Tag governance

AI, Data, and Public Benefit: Reflections from Data for Policy CIC 2025

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

At Data for Policy CIC 2025 in The Hague, themed “Twin Transition in Data and Policy for a Sustainable and Inclusive Future,” we explored how emerging technologies—especially AI—and diverse data sources can support accountable, inclusive, and sustainable policymaking.

Across several full days of sessions, the event brought together transdisciplinary researchers, policy practitioners, and technology experts. Notable contributions included:

  1. Research presentations – “Proactive-by-Design: The Future of Governance Beyond Bureaucracy?,” on the study we conduct with Paula Rodriguez Müller & Luca Tangi (European Commission JRC) and “The Data Agency Awakens: A New Era for Official Statistics” we prepared with Luca Di Gennaro Splendore
  2. Panel on National Data Strategies in Europe: Learning from and for the Dutch Data Strategy, which I joined the conversation as a panelists, along with Tim Faber (Ministry of Interior & Kingdom Relations), Anne Fleur van Veenstra, Iryna Susha, Adrianna Michałowicz (chaired by Devin Diran & Thijmen van Gend)
  3. finally, the paanel on Responsible AI and Data Science Revolutions: Implications for Public Benefit Research and Policy Making that I was honored to chair, with panelists representing Smart Data Foundry and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), joined by Magdalena Getler, Oliver Berry, and Rosario Piazza.

Our discussion highlighted the immense potential of AI and data, but also the responsibilities that come with it. Key insights included:

  • Balancing optimism and realism: AI is transformative, but its adoption requires grounded, practical experience. It can support public benefit—if managed carefully;
  • Data quality over quantity: More data isn’t always better. Governance, documentation, bias mitigation, and transparency are essential for AI-readiness;
  • Embedding public trust: High-sensitivity contexts, such as health or finance, demand proportionality, oversight, and systems designed for inclusivity;
  • Human-in-the-loop mechanisms: Ensuring AI reflects human values and context is critical, even when those values are evolving;
  • Task-appropriate AI: Not every problem requires a large language model; careful alignment between technology and purpose is essential;
  • Data literacy for all: Understanding AI’s limitations and risks is as important as technical infrastructure;
  • Triangulating perspectives: Combining structured/unstructured and qualitative/quantitative data helps address bias, power imbalances, and complexity;
  • Sustainable and inclusive systems: Scalable infrastructure alone is insufficient; AI governance and operational design must prioritize long-term societal benefit.

As Amara’s Law reminds us: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run.” Our discussion echoed this sentiment: AI’s potential is enormous, but realizing it for public benefit requires careful design, governance, and collaboration.

The overarching theme through all days (beyond above) was clear: AI and data are not neutral tools. Their value for public policy depends on human-centered design, responsible governance, and active societal engagement. Tools alone won’t deliver public benefit—they must be operationalized thoughtfully, with attention to ethics, context, and inclusion.

Huge thanks to Sarah Giest, Bram Klievink, Zeynep Engin, and all participating institutions—Leiden University, TNO Vector, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and The Hague Centre for Digital Governance—for creating the space for meaningful dialogue in such a rich, collaborative environment.

The CIC 2025 conversations reminded us: building a truly responsible, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable AI ecosystem is not just a technical challenge—it is a societal mission and each and every of us is part of it.

Advancing Democracy & AI: Reflections from IJCAI, PRICAI, and ICA 2025 Workshops

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how societies govern, deliberate, and make collective decisions. Over the past year, our Democracy & AI workshop series—held across IJCAI, PRICAI, and ICA—has become a global forum for examining both the promise and the perils of AI in democratic contexts. From Montréal to Wellington to Wuhan, our community continues to grow, connecting researchers across AI, political science, HCI, law, design, ethics, and public administration.

DemocrAI at IJCAI 2025: AI at the Service of Society

As part of the IJCAI International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence in Montréal, themed “AI at the service of society,” we (Jawad Haqbeen, Takayuki Ito, Rafik Hadfi, and myself) convened the 6th International Workshop on Democracy & AI (DemocrAI25).
Although I could not attend in person, I am deeply grateful to my co-organizers for leading the workshop and for representing our team—as well as for the chance to meet Yoshua Bengio, one of the pioneers of modern deep learning and the one who recently became the very first researcher who while still being active in research achieved the milestone of 1 million citations!

The workshop opened with two outstanding keynote talks:

  • Mary Lou Maher (UNC Charlotte) — “The Imperative for AI Literacy”
  • Michael Inzlicht (University of Toronto) — “In Praise of Empathic AI”

Across 13 diverse presentations, contributors explored: AI’s impact on trust, civic engagement, and deliberation, risks and governance of LLMs in judicial settings and policymaking, collective intelligence and value aggregation for democratic processes, AI applications in education, law, and policy design, governance, fairness, inclusion, and global research equity.

We were delighted to recognize several exceptional contributions:

  • Best Paper Award — “LLMs in Court: Risks and Governance of LLMs in Judicial Decision-Making” (Djalel Bouneffouf & Sara Migliorini)
  • Best Student Paper Award — “Finding Our Moral Values: Guidelines for Value System Aggregation” (Víctor Abia Alonso, Marc Serramia & Eduardo Alonso Sánchez)
  • Best Extended Abstract Award — “Group Discussions Are More Positive with AI Facilitation” (Sofia Sahab, Jawad Haqbeen & Takayuki Ito)
  • Best Presentation Award — “Democracy as a Scaled Collective Intelligence Process” (Marc-Antoine Parent)

A key message echoed throughout the day: AI can enhance social cohesion, participation, and equity—but only through responsible design and robust governance frameworks.

DemocrAI at PRICAI 2025: Participation, Values, and Governance

Following IJCAI, I joined the organizing committee for the 7th Democracy & AI Workshop at PRICAI 2025, held in Wellington, New Zealand. Two years ago, I had the privilege of giving a keynote at PRICAI DemocrAI on symbiotic relationship of Artificial Intelligence, Data Intelligence, and Collaborative Intelligence for Innovative Decision-Making and Problem Solving. This year, I am excited to help shape the conversation from the organizing side.

The workshop explored the expanding role of AI in democratic life, including AI-assisted policy design and decision-making, AI in governance, elections, and public administration, citizen participation and deliberative democracy tools, behavioral impacts of AI on trust, engagement, and polarization, transparency, accountability, and legitimacy of algorithmic decisions, ethics, socio-technical risks, and AI’s impact on societal wellbeing, and reimagining democracy in the LLM era.

Special Track at ICA 2025: AI in e-Government & Public Administration

Our workshop series expands further with a dedicated Special Track on AI in e-Government & Public Administration at the IEEE International Conference on Agentic AI (ICA 2025), held in Wuhan, China.

Co-organized with Jawad Haqbeen, Takayuki Ito, and Torben Juul Andersen, this track examines how AI-driven tools are transforming public governance—from policy co-creation and civic engagement to service delivery and institutional decision-making.

Topics include:

  • AI for participatory and deliberative governance
  • AI’s impact on societal wellbeing
  • AI in public service delivery and policy design
  • Ethics and risk governance in public-sector AI
  • Case studies and experiments with deployed systems
  • Transparency, accountability, and responsible administration

Across IJCAI, PRICAI, and ICA, one theme is clear: AI’s role in democracy is neither predetermined nor neutral. It can support inclusion, transparency, and collective intelligence—or undermine trust, equity, and participation. The outcome depends on the choices we make now: the values we embed, the governance we build, and the communities we bring together.

Our Democracy & AI workshop series exists to advance this work—uniting technologists, policymakers, social scientists, designers, and ethicists in a shared mission: to ensure AI serves democracy, rather than the other way around.

Huge thanks to all speakers, awardees, participants, and co-organizers.
Onward to DemocrAI at PRICAI and ICA 2025!

From Krems to Linz: Reflections from EGOV 2025 and a Research Visit to Austria

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

September brought a truly inspiring and intense sequence of events: the EGOV 2025 from Doctoral Colloquium to Junior Faculty School, and the main IFIP EGOV 2025 conference in Krems, followed by a research stay at Johannes Kepler University Linz. Five days of discussion, mentoring, presenting, and connecting in Krems with several more in Linz where the intensive research stay was enriched by a memorable dive into the Ars Electronica Festival and its conversations on technology, fear, and democratic futures.

What follows is a reflection on an academically dense but deeply rewarding journey across two Austrian cities.

EGOV2025: Doctoral Colloquium & Junior Faculty School

We began in the breathtaking setting of Göttweig Abbey with the EGOV 2025 Doctoral Colloquium, where 13 PhD students presented their research, shared challenges of the doctoral journey, and engaged in open discussions with mentors.

The following day, the Junior Faculty School expanded these conversations to early career researchers (up to five years post-PhD). Together with a wonderfully engaged group, we explored questions about career trajectories, researcher identity, publishing strategies, gender inequalities in academia, and the importance of being in a workplace that supports—not drains—well-being.

A recurring theme across both days was impact. We examined it from multiple perspectives:

  • during the Colloquium’s mentor panel
  • in Tomasz Janowski’s keynote
  • through the “from research to policy” workshop by Paula Rodriguez Müller, Sven Schade, and Luca Tangi
  • in the panel on publishing in top journals with Panos Panagiotopoulos and Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar
  • and in roundtable discussions on career development

Sincere thanks to the organizers—Gabriela Viale Pereira, Ida Lindgren, Lieselot Danneels, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, and Michael Koddebusch—for making these events equally enriching for participants and mentors.

EGOV 2025 conference

With the main conference underway, we launched the Emerging Technologies and Innovations track, which I co-chaired with Francesco Mureddu and Paula Rodriguez Müller. This year, we welcomed Paula (European Commission JRC) to the team and continued pushing the track beyond academic silos, aiming to strengthen the bridge between research, policy, and practice.

We were delighted to see a record number of submissions—double compared to last year. A growing Information Systems community joined us, fulfilling the long-term ambition that Marijn Janssen and I have shared for the track.

Across three sessions, we explored topics that shape the future of governance:

  • the potential of generative AI and LLMs for administrative literacy and public sector transformation
  • trust frameworks and platform governance
  • GovTech incubators and the gap between prototypes and long-term implementation
  • self-assessment tools for climate adaptation
  • digital transformation patterns in smart city strategies

These studies together illustrated how emerging technologies and governance innovation are reshaping public institutions.

A special highlight was the Best Paper Award in the category “Most Innovative Research Contribution or Case Study”, received by Lukas Daßler for “GovTech Incubators: Bridging the Gap Between Prototypes and Long-Term Implementation” (co-authored with Andreas Hein and Helmut Krcmar). Congratulations once again!

I was happy to present two papers at the conference:

  1. “Proactive Public Services in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Towards Post-Bureaucratic Governance” with Paula Rodriguez Müller, Luca Tangi, and Jaume Martin Bosch – the first (or “step 0”) output of our ongoing research on AI-enabled proactive service provision.
  2. “May the Data Be with You: Towards an AI-Powered Semantic Recommender for Unlocking Dark Data” based on the master thesis of my former student, now at Microsoft, Ramil Huseynov; co-authored with Dimitris Simeonidis and David Duenas-Cid – a project that combines technical exploration with a generous dose of nerdiness and fun.

Research Visit to Linz

Right after EGOV, I travelled to JKU Linz, hosted by Christoph Schuetz at the Institute of Business Informatics – Data & Knowledge Engineering. During the visit, I delivered an invited talk titled “Responsible Data Ecosystems: From Data Governance to AI Adoption.”
We discussed how to establish trustworthy, effective data practices while responsibly integrating AI, and explored opportunities for future collaboration.

Beyond the academic exchange, Linz offered its own inspiration: diverse, vibrant, and beautifully intertwined with nature and art such as..

Ars Electronica 2025: Panic – Yes/No?

One of the standout experiences was the Ars Electronica Festival, which this year examined the theme “Panic – Yes/No?”. The exhibitions brought together over 1,400 contributors—artists, scientists, developers, entrepreneurs, and activists—questioning our collective sense of alarm and exploring whether “collective panic” is a rational response or a product of sensationalism.

AI and its societal implications stood at the heart of many installations: Who designs these systems? For whom? According to which values? These questions resonate strongly with the core of my own research and offered a refreshing, interdisciplinary lens on technology and democratic futures.

From mentoring early-stage researchers and running a dynamic track, to presenting new work, reconnecting with colleagues, expanding the Information Systems presence within EGOV, and diving into Linz’s research and cultural landscape—it was an intense but profoundly rewarding start of the semester. Weeks like these is a food reminder of why mentoring, connecting, and building research communities matter so much—and why an early Sunday alarm can indeed be worth it.

Panel on Trust in AI @Digital Life Norway: In AI we trust!? (or don’t we? / should we?)

Anastasija Nikiforova 1 Comment

This October, I had an opportunity to participate in the panel on Trust in AI that took place as part of Digital Life Norway conference organized by Centre for Digital Life Norway (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)) that took place in a very peaceful Hurdal (Norway) 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴.


As part of this panel, together with M. Nicolas Cruz B. (KIWI-biolab), Korbinian Bösl (ELIXIR, both of us being also part of EOSC Association)), and Anamika Chatterjee (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)), who masterly chaired this discussion, we discussed trust in AI and data (as an integral part of it), emphasizing the need for transparency, reproducibility, and responsibility in managing them.


What made this discussion to be rather insightful – for ourselves, and, hopefully, for the audience as well – is that each of us represented a distinct stage in the data lifecycle debated upon the aspect of trust and where concerns arise as data moves from the lab to inform AI tools [in biotechnology].
As such we:
✅highlighted the interconnectedness of human actors involved in data production, governance, and application;
✅highlighted the importance of proper documentation to make data usable and trustworthy, along with the need for transparency – not only for data but also for AI in general, incl. explainable AI;
✅discussed how responsibility becomes blurred as AI-driven methodologies become more prevalent, agreeing that responsibility for AI systems must be shared across teams.
Lastly, despite being openness advocate, I used this opportunity to touch on the risks of open data, including the potential for misuse and ethical concerns, esp. when it comes to medical- and biotechnologies-related topics.


All in all, although rather short discussion with some more things we would love to cover but were forced to omit this time, but very lively and insightful. Sounds interesting? Watch the video, incl. keynote by Nico Cruz 👇.

And not of least interest was a diverse set of other events – keynotes, panels, posters etc. – takeaways from which to take back home (not really to home, as from the DNL, I went to the Estonian Open Data Forum, from which to ECAI, and then, finally back home to digest all the insights), where “Storytelling: is controversy good? How to pitch your research to a non-academic audience” by Kam Sripada and panel on supervision are probably the main things I take with me.


Many thanks go organizers for having me and the hospitality, where the later also goes to Hurdal 🇳🇴 in general, as we were lucky enough to have a very sunny weather, which made this very first trip to Norway – and, hopefully, not the last one – very pleasant!

📢✍️🗞️New paper alert! “Sustainable open data ecosystems in smart cities: A platform theory-based analysis of 19 European cities”, Cities (Elsevier)

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

With this post I would like to introduce our new paper entitled “Sustainable open data ecosystems in smart cities: A platform theory-based analysis of 19 European cities” (authors: M. Lnenicka, A. Nikiforova, A. Clarinval, M. Luterek, D. Rudmark, S. Neumaier, K. Kević, M. P. R. Bolívar) that has been just published in Cities journal (Elsevier, Q1).

Smart cities aim to enhance citizens’ lives, urban services, and sustainability, with open data playing a crucial role in this development. Cities generate vast data that, if properly utilized within an open data ecosystem, can improve citizens’ lives and foster sustainability. Central to this ecosystem is the platform, which enables data collection, storage, processing, and sharing. Understanding modern Open Data Ecosystems is pivotal for sustainable urban development and governance, promoting collaboration and civic engagement. In this study, we aimed to identify key components shaping these efforts by conducting a platform theory-based multi-country comparative study of 19 🇪🇺 European cities across 8 countries – Austria 🇦🇹, Belgium 🇧🇪, Croatia 🇭🇷, Czech Republic 🇨🇿, Latvia 🇱🇻, Poland 🇵🇱, Sweden 🇸🇪. Considering both managerial and organizational, political and institutional, as well as information and technological contexts, drawing on both primary and secondary data, we:

  • 🔎🧐🔍identify 50 patterns that influence and shape sustainable Open Data Ecosystems and their platforms, i.e., Open Data Platform Ecosystems. We applied a cluster analysis to identify similarities between groups of patterns that influence and shape open (government) data efforts in smart cities.
  • 🔎🧐🔍explore the relationships between platforms and other Open Data Platform Ecosystems’ components by developing a respective model, and identifying internal platforms and other components that we classified into four categories, (a) data and information disclosure platforms such as open data portals, transparency portals, and official city websites, (b) thematic city development platforms focused on the subject of information such as smart city and smart projects platforms, participation platforms, citizen reporting or accountability platforms, crowdfunding platforms for local projects, startup platforms, etc., (c) specific data format disclosure platforms, and (d) content of information focused platforms, i.e., domain-specific platforms focused on data visualizations and storytelling, which include but are not limited to smart data portals, IoT and big data portals etc. In addition, we identify four OGD strategies used in the strategic planning of the city;
  • 🔎🧐🔍 empirically validate the conceptual findings of five types of Open Data Platform Ecosystems presented in the literature, redefining them from the conceptual to real-life implementation of the respective components in 19 cities with further description of how they contribute to the maturity concept of a sustainable ODE and respective platforms;
  • 🔎🧐🔍 considering the experience gained during the study and external pressures and environments that shape or influence Open Data Platform Ecosystems, based predominantly on best practices or pain points for Open Data Ecosystems in the sampled smart cities, we define 12 recommendations for policy planning and urban governance of more sustainable Open Data Ecosystems.

And this is just a short overview of our contributions. Sounds interesting? Read the article here!

In case of interest, cite this paper as: