework to guide collaboration between scholars and practitioners. Presentation outlined three major concepts: the mind as a principle, the unity between knowledge and action, and the extension of innate knowledge. The speaker emphasized that knowledge shapes purposes, which in turn direct actions, forming a teleological rather than sequential causal relationship. Ni Yifeng concluded by relating these philosophical ideas to bridging the scholar-practitioner divide, suggesting that aligning perceptual purposes rather than just conceptual understanding is key to overcoming this gap. 

Ph.D. Candidate of the University of Macau (China) Jixiang LI presented on the topic “How Early HITECH Investments in Electronic Health Records Enhance Long-term Public Health Governance Resilience: Evidence from U.S. States». Initial findings suggest that states receiving more funding saw significant increases in life expectancy and decreases in all-cause mortality, with effects becoming stronger during the COVID-19 crisis. The benefits accumulated over time, providing resilience during system pressure. The study also found that EHR systems played a key role in improving health performance, but other factors contribute to overall resilience. State-level differences, such as political support for the Recovery Act, affected how investments translated into health improvements. Jixiang LI presented findings on public health performance across 51 US states from 2009 to 2022. The study suggests that increased investment in healthcare leads to better public health outcomes, especially during crises like flu or COVID-19.  

Ph.D. Candidate of the University of Haifa (Israel) Galina Vissoky-Schwartzman made a presentation on the topic «Citizens and digital governance: An empirical study of emotional and cultural effects». She outlined a research model examining the relationships between human-machine interactions, emotional responses, digital governance performance, and trust. The study included surveys across six culturally diverse countries and AI-generated videos to evoke citizen’s emotions on digital governance. Preliminary results indicate that positive emotions correlate with increased trust in digital governance, while negative emotions have the opposite effect. Galina Vissoky-Schwartzman emphasized that trust in digital governance is deeply emotional, culturally influenced, and dependent on system performance.

Research Assistant of the HSE University (Russia) Agnessa Bich presented on the topic «Informing the public and organizing feedback by district administrations of Saint-Petersburg via social media: analysis of mechanisms and results». She presented the research on developing a methodology for assessing public sentiment on social media at the district level in St. Petersburg (Russia). Agnessa Bich used sentiment analysis of posts and comments from district-based online communities on VKontakte to measure public opinion. The study involved categorizing content topics, identifying key figures mentioned, and calculating a sentiment index based on post engagement and sentiment classification. Speaker showed a map covering sentiment distribution across districts, with darker colors indicating sentiment that is more negative. In conclusion, she emphasized that this approach can help turn social media data into an effective management tool for authorities to understand citizen concerns.

Ph.D. Candidate of the Huazhong University of Science and Technolgy (China) Nanyan CAO made a presentation on the topic «The impact of intelligent chatbot application on total factor productivity of enterprises: an empirical investigation based on the staggered differences-in-differences». Nanyan CAO presented her PhD research on the impact of intelligent chatbots in government portals on enterprise total factor productivity (TFP). The study uses data from 6,000 companies across 271 Chinese cities to examine how chatbots reduce administrative burdens and improve TFP. She outlined the research questions, hypotheses, methodology, and potential innovations of the study. 

The conference discussions during Q&A sessions were fruitful and covered different problems of digital governance development. Digital infrastructure sovereignty and values behind it were topics of common research interest for researchers Russia, Brasil, China, South Africa and Israel. The conference enhanced current international collaborations of the HSE University International Laboratory for Digital Transformation in Public Administration and gave the flour for integration between its partners.