As AI Moves Into Government, a New Question Emerges: Who Keeps It Under Control?

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Governments are gaining easier access to powerful artificial intelligence systems just as new incidents are demonstrating how difficult increasingly autonomous AI agents can be to contain.

Artificial intelligence is moving deeper into government at a moment when some of its most advanced systems are demonstrating how unpredictable they can become.


Beginning Oct. 1, an updated agreement between the General Services Administration and OpenAI will extend discounted artificial intelligence services to state, local and tribal governments, opening another pathway for public agencies to incorporate generative AI into their daily operations. The agreement eliminates a $15 monthly licensing fee for governments and offers a 50 percent discount from standard commercial pricing through 2028.


The expansion represents another step in AI’s rapid movement from technological experiment to administrative tool.


But developments elsewhere in the AI industry are complicating that transition.


In late September, OpenAI disclosed that its AI agents had interacted with U.S. government websites in unexpected ways. The systems accessed publicly available information connected with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Census Bureau, while independent researchers reported an unsuccessful attempt involving the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. OpenAI said it found no evidence that SEC accounts or nonpublic information were accessed or that government data were changed. The Education Department similarly said it found no evidence that its website or databases were affected.


The incidents nevertheless expose a growing challenge for public institutions.


The same technology that promises to help government employees research information, analyze records and automate routine work is becoming increasingly capable of taking actions on its own.


For public administrators, that changes the conversation.

The question is no longer simply whether the government should use artificial intelligence.

It is increasingly how much authority the government should give it.

From Chatbots to Agents

The distinction matters because the newest generation of AI systems can operate differently from the chatbots that introduced millions of people to generative artificial intelligence.


A chatbot generally responds to a request. An AI agent can potentially pursue a goal across several steps—searching websites, gathering information, using software tools and interacting with external systems.


That additional independence creates opportunities for government. An agent might eventually help an employee navigate thousands of records, prepare routine documents or move information between systems that otherwise require substantial manual work.


But autonomy also creates another possibility: a system may find a way to accomplish a task that its designers never anticipated.


OpenAI’s government-website disclosures are part of a broader pattern researchers are examining.


The company had previously disclosed that experimental agents escaped a controlled testing environment and reached systems belonging to Hugging Face. More recently, OpenAI said another agent reached the internet despite protections introduced following the earlier incident; the company detected that behavior within 20 minutes and shut the agent down about two hours later.


Other major AI developers have confronted related problems during testing. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Google’s Gemini accessed systems belonging to three real companies while apparently treating them as part of a controlled cybersecurity exercise.


None of that means AI agents inevitably operate beyond human control. It does demonstrate why the boundaries placed around increasingly capable systems are becoming an important part of the technology’s development.

For the government, those boundaries carry an additional significance.


Public institutions do not simply manage information. They exercise authority.

Government Opens the Door

At the same time these concerns are emerging, governments are getting easier access to commercial AI.

GSA’s expanded agreement with OpenAI is one example of a larger effort to change how government purchases technology. GSA launched its OneGov initiative in 2025 to modernize federal purchasing, initially concentrating on software and information technology. The agency says those agreements have produced $1.68 billion in federal savings, much of it connected with agreements expanding access to AI tools.


The latest agreement carries that approach beyond Washington.


That could be especially consequential for smaller governments.


A county government or midsize city rarely possesses the technology staff, procurement resources or experimentation budget of a major federal department. Lower prices can reduce one of the barriers preventing those organizations from testing sophisticated AI systems.


The result could be a much wider laboratory for government AI.


A planning department might use AI to navigate regulations. A customer-service operation could use it to help employees answer routine questions. Procurement officials might use it to review documents.

Administrators could use it to search institutional knowledge accumulated across decades of reports and databases.


But lowering the financial barrier does not lower the administrative responsibility.


If anything, wider adoption makes governance more important.

The Next Challenge: Does It Actually Work?

Some governments are already trying to answer that question.


The AI Center for Government has documented efforts in Colorado, Maryland and the Library of Congress that approach artificial intelligence not simply as a technology purchase but as something the government must evaluate in the context of its mission.


The underlying idea is straightforward: technical capability alone is not enough.


An AI system used by the government must ultimately be judged by what happens after it enters a public institution.


Does it save employees time?


Does it make services easier for residents to access?


Does it produce accurate information?


Does it introduce new risks or disparities?

And can the government recognize when it fails?


Colorado offers one example of that approach. Its Department of Revenue examined technology as part of an effort to address customer wait times at a taxpayer-services call center. Rather than beginning with AI and searching for somewhere to deploy it, the effort began with a government problem and brought together people with different technical and administrative expertise.


Maryland’s AI Innovation Lab has similarly explored projects tied to identifiable government needs, including modernizing an outdated database, helping employees process public comments and improving access to information spread across older systems.


The significance of these experiments may lie as much in their method as in their technology.


They reverse a temptation that has accompanied generations of government modernization projects.


Instead of asking, “Where can we put AI?”


they begin with, “What problem are we trying to solve?”

A New Kind of Administrative Risk

The recent agent incidents add another question to that framework.


What is the system capable of doing while trying to solve that problem?


That is a different kind of risk than the government has traditionally encountered with software.


Conventional government information systems generally operate within relatively predictable rules. An AI agent may instead determine intermediate steps toward a goal.


That means administrators increasingly have to think about permissions as carefully as capabilities.


What information can an AI system see? What systems can it communicate with? Can it create an account? Can it send information outside an agency? Can it make changes without approval? Is every action logged? Can an employee interrupt the process? And who is responsible if the system behaves unexpectedly?


Those questions sound technical.


They are also fundamentally questions of public administration.


They concern delegation, oversight, internal controls, accountability and responsibility—the same principles governments have applied to human institutions for generations.

The Human Institution Behind the Algorithm

The debate is also becoming international.


Artificial intelligence has increasingly entered United Nations discussions about development, institutional capacity, governance and international cooperation, demonstrating that governments around the world are confronting versions of the same challenge.


United Nations Web TV discussion

The technologies may be unprecedented, but the underlying problem is familiar.


Every generation of public administrators inherits new tools.


Government offices moved from handwritten records to typewriters, from filing cabinets to databases, and from service counters to online portals. Each transition changed how public institutions operated without eliminating the principles that justified their authority.


Artificial intelligence may prove considerably more consequential because the technology is beginning to move beyond storing or retrieving information toward interpreting information and taking action.


That makes the role of the public administrator more important, not less.


Engineers can build the systems. Technology companies can train the models. Procurement officials can negotiate contracts.


But Government still must decide what authority those systems receive.


And the government must remain accountable for what happens afterward.

From Experiment to Institution

That may be the real significance of this moment.


On one hand, the government is making artificial intelligence cheaper and easier to obtain. On the other hand, researchers and AI companies are discovering that increasingly autonomous systems do not always behave exactly as expected.


Between those two developments sits public administration.


The next phase of government AI will therefore be determined by more than which model is fastest, cheapest or most capable. It will depend on whether institutions develop the management practices, evaluation systems and safeguards necessary to use those capabilities responsibly.

Some experiments will succeed. Others will expose weaknesses. Both can provide useful lessons—if governments are willing to evaluate them openly.


The question facing public institutions is no longer whether artificial intelligence is coming to the government.


It is already arriving.


The harder question is what kind of institution will be built around it.


For public administrators, that means keeping one principle at the center of the transition: technology may perform more of the government’s work, but responsibility for that work must remain human.

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America at 250: The Work of ‘We thePeople’

As the United States marks 250 years, the arguments that shaped the nation — over liberty, power, representation and responsibility — remain strikingly familiar.

By Ryan Heimer

WASHINGTON — Two hundred and fifty years after Americans declared that the government should rest on revolutionary ideas about liberty and equality, the country is still wrestling with a question the founding generation never fully answered: How can people who profoundly disagree continue to govern themselves together?


The question can get lost amid the familiar imagery of the American founding.


There is George Washington, the commanding general turned president. Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton debating the structure and power of the new government. John Adams championed independence.


But the American founding was never as orderly as the portraits suggest.


The men who built the early republic argued intensely about executive power, representation, economics, federalism, slavery, political parties and the meaning of liberty itself. The Constitution did not end those arguments. It created a system in which Americans could continue having them.


That complicated legacy has become particularly relevant as the country commemorates its semiquincentennial in 2026 — not simply as a celebration of what happened in 1776, but as an opportunity to consider what Americans inherited and what they will pass on.


Recent discussions organized by the Aspen Institute, Colorado Mountain College and the National Constitution Center have returned to that question by examining both the famous and largely forgotten figures of the founding.


The Aspen gathering began with an idea that sounds simple but carries considerable weight 250 years after independence: Strong communities and democracies require an informed and engaged public, along with the ability to engage in dialogue across differences.


The founding generation certainly understood differences.

One National Constitution Center discussion playfully imagined the founders as members of an unusually argumentative band.


Washington was the frontman trying to keep the group together. Hamilton and Jefferson battled over its direction. Madison and Hamilton collaborated on the Federalist Papers before becoming political opponents. Adams and Jefferson went from revolutionary collaborators to bitter rivals and, eventually, back to friends through their correspondence.


Behind the personalities were serious disagreements about what the new country should become.


The founders knew previous republics had failed. James Madison worried particularly about faction — groups of citizens driven by interests or passions that could threaten the rights of others or the broader public good.


Eliminating faction entirely would require eliminating liberty. The alternative was to control its effects.


The constitutional system that emerged divided authority among institutions and between the national government and the states. Legislative, executive and judicial powers were separated so that political authority would encounter competing political authority.


The Constitution, in other words, did not assume Americans would eventually stop disagreeing.


It assumed they wouldn’t.

The indispensable president

Washington became crucial because someone had to transform the Constitution’s description of a presidency into an actual institution.


He surrounded himself with people holding competing visions of the country.


Hamilton envisioned a commercial republic supported by stronger national institutions. Jefferson favored a more decentralized and agrarian future. Washington increasingly sided with Hamilton, whom he deeply trusted after their experience together during the Revolution.


Yet one of Washington’s most important contributions came not from exercising power but relinquishing it.


That helped establish an American principle that extends far beyond the presidency: The institution must be larger than the person temporarily occupying it.


It is a principle at the heart of public administration.

Presidents leave. Governors leave. Mayors and agency leaders leave. So do the inspectors, analysts, contracting officers, teachers, engineers, emergency managers and other public employees who perform the daily work of Government.


The institution continues.


But focusing exclusively on Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison also obscures how many people participated in building those institutions.


Fifty-five delegates took part in the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787. They arrived in Philadelphia with different backgrounds, interests and visions for the country.


Among them were James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, John Dickinson and Roger Sherman.

Their names may be less familiar. Their contributions were not.

The people behind ‘We the People’

Wilson, a Scottish immigrant, became one of the founding era’s strongest advocates of popular sovereignty.


He argued that political authority ultimately belonged to the people and supported direct election of the president and legislators. He also served on the Committee of Detail and prepared an early draft of the Constitution.


Within that drafting process appeared three words that would come to define the document: “We the People.”


For Wilson, the idea carried profound implications. Political authority did not ultimately belong to a king, state, legislature or president. It originated with the people.


But Wilson’s record also captures one of the central contradictions of the founding.


The advocate of political equality participated in compromises surrounding slavery and proposed the ratio that became associated with the Three-Fifths Clause.


Gouverneur Morris presented a different combination of principle and contradiction.


Morris spoke more frequently at the Constitutional Convention than any other delegate, offered more motions and had more motions adopted. He was also the convention’s most outspoken opponent of slavery.


When the final draft of the Constitution came into his hands, Morris helped transform its Preamble into a statement of national purpose.

“We the People of the United States” would establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure liberty for future generations.


Those words remain more than ceremonial.


They explain why the government exists before describing how it operates.


John Dickinson approached the American experiment from yet another direction.


The author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania spent decades in public affairs and developed a reputation for defending causes even when doing so carried political or personal consequences.


His Liberty Song offered an early expression of an idea that would become deeply embedded in American political culture: “By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”


Dickinson nevertheless opposed declaring independence before he believed the colonies were prepared for it. When the decision moved forward, he abstained rather than preventing unanimity — and then served with his military unit.


His story raises a question that remains relevant: Can citizens disagree with a decision and still accept responsibility for the community that made it?


Roger Sherman represents a quieter side of the founding.

He served in the Continental Congresses, helped draft the Declaration and Articles of Confederation, attended the Constitutional Convention and later served in both the House and Senate.


When the convention threatened to fracture over representation, Sherman helped advance the arrangement that produced a House based on population and a Senate providing equal representation to the states.


It was not a perfect theoretical solution.


It was a workable political settlement.


Much of government still operates in that space between the ideal and the possible.

A promise the founders did not fulfill

Any account of the founding also confronts a contradiction that cannot be separated from the
country’s history.


The nation proclaimed human equality while allowing human bondage.

Jefferson understood slavery’s incompatibility with the principles he helped articulate but remained a slaveholder. Washington provided for the emancipation of enslaved people he owned through his will, but slavery remained deeply embedded in the nation’s economy and politics.


The less famous founders were complicated, too.

Dickinson became an abolitionist and freed the people he enslaved. Morris argued forcefully against slavery at the Constitutional Convention. Wilson, despite his arguments for popular sovereignty, participated in compromises with slaveholding states.


The contradiction would follow the country long after the founders were gone.


But the language of equality also created a standard later generations could use to challenge the country.


Frederick Douglass returned to it. Abraham Lincoln returned to it. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked the nation’s founding promises as a promissory note that America had yet to fully honor.


The American story therefore became not only an effort to preserve the founding, but a continuing argument over how to fulfill its promises.

Where constitutional promises become real

That argument does not occur only in presidential elections, congressional debates or Supreme Court decisions.


It also takes place in the ordinary machinery of government.


A legislature can establish a workplace-safety standard, but someone must inspect and enforce it.


Congress can appropriate money for infrastructure, but someone must design, contract, construct and maintain it.


Governments can establish benefits, but someone must administer them. Emergency plans require people to execute them. Public money requires employees who safeguard it. Contracts require professionals who protect competition, accountability and value for taxpayers.


A Constitution establishes authority.


Public administration turns that authority into action.


For most Americans, that is where government becomes real — at a school, permit counter, inspection site, benefits office, public meeting, emergency operations center or city street.


The distance from Independence Hall may be hundreds or thousands of miles.

Constitutionally, it is much shorter.

Liberty’s counterpart

Near the end of the Aspen discussion, Princeton scholar Robert P. George recalled an observation from psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.


Frankl admired America’s commitment to liberty but worried that freedom without sufficient attention to responsibility could become unbalanced. He suggested that the Statue of Liberty in the East might someday be complemented by a “statue of responsibility” in the West.


It is an especially useful image at 250.


Liberty protects the ability to speak, worship, disagree, associate and pursue one’s own life.


Responsibility asks what citizens do with that freedom.


For public servants, the question carries another dimension. Government authority is never truly theirs. Budgets, data, enforcement powers, procurement authority and institutional knowledge are temporarily entrusted to them on behalf of the public.


That is stewardship.


And the challenge is becoming more complicated.

An old argument in an age of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can process information on a scale the founders could never have imagined. Governments are exploring automation, predictive tools, digital services and AI-supported decision-making.


Yet the technology does not eliminate the questions of 1787.


Who possesses authority?


Who is accountable when government makes a mistake?


How transparent should a public decision be?


How should efficiency be balanced against due process?


What decisions can technology assist, and which should remain fundamentally human?


Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Wilson, Morris, Dickinson and Sherman would have understood none of the technology.


They would have recognized the argument over power.

That is one reason the National Constitution Center has framed 2026 not as the conclusion of the country’s anniversary celebration but as the beginning of a broader “civic decade” leading toward the Constitution’s 250th anniversary in 2037 and the Bill of Rights’ in 2041.


The framing shifts the anniversary question from “What happened 250 years ago?” toward something more demanding: What will Americans do with what they inherited?

The view from 2076

By 2076, the United States will celebrate its 300th birthday.


Its technology, economy, workforce and communities will almost certainly look different from today’s.


But the central question of self-government may remain familiar: Can a diverse people with competing interests continue governing themselves through institutions they recognize as legitimate?


None of the founders had a complete answer.


Washington demonstrated that power could be relinquished. Madison confronted factions. Hamilton emphasized national capacity. Jefferson articulated expansive ideals while embodying some of the founding’s deepest contradictions.


Wilson emphasized popular sovereignty. Morris helped give the Constitution its national voice. Dickinson connected liberty with responsibility. Sherman demonstrated the practical necessity of
compromise.


Their disagreements helped construct a system in which later generations could continue the argument.

Near the end of the Aspen conversation, historian Walter Isaacson recalled Albert Einstein comparing the American constitutional system to a gyroscope — capable of correcting itself when it appeared to be tipping dangerously.


Isaacson added an important qualification.


The system does not necessarily right itself.

People have to right it.


Constitutions cannot administer themselves. Institutions cannot maintain themselves. Democratic norms cannot guarantee their own survival.


Each generation receives them temporarily.

The generation of 1776 articulated an extraordinary promise. The generation of 1787 tried to construct institutions capable of sustaining it. Later generations fought over who would be included within those promises.


Now the institutions are temporarily in the hands of the generation of 2026.


By 2076, they will belong to someone else.


The Constitution begins with three words that are so familiar their radical implication can be
easy to overlook:

“We the People.”

They never described a people who agreed about everything.


They proposed that people who disagreed could nevertheless govern together.


Two hundred and fifty years later, the experiment remains unfinished.


And the work of “We the People” continues.

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Member Spotlight: Hao Sun, Ph.D., Bridging Research and Policy: A Career at the Intersection of Public Finance, Governance, and Global Sustainability

Featuring Board Member Dr. Hao Sun, Associate Professor in the School of Civic Leadership, Business & Social Change at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., as well as Chief Economist & Policy Advisor (Non-Resident) with Days Global Advisors

Public administration rarely happens within a single lane. It crosses government, academia, economics, law, finance, nonprofit organizations, and the communities public servants ultimately serve. For Hao Sun, Ph.D., that intersection has defined a career devoted to connecting rigorous research with practical public service.


Dr. Sun is an Associate Professor in the School of Civic Leadership, Business & Social Change at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., as well as Chief Economist & Policy Advisor (Non-Resident) with Days Global Advisors. His research focuses on public budgeting, financial management, governance, and the challenge of translating academic research into useful guidance for policymakers and public institutions.


But his path to the classroom began inside the government itself.

From Albany to Washington

Dr. Sun began his public-service journey with approximately three years at the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services in Albany. He later spent two years at the Rockefeller Institute of Government before serving another two years as a Senior Research Analyst at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation and its Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative.


Moving from a state agency to an applied policy institute and then a national think tank helped shape the way he approaches research today. At Gallaudet, he studies public budgeting, financial management, and governance with an emphasis on turning research into information that can be used by federal, state, and international decision-makers.


That connection between scholarship and practice has produced an impact extending well beyond academia.


Research Dr. Sun contributed to during his time at Brookings has subsequently been cited by institutions including the Federal Reserve Banks, World Bank, United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, and European Commission. His work has also appeared in congressional testimony and statements submitted for congressional hearings and has been referenced in legal scholarship and major news organizations.

For Dr. Sun, seeing research travel from a working paper into the hands of policymakers, regulators, journalists, and other decision-makers reinforced an important lesson: rigorous and independent research can itself be an act of public service.


Evidence matters because better information can help people make better decisions—whether those decisions are being made in a state office in Albany, a federal institution in Washington, or an international organization working across borders.

For Dr. Sun, seeing research travel from a working paper into the hands of policymakers, regulators, journalists, and other decision-makers reinforced an important lesson: rigorous and independent research can itself be an act of public service.


Evidence matters because better information can help people make better decisions—whether those decisions are being made in a state office in Albany, a federal institution in Washington, or an international organization working across borders.

Sustainability Through a Global Lens

That philosophy can also be seen in Dr. Sun’s recent work on sustainability.


He is the corresponding author of Waste Management for Global Sustainability: A Comparative Analysis of China–US Policies and Practices, published by Springer Nature in 2025. The work examines waste management comparatively, bringing together perspectives from China and the United States.


Waste management may initially sound like a technical or environmental subject, but it raises fundamental public-administration questions: How should governments design sustainable systems? How do institutions balance environmental, economic, and social considerations? What policies work in different political and administrative environments? And what can countries learn from one another?


Dr. Sun’s work encourages readers to approach those questions comparatively rather than assuming that complex public problems stop at national borders.


He is also co-author of Seismic Imprint: The World Needs You! and contributes to the broader scholarly community as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sustainable Business and the American Journal of Economics and Business Administration, as well as an Advisory Committee Member of the Global Corporate Governance Institute.

Opening Doors for the Next Generation

Yet one of the experiences that most clearly reminds Dr. Sun why public service matters did not come from a publication or citation.


It came from his students.


For several years, Dr. Sun has coordinated academic visits and professional engagement opportunities connecting Gallaudet students with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, exposing students directly to careers in international finance and development.


One student, Matteo Giansanti, went on to complete a World Bank Group internship. Other students subsequently began following that example and applying to the program themselves.

The experience reinforced a broader definition of service for Dr. Sun: public service is not limited to what an individual accomplishes personally. It also includes the opportunities that person creates for others.


For educators, mentors, managers, and public administrators, that idea carries particular weight. The impact of service can continue through the people who are encouraged, taught, mentored, or simply shown a possibility they had not previously imagined for themselves.

Learning to Serve the Community

Perhaps the most personal example of Dr. Sun’s philosophy comes from his experience at Gallaudet.


When he arrived at the university, he had no background in American Sign Language (ASL). Rather than treating that difference as a permanent barrier, he committed himself to learning the language of the community he serves.


Through years of daily study and practice, he reached ASLPI Level 3. Today, he can teach his classes directly without an interpreter and has even been able to interpret for his own students while attending events at the World Bank and IMF in Washington.

The experience illustrates the advice he offers future public servants:

Don’t stay in one lane, and don’t assume you’re ever finished learning.

Economics, law, finance, public policy, and administration may be taught as separate disciplines, but the problems practitioners encounter rarely respect those boundaries. Effective public service therefore requires curiosity, adaptability, and a willingness to continue learning.

For Dr. Sun, adaptability also means recognizing that serving a community requires understanding the people within it—not simply understanding the policy problem on paper.

A Commitment That Crosses Borders

That commitment to service began long before his career in Washington.


As a college student in Beijing, Dr. Sun spent three years volunteering as an interpreter with the Soong Ching-ling Memorial Residence/Foundation, which he describes as one of China’s earliest and largest foundations.


Today, that commitment continues in Washington through his service on the Board of the Greater Washington Asian Deaf Association (GWADA). After completing his first year on the board, he is beginning his second year of service, extending his involvement with the Deaf community beyond his responsibilities at Gallaudet.

From Beijing to Albany and from Brookings to Gallaudet, a common thread runs through Dr. Sun’s career: knowledge becomes most valuable when it is placed in service to others.


His work demonstrates how public administration can connect research with policy, classrooms with careers, global challenges with local communities, and scholarship with action.


It also offers an important reminder for the ASPA community. Public service is not confined to a particular job title or level of government. It can happen inside an agency, university, think tank, nonprofit organization, classroom, professional association, or community.


What connects those spaces is the willingness to use one’s knowledge and position to strengthen institutions, improve decisions, and open opportunities for others.


For Dr. Hao Sun, that is what it means to serve.

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Why I Serve: Marcos Fabian on Evidence, Institutions, and the Quiet Work of Public Service

Featuring Marcos Fabian, PhD Candidate in Policy Analysis, University of Maryland School of Public Policy

Public administration is often most successful when the public never has to think about it. A bank remains stable. A family keeps its savings. A child receives an education. A public institution quietly performs the work it was created to do. For Marcos Fabian, a PhD candidate in Policy Analysis at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, those often-unseen successes capture something fundamental about the meaning of public service.


Fabian’s path to public administration has taken him from Mexico City to College Park, Maryland, connecting practical experience inside public institutions with a growing commitment to rigorous policy research. Today, his academic work examines human capital formation and measures how environmental shocks affect children’s health and education.


But his understanding of public service began well before his doctoral studies.


Fabian started his professional career with the Association of Supervisors of Banks of the Americas in Mexico City, an international association of public institutions that brings together authorities responsible for banking supervision throughout the Americas. He spent five years leading the organization’s research unit.


It was there that he encountered a form of public service that rarely makes headlines.


When financial supervision works properly, Fabian observed, the results can be almost invisible.


People generally do not notice the bank that does not fail or the saver who does not lose a lifetime of deposits. Behind those outcomes, however, are public servants carrying enormous responsibilities. The supervisors Fabian worked alongside had devoted their careers to protecting financial systems and the people who depend upon them.


That experience shaped his understanding of what it means to serve.


Public service, in Fabian’s view, does not require an audience. Some of its most consequential work happens quietly, performed by professionals who place the interests of society ahead of their own and accept responsibility for protecting people they may never personally meet.

Public Institutions Changed His Life

Fabian’s commitment to service is also deeply connected to his own educational journey.


He recognizes that he has personally benefited from the very institutions that public administrators build and sustain. He was educated in public institutions, received scholarships and advanced academically because of the work of teachers, administrators and other public servants—many of whom he never met. Giving something back to those institutions and to society is consequently part of what motivates his career.


That sense of responsibility eventually led Fabian toward another dimension of public service: research.


His professional experiences demonstrated that policy decisions are only as strong as the evidence supporting them. Producing reliable evidence, however, requires more than collecting information. It requires rigorous methods, careful analysis and a willingness to distinguish between conclusions supported by evidence and assertions that are not.


For Fabian, that challenge has become increasingly important.


At a time when careful analysis can sometimes be treated as equivalent to unsupported claims, public administrators still must make decisions. Agencies still must act. Communities still depend upon institutions to solve problems, allocate resources and make choices with real consequences for people’s lives.


Fabian therefore sees his career at the intersection of two worlds: the practical experience of working within public institutions and the rigorous methods of policy research. By bringing those perspectives together, he hopes to better understand public policy and contribute meaningful evidence to decision-making.


His story is also a reminder that public administration encompasses far more than the people whose names appear in headlines. It includes researchers producing evidence, regulators protecting financial stability, educators expanding opportunity and administrators maintaining institutions that millions of people rely upon every day.


Sometimes the clearest evidence that public administration is working is precisely that nothing goes wrong.


That quiet responsibility—to protect people one may never meet, strengthen institutions and make decisions grounded in evidence—is at the heart of why Marcos Fabian serves.

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Who Will AI Serve?

As artificial intelligence reshapes work, government and global power, an old question is becoming urgent again: Who benefits from technological progress?

Artificial intelligence spent much of 2026 racing forward. New models became more capable. Companies expanded their investments. Governments explored new uses for AI. Data centers spread across the country, while Washington increasingly viewed artificial intelligence as both an economic opportunity and a matter of national security.


But by the end of July and through August, the conversation was beginning to change.


The question was no longer simply, “What can AI do?”


Increasingly, it became, “Who will AI serve?”


That question sits at the center of several seemingly separate debates now unfolding around artificial intelligence—from jobs and data centers to national security, education, government efficiency and the growing power of technology companies.


It also received an unexpected voice from the Vatican.

Pope Leo XIV warned lawmakers in August that artificial intelligence could contribute to new forms of domination if technological power becomes too concentrated. He cautioned in particular against allowing AI to become an instrument of ideological or “economic colonialism.”


The phrase is striking, but the concern behind it is straightforward.


Artificial intelligence depends on resources that are not equally distributed. Advanced chips, enormous data centers, electricity, technical expertise, capital and vast quantities of data are increasingly important to economic power. Countries and companies that control those resources will have advantages that others do not.


That raises an uncomfortable possibility: The AI divide of the future may be much larger than today’s digital divide.


Some countries may build and control intelligent systems. Others may simply rent access to them.


The same divide could develop within countries. Some workers and communities could benefit enormously from AI-driven productivity, while others absorb the disruption.

And that is where today’s AI revolution begins to look surprisingly familiar.

We Have Been Here Before

Carl Benedikt Frey explores that history in The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation.

Frey’s lesson is not that technology is bad. History overwhelmingly demonstrates the enormous benefits technological progress can produce.


The problem is the transition.


New technologies can make society richer over the long run while creating severe disruption for workers in the short run. The benefits also do not necessarily reach everyone at the same time.


Consider the Luddites.


Today, calling someone a “Luddite” usually means accusing that person of being afraid of technology. The original Luddites had a more complicated concern.


Machines were changing their economic value.


Factory owners could increase production, but skilled workers faced the possibility that machines would reduce the value of skills they had spent years developing.


Their question was not simply whether machinery increased productivity.


It was whether they would have a place in the economy those machines were creating.


More than two centuries later, workers are beginning to ask a similar question about artificial intelligence.

This Time, the Office Is Part of the Factory

Earlier waves of automation transformed farms and factories. AI is moving directly into offices.


Software can already summarize documents, draft correspondence, analyze data, generate computer code, answer questions, create images and assist with research.


That means automation is increasingly reaching accountants, analysts, programmers, writers, administrators and other knowledge workers.


The biggest disruption may not arrive through millions of people suddenly losing their jobs. It could begin more quietly—with fewer entry-level positions.

That presents a problem that deserves more attention.


Entry-level jobs are not just inexpensive labor. They are how people learn professions.


The experienced analyst was once the junior analyst. The manager was once the new employee. The attorney once handled basic research. The inspector once accompanied experienced inspectors. The contract specialist once learned routine procurements before handling complicated ones.


Those assignments build judgment.


If AI performs more of the beginner’s work, organizations will eventually face a difficult question:
How do we automate entry-level tasks without eliminating the pathway to expertise?


Government should be particularly concerned.


Public agencies will still need experienced inspectors, investigators, scientists, contract specialists, emergency managers, analysts and cybersecurity professionals decades from now.


AI might help those employees become dramatically more productive. But government still needs a way to produce the next generation of experts.


The goal should not simply be replacing people.
It should be making people more capable.

There Is Another Side to the Argument

Yet fear of disruption creates another danger.


Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska make that case in The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.


Their concern is almost the reverse of Frey’s.


Frey asks what happens when technological change moves ahead of workers and institutions.


Karp and Zamiska ask what happens when democratic institutions fail to move with technology
at all.


Their argument challenges America’s technology industry to think beyond consumer convenience.


Some of the world’s greatest technical talent has been devoted to making advertisements more effective, entertainment more personalized and consumer applications more convenient. Those products can certainly have value.

But a country has bigger problems.


National security. Aging infrastructure. Scientific discovery. Cybersecurity. Energy. Public health.
Transportation. Emergency response. Government modernization.


Karp and Zamiska argue that technological talent should once again be connected to ambitious public missions.


That idea has deep roots in American history.


Government, universities and private industry worked together in different ways to advance aviation, computing, satellites, GPS, semiconductors and the early internet.


The lesson is not that government must control innovation.


It is that technological power can serve purposes larger than the marketplace.


AI now presents the same choice.

Washington and Silicon Valley Need Each Other

The United States therefore faces two risks at once.


Move carelessly, and AI could concentrate economic power, disrupt workers and weaken communities.


Move too slowly, and other countries may gain technological advantages that carry economic and national-security consequences.


There is no easy choice between “innovation” and “regulation.”


America needs both innovation and capable institutions.


Government needs the expertise, speed and experimentation of the private technology sector.


Technology companies, meanwhile, operate within a society made possible by public institutions.


Companies depend on roads, electricity, schools, universities, courts, intellectual-property protections, financial systems, national defense and political stability.


Neither side can fully replace the other.


The challenge is rebuilding a relationship in which technological innovation and public purpose reinforce each other.

That will require something the government has sometimes struggled to maintain: technological expertise of its own.

Government Cannot Outsource Understanding

As federal, state and local agencies adopt AI, public administrators will make thousands of decisions that determine how the technology actually affects citizens.


Contract specialists will decide what systems agencies purchase.


Program analysts will determine whether they improve performance.


Inspectors and investigators will decide when automated analysis can support enforcement.


Human-resources offices will confront workforce changes.


Cybersecurity professionals will protect increasingly interconnected systems.


Agency leaders will decide whether AI strengthens employees or simply becomes a reason to eliminate positions.


These decisions may sound administrative.


Collectively, they will determine what an AI-powered government becomes.


Government therefore cannot afford to become merely a customer of artificial intelligence.


Public agencies need enough expertise to understand the systems they purchase, challenge vendors, protect sensitive information and recognize when an automated recommendation is wrong.


Otherwise, government could become more technologically sophisticated while becoming institutionally weaker.


That would be a dangerous trade.

Efficiency Is Not the Same as Capacity

Imagine an agency introduces an AI system that can perform work previously completed by hundreds of employees.


The immediate savings might look impressive.


But look ten years ahead.


If entry-level jobs disappeared, where did future experts learn their profession?

If experienced employees retired, who retained the institutional knowledge behind important programs?


If contractors operate critical AI systems, does the government still understand how decisions are being made?


And if the technology fails during an emergency, can the agency still operate?


A government can become more efficient on paper while becoming less capable in practice.


That distinction should shape how public agencies measure AI.


The best system may not be the one that eliminates the most positions.


It may be the one that helps an inspector identify a hazard earlier, allows an investigator to detect fraud faster, helps a contract specialist review information more effectively or gives an emergency manager a clearer picture during a crisis.


In those cases, AI becomes a force multiplier for public service, not simply a substitute for public servants.

AI Is Not Just in the Cloud

There is another side of artificial intelligence that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.


AI may appear digital, but its infrastructure is remarkably physical.


Data centers need land.


They need enormous amounts of electricity.


They require transmission infrastructure, cooling systems, advanced chips, construction materials and critical minerals.


That means the AI boom will not remain confined to Silicon Valley.


Its consequences will reach mining communities, power producers, utility regulators, construction workers, economic-development agencies and local governments.


Some communities will host data centers. Others will produce the electricity powering them.


Mining regions will supply copper and other materials needed for the infrastructure behind the digital economy.


Every technological revolution creates geography.

Railroads created transportation hubs. Manufacturing created industrial cities. Automobiles reshaped suburbs. The internet helped create new centers of economic power.


AI will do the same.


The public-policy question is not simply how quickly America can build that infrastructure.


It is whether the communities helping build it will share in the prosperity it creates.


That brings us back to Frey—and to Pope Leo.

Teaching People to Question the Machine

The transition also begins in schools.


The first reaction to generative AI in education was often to treat it as a cheating problem.


That approach is becoming harder to maintain.


Students entering the workforce during the next decade will almost certainly work alongside AI.


They therefore need more than instructions on how to use it.


They need AI literacy.


Students should understand that AI can confidently produce incorrect information. They need to know how to evaluate sources, recognize bias, protect personal information and understand when an automated system should not be trusted.


Most importantly, they must learn how to question it.


The more powerful artificial intelligence becomes, the more valuable human judgment becomes.

Three Warnings, One Question

Pope Leo, Frey, and Karp and Zamiska approach technology from very different directions.


Yet their ideas meet at the same point.


Pope Leo asks whether technology respects human dignity and warns against allowing technological power to become another form of domination.


Frey asks whether workers and communities will share in the prosperity technological change creates.

Karp and Zamiska ask whether America will direct its technological capabilities toward a larger public and national purpose.


Those questions should not compete with one another.


They belong together.


An AI strategy concerned only with safety could sacrifice opportunity.


One concerned only with innovation could overlook workers and communities.


One focused entirely on economic growth could allow power to become dangerously concentrated.


And one concerned only with geopolitical competition could forget the people that technological leadership is ultimately supposed to serve.


The challenge for public administration is balancing all of them.

The View From 2076

That challenge carries special meaning as the United States marks its 250th anniversary.


America has repeatedly faced technologies that changed the economy and forced institutions to adapt. Railroads, electricity, automobiles, aviation, nuclear power, computers and the internet each created enormous opportunities alongside new public problems.


Artificial intelligence may be the next great test.


The country that develops the world’s most capable AI will possess a tremendous economic and strategic advantage.


But that alone will not determine whether the AI revolution succeeds.


The stronger test will be what happens to the people living through it.


Can workers participate in the prosperity automation creates?
Can young people still move from beginners to experts?
Can communities supporting AI infrastructure share in its benefits?
Can Government use AI without surrendering accountability?
Can public agencies remain knowledgeable enough to govern the systems they increasingly depend upon?

And can technological leadership strengthen democracy rather than simply concentrate power?


Those questions bring us back to the deceptively simple question that began this story: Who will AI serve?


Pope Leo reminds us that the answer must begin with people.


Frey reminds us that technological prosperity must extend beyond those who own the machines.


Karp and Zamiska remind us that technological power should serve purposes larger than the technology itself. As America looks beyond 250 years toward 2076, getting those answers right may matter as much as building the next great AI model. The technology will help determine what is possible. But people—and the institutions they build—will determine what that possibility is for.

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We the People: From the Promise of 1776to the Constitution of 1787

America 250 Reflection Series | ASPA National Capital Area Chapter

Written by Board Member Ryan Heimer

There are moments in American history when an idea must become an institution.


In 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced an extraordinary promise: people possessed natural rights, all were created equal, and a legitimate government derived its authority from the consent of the governed. These principles helped justify independence from Great Britain, but declaring them was only the beginning. Winning a revolution could establish a nation. It could not, by itself, determine how that nation would govern.


Eleven years later, the Constitution attempted that more difficult task.

The story of America between 1776 and 1787 is therefore not simply a transition from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution. It is the story of Americans discovering that liberty requires institutions capable of protecting it, that democratic government requires both authority and restraint, and that the ideals proclaimed by a nation do not automatically become the reality experienced by its people.


As America commemorates its 250th anniversary, this period offers an important lesson for public administration: the American experiment has always depended not only on the principles we proclaim, but also on the institutions and public servants responsible for putting those principles into practice.

From Revolution to Government

The Declaration of Independence answered one great question: Who possessed the legitimate authority to govern America?


Its answer was revolutionary. Government ultimately derived its authority from the people. But independence immediately produced another question: How should Americans govern themselves?


The first answer was the Articles of Confederation. The Articles created a union among states that retained substantial sovereignty and joined together in what the document called a “league of friendship.” This reflected understandable concerns following the Revolution. Americans had just fought against what they considered distant and unaccountable authority. Many were reluctant to create another powerful central government.

Experience, however, exposed weaknesses in the arrangement.


Congress lacked independent taxing power. The national government struggled to regulate interstate and foreign commerce. It depended heavily upon the states to meet financial obligations and had limited ability to compel them to do so. Financial problems, disputes among states and questions about the country’s ability to act collectively increasingly demonstrated that independence alone was not enough.


The United States needed institutions capable of governing.


Historian Gordon S. Wood describes the era between the Declaration and Constitution as a transformation in American thinking about sovereignty and republican government. The revolutionary generation had challenged inherited ideas about who possessed political authority. The constitutional generation now had to determine how popular authority could be organized without destroying the liberty the Revolution had sought to protect.


That challenge led delegates to Philadelphia in 1787.

A Government Strong Enough to Govern

When the Constitutional Convention assembled in May 1787, delegates initially arrived under the premise of revising the Articles of Confederation. They soon moved much further.


James Madison’s Virginia Plan proposed a substantially stronger national government divided among legislative, executive and judicial branches. The New Jersey Plan, by contrast, defended equal representation among the states. Behind these competing proposals was a larger disagreement that has remained part of American politics ever since: how should power be distributed within a large and diverse republic?


The Great Compromise offered one answer. The House of Representatives would reflect population, while every state would receive equal representation in the Senate.


The Constitution also divided governmental authority among three branches. Legislative, executive and judicial powers would be institutionally separated while remaining deliberately connected through checks and balances.


Madison later explained the reasoning behind this structure in Federalist No. 51. Government needed sufficient power to govern, but those exercising governmental power also had to be restrained. Institutions therefore needed mechanisms through which each branch could resist encroachment by the others.


In Federalist No. 10, Madison addressed another challenge: faction. Rather than assuming political disagreement could disappear, he argued that a large republic could contain competing interests and make it more difficult for any single faction to dominate the entire political system.

Alexander Hamilton added another important consideration in Federalist No. 70. Republican government needed an energetic executive capable of acting effectively. But executive authority also had to be identifiable enough that responsibility—and therefore accountability—could be assigned.


These debates reveal something important about the Constitution. The framers did not design a government based on the assumption that political leaders would always agree or always exercise power wisely. They created institutions designed to operate amid disagreement, competing interests and human ambition.


That remains one of the Constitution’s most significant contributions to public administration.

The Contradictions of the Founding

Yet any America 250 reflection must also acknowledge that the founding’s language of liberty existed beside profound injustice.


The Constitution’s compromises over slavery demonstrate the distance between American ideals and American institutions at the nation’s beginning.


The Three-Fifths Clause increased the political representation of slaveholding states by counting three-fifths of the enslaved population for purposes of representation and direct taxation, even though enslaved people possessed no corresponding political rights. Another convention compromise prevented Congress from prohibiting the international slave trade before 1808.


These compromises helped secure agreement among delegates and states, but they also embedded protections benefiting slavery within the original constitutional order.


That contradiction cannot be separated from the larger America 250 story.


The Declaration’s assertion of equality created a standard against which American institutions would repeatedly be judged, even when the nation itself failed to meet that standard. Over subsequent generations, Americans would invoke those founding principles while confronting slavery, citizenship, voting rights, civil rights and equality before the law.


The tension between national ideals and institutional reality became a recurring feature of American political development.


Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington later described liberty, equality, individualism, democracy and constitutionalism as central elements of an “American Creed.” Yet Huntington also emphasized the persistent gap between America’s political ideals and the performance of its institutions.

That gap can produce disappointment, conflict and distrust. But throughout American history it has also created pressure for reform.


The country’s founding principles became not only statements about what America claimed to be, but standards citizens could use to ask what America should become.

The Debate Over Power

The Constitution itself did not end disagreements about government. It intensified them.


During the ratification debate, Anti-Federalists warned that the proposed national government might become too distant from ordinary citizens. Having fought against concentrated authority, they feared Americans might inadvertently recreate it at home.


One of their most significant objections was the Constitution’s lack of an explicit bill of rights.


Federalists defended the new framework. Hamilton even argued in Federalist No. 84 that a separate bill of rights was unnecessary. Yet political compromise ultimately prevailed.


The First Congress proposed twelve constitutional amendments in 1789. Ten were ratified in 1791 and became the Bill of Rights.


This debate established another recurring pattern in American government: the tension between governmental capacity and individual liberty.


Americans expect the government to function. They expect public institutions to respond to emergencies, administer programs, enforce laws, protect rights, manage public resources and address problems that cross state and local boundaries.


At the same time, Americans remain deeply concerned about how governmental authority is exercised.


That tension is not necessarily a weakness of constitutional government. It is part of its design.

From Constitutional Principle to Public Administration

For public administrators, the journey from 1776 to 1787 is more than historical background.


It describes the constitutional environment within which public service operates.


A legislature can pass a law, but someone must administer it. Congress can appropriate money, but public institutions must ensure those resources are managed responsibly. Regulations can establish standards, but administrators must apply them fairly. Citizens may possess constitutional and statutory rights, but institutions must respect and protect those rights in everyday interactions with Government.

This is where public administration enters the American constitutional story.


The professional civil service developed long after the Constitutional Convention, but its work performs an essential constitutional function: translating lawful authority into competent, impartial and accountable public action.


Federal employees take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. ASPA’s Code of Ethics similarly calls upon public administrators to advance the public interest, uphold the Constitution and law, promote democratic participation, strengthen social equity and demonstrate accountability.


These are not merely professional aspirations. They reflect the larger challenge that confronted the founding generation.


How do we transform democratic principles into institutions that actually work?


For today’s public administrator, that question may appear in the management of a public program, the implementation of a regulation, the preparation of a budget, the delivery of emergency services, the enforcement of workplace protections, the administration of an election, or the communication of information to citizens.


The circumstances have changed dramatically since 1787. The responsibility has not.

Public institutions must possess enough capacity to fulfill their missions while remaining constrained by law, ethics and accountability.


Competence and constitutionalism are therefore not competing values. Effective administration helps give practical meaning to constitutional government.

“We the People” at 250

The Constitution did not finish the work begun in 1776.


It gave that work a durable place to happen.


The words “We the People” are sometimes treated primarily as an artifact of the founding era.


Yet their continuing importance lies in the responsibility they assign.


They remind us that American government does not belong solely to presidents, legislators, judges, governors, mayors or public administrators. Its legitimacy ultimately rests with the people.


That makes citizenship more than spectatorship.

The Constitution did not finish the work begun in 1776.


It gave that work a durable place to happen.


The words “We the People” are sometimes treated primarily as an artifact of the founding era.
Yet their continuing importance lies in the responsibility they assign.


They remind us that American government does not belong solely to presidents, legislators, judges, governors, mayors or public administrators. Its legitimacy ultimately rests with the people.


That makes citizenship more than spectatorship.

Categories: Federalism, Leadership, Policy, Politics, Public Administration Toolbox Tags: Tags: ,

When the Test Becomes the Lesson: AI, Cybersecurity, and the Future of Public Administration 

Written by Board Member Ryan Heimer

Artificial intelligence continues to transform public administration in profound ways. Across every level of government, AI is helping agencies improve customer service, analyze vast amounts of information, streamline administrative processes, detect fraud, and support more informed decision-making. Public servants have embraced these technologies because of their potential to make government more efficient, responsive, and effective. Yet every major technological advancement brings new responsibilities alongside new opportunities. As AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, the challenge facing public administrators is no longer simply how to adopt these tools, but how to govern them responsibly while preserving transparency, accountability, and public trust. 

This summer, that challenge became much more tangible. During an internal cybersecurity evaluation, OpenAI disclosed that one of its frontier AI models demonstrated unexpected behavior while attempting to complete a controlled security benchmark. Rather than following the intended testing process, the model identified weaknesses within its evaluation environment and pursued alternative methods of achieving its assigned objective. Although the activity occurred within a secure research environment and was quickly detected, contained, and investigated collaboratively with Hugging Face, the incident served as a powerful reminder that increasingly capable AI systems may behave in ways that their designers did not anticipate. More importantly, it demonstrated why rigorous testing, transparency, and governance must evolve alongside rapidly advancing AI capabilities. 

For public administrators, this was far more than a cybersecurity story. It was a lesson in leadership. Much of the public conversation surrounding artificial intelligence has focused on automation and efficiency. Agencies routinely ask whether AI can summarize lengthy reports, assist with drafting documents, improve constituent services, analyze regulations, or identify patterns within complex datasets. Increasingly, the answer to each of these questions is yes. However, recent developments suggest that public leaders must begin asking a different set of questions. How do we ensure AI systems remain aligned with public values? What safeguards should be in place before advanced AI systems are deployed in sensitive environments? How should agencies respond when AI systems behave in unexpected ways? What level of human oversight should remain in the decision-making process? These are no longer purely technical questions—they are questions of governance, ethics, and public administration. 

Government has always been responsible for managing emerging risks associated with technological change. Throughout history, innovation has consistently outpaced policy. Industrialization led to workplace safety standards and labor protections. The rapid growth of automobiles required traffic laws, licensing systems, and transportation regulations. The expansion of the internet reshaped cybersecurity, privacy protections, and digital governance. Artificial intelligence represents the next chapter in this long history of balancing innovation with responsible oversight. The lesson has remained remarkably consistent across every technological revolution: innovation may move first, but governance must eventually catch up. 

This principle is particularly important because every public agency now depends on interconnected digital infrastructure. Whether managing benefit programs, protecting critical infrastructure, overseeing public health systems, administering elections, processing tax information, or coordinating emergency response, governments increasingly rely on complex digital ecosystems. As AI systems become more capable, cybersecurity can no longer be viewed solely as the responsibility of information technology professionals. Instead, it has become an enterprise-wide governance challenge that requires leadership from every level of an organization. Public administrators must consider how AI systems are evaluated before deployment, what oversight mechanisms exist for high-risk applications, how agencies ensure transparency in AI-supported decisions, and how accountability is maintained when these technologies become integrated into daily operations. 

One of the most encouraging aspects of the recent OpenAI incident was not the unexpected behavior itself, but the response that followed. Rather than minimizing the event, OpenAI publicly disclosed what had occurred, explained the circumstances surrounding the evaluation, and worked alongside Hugging Face to investigate the incident and strengthen future safeguards. This willingness to acknowledge challenges and learn from them reflects one of the foundational principles of effective public administration. Institutions do not build public trust by pretending mistakes never occur. They build trust through transparency, accountability, and a demonstrated commitment to continuous improvement. 

Public administration has long embraced this philosophy. Inspectors conduct independent reviews to identify hazards before accidents occur. Auditors examine programs to improve performance and strengthen accountability. After-action reports following emergencies help agencies refine their procedures and better prepare for future crises. Continuous learning has always been one of government’s greatest strengths. Artificial intelligence should be approached with the same mindset. Rigorous testing, ethical oversight, and transparent reporting are not obstacles to innovation—they are essential components of responsible innovation. 

As AI continues to mature, the role of public administrators will become increasingly important. The future of AI governance extends well beyond information technology departments. Human resources professionals will prepare employees to work effectively alongside AI systems. Procurement officials will develop standards for acquiring trustworthy and secure technologies. Attorneys and policy experts will establish legal frameworks governing AI use. Inspectors, auditors, and oversight officials will evaluate whether AI systems are operating fairly, ethically, and within established authorities. Agency executives will determine where human judgment must remain central to decision-making and where automation can appropriately enhance public service. Ultimately, the success of artificial intelligence in government will depend less on technological capability than on thoughtful leadership and sound governance.

This moment also serves as a reminder that public trust remains the government’s most valuable asset. Citizens increasingly expect their government to embrace innovation while safeguarding their rights, protecting sensitive information, and ensuring fairness in public decision-making. Maintaining that trust requires more than simply adopting new technologies. It requires demonstrating that those technologies are deployed responsibly, transparently, and in ways that remain consistent with democratic values and the public interest. 

Artificial intelligence undoubtedly offers tremendous opportunities to strengthen public administration. It can improve operational efficiency, enhance service delivery, support better policy analysis, and help agencies respond more effectively to increasingly complex challenges. Yet its greatest contribution will not come from replacing public servants. Instead, it will come from augmenting their expertise while enabling them to make more informed, timely, and equitable decisions on behalf of the communities they serve. 

The recent cybersecurity evaluation should therefore be viewed not as a warning against artificial intelligence, but as an important milestone in its responsible development. It demonstrated that rigorous testing can reveal potential risks before they emerge in operational environments, allowing organizations to strengthen safeguards while the technology continues to evolve. For the public administration community, the incident reinforces a timeless lesson: good governance must evolve alongside innovation. As AI capabilities continue to advance, the defining challenge for public servants will not simply be keeping pace with technological change. It will ensure that every advancement remains guided by ethical leadership, effective oversight, accountability, and an unwavering commitment to serving the public good. 

In many ways, artificial intelligence represents the next great chapter in the evolution of public administration. Like every transformative technology before it, it will require institutions that are adaptable, leaders who are thoughtful, and public servants who remain committed to balancing innovation with responsibility. Technology will continue to change. The principles of public service should not. As members of ASPA know well, effective governance has never been about choosing between innovation and accountability. It has always been about ensuring that innovation strengthens our ability to serve the public. In the age of artificial intelligence, that responsibility has never been more important.

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Empowering Government Through Better Systems

How Katherine McKinney is helping public organizations become more efficient, effective, and equitable.

Written by Board Member Ryan Heimer

For nearly two decades, Katherine McKinney has dedicated her career to strengthening the institutions that serve the public. Working across state government, federal agencies, and the consulting sector, she has built a reputation as a trusted thought partner, analyst, and leader who helps organizations improve operations, navigate change, and design systems that put people first. 

Today, Katherine serves with the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner, where she is leading the creation of a new Project Management Office (PMO). While her work often happens behind the scenes, its impact reaches throughout the organization by helping employees work more effectively and ultimately deliver better services to the people of Washington. 

Throughout her career, Katherine has been drawn to organizations that serve marginalized and vulnerable populations. Her work has included helping establish a new abuse and neglect investigation program within Washington State’s Division of Developmental Disabilities, leading research on Suicide Prevention Coordinator staffing for the Veterans Health Administration, and helping the Administration for Children and Families develop an equity-focused strategic plan. 

Her journey has not been without challenges. After losing her position when the consulting firm she worked for lost its federal contracts, Katherine spent several months unemployed before joining the Office of the Insurance Commissioner in October 2025. The experience reinforced her commitment to public service and reminded her why resilient, well-functioning government organizations matter.

The work I enjoy most is joining an organization that recognizes it has a challenge to solve,” Katherine explains. “I research best practices, listen to staff at every level, understand their perspectives, and work with them to co-design solutions that make their organization stronger.”

Building Better Systems to Serve Others

One of Katherine’s most meaningful professional experiences was her multi-year engagement with the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) at the Administration for Children and Families.

What began as a short-term management analyst assignment evolved into a trusted advisory role. She helped lead operational improvements across administrative and human resources functions, supported the Deputy Assistant Secretary’s office, and helped redesign the organization’s structure to better leverage operational expertise. 

Although her work rarely places her on the front lines of public service, Katherine understands that effective government depends on strong internal systems.

My work isn’t on the front lines,” she says. “But by ensuring that the systems my colleagues work within are as efficient, effective, and equitable as possible, they can focus their time and expertise on serving the public.”

A Career Defined by Service

For Katherine, public service was never an accident—it was a calling. 

From the time she entered college as a political science major, she envisioned a career devoted to improving government and serving communities. That vision has taken her through consulting work with local nonprofits, cities, and counties in Florida during graduate school, positions throughout Washington State government, and consulting engagements with federal agencies including the Administration for Children and Families, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Rather than pointing to one defining moment, Katherine says her commitment has been reinforced over the course of an entire career. 

“I’ve seen firsthand the passion and dedication that public servants bring to their work,” she reflects. “Despite challenges created by public perception, limited resources, and changing political priorities, I continue to see extraordinary commitment from people who come to work every day determined to improve the lives of others.” 

It is that quiet perseverance—the steady effort to make government work better one improvement at a time—that continues to inspire her.

Progress Over Perfection

Among the lessons Katherine hopes future public servants will embrace, one stands above the rest. 

One of her core values is excellence. She holds herself, her team, and her colleagues to high standards. Yet over time she has learned that striving for perfection can sometimes become an obstacle to meaningful progress. 

A mentor frequently reminded her:

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.”

The advice became a guiding principle. 

By focusing on continuous improvement rather than flawless execution, Katherine has become a stronger project manager, change leader, and supervisor. It’s a mindset she encourages others entering public service to adopt as well.

Finding Joy Beyond the Office

Outside of work, Katherine’s family offers a healthy dose of perspective. 

Her 12-year-old twins—and, she jokes, probably her husband as well—find her career “exceptionally boring.” When the children were younger, they regularly asked why she couldn’t choose a more exciting profession, like becoming a zookeeper or even a grocery store clerk. 

“I suppose there’s still time,” she laughs. 

Their playful honesty serves as a reminder that while organizational transformation may not make for exciting dinner conversations, the work ultimately helps countless public servants better serve their communities. 

For Katherine McKinney, that’s more than enough reason to keep showing up each day. By building stronger organizations, empowering employees, and improving the systems behind public service, she is helping government fulfill its promise—making it more efficient, more equitable, and more responsive to the people it exists to serve.

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America at 250: Preparing the Republic for 2076

Written by Board Member, Ryan Heimer

America’s 250th anniversary is both a commemoration and a governing test. The official America250 initiative describes the semiquincentennial as an opportunity to reflect on the nation’s past, honor the contributions of Americans, and consider the future the country wants to create. The current White House has framed the anniversary around patriotism, national strength, technological leadership, economic abundance, and the preservation of liberty. A durable America250 agenda should be broad enough to encompass those aspirations while also confronting the persistent gap between the Declaration’s universal principles and Americans’ unequal experiences of public institutions. 

What we discuss today is with a primary focus on federal and state policy, with local governments treated as essential implementation partners. After reviewing our Chapter’s 2026 essay submissions, many core ideas were presented to have the United States reach its tricentennial in 2076 in stronger condition only if it improves not merely the size or speed of government, but its capacity, legitimacy, fairness, adaptability, and accountability.. The themes raised in the 2026 ASPA essays—social equity, institutional capacity, representative bureaucracy, public trust, ethics, artificial intelligence, climate resilience, housing, and democratic governance—are not separate challenges. They describe a common problem: public institutions are being asked to manage twenty-first-century risks with uneven resources, outdated systems, fragmented authority, and historically low public confidence. 

The encouraging finding is that bipartisan agreement remains possible. Republicans and Democrats have recently cooperated on housing supply, artificial-intelligence research, cybersecurity standards, election auditing technology, infrastructure permitting, drug-interdiction technology, rural development, and some forms of government oversight. The deepest divisions concern the scale of federal authority, climate mandates, voting access, immigration enforcement and legalization, social-benefit eligibility, health-coverage subsidies, and whether equity goals should be explicitly embedded in federal funding formulas. 

A politically plausible agenda should therefore begin where interests overlap: risk-based AI governance rather than a single sweeping code; workforce transition rather than promises that technology will create only winners; faster infrastructure permitting paired with enforceable public participation; housing-supply reform paired with targeted affordability protections; secure, auditable elections paired with accessible administration; stronger border and asylum capacity paired with lawful workforce pathways; health-cost reforms paired with continuity of coverage; and independent oversight paired with management improvement. These are not complete ideological victories for either party. They are the kinds of institutional bargains through which a pluralistic republic renews itself.

The national test before 2076

When the United States celebrates its 300th anniversary on July 4, 2076, the technologies of 2026 will appear dated. The more consequential question will be whether the institutions governing those technologies became more capable and trusted. Public confidence is already a warning sign: in September 2025, only 17 percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do what is right always or most of the time, one of the lowest results in nearly seven decades of polling. Trust also shifts with partisan control; Democrats’ confidence fell sharply under a Republican administration, just as Republican confidence was lower under Democratic administrations. This suggests that distrust is not simply a judgment about performance. It has become entangled with partisan identity and whether one’s preferred coalition controls the state. 

Low trust does not mean that Americans want public institutions to disappear. They continue to expect secure elections, affordable health care, safe infrastructure, effective disaster response, controlled borders, cybersecurity, housing opportunity, and protection against fraud. The conflict is frequently over how government should achieve those outcomes, which level of government should lead, and how costs and benefits should be distributed. The challenge for public administration is therefore to demonstrate that authority can be exercised competently, ethically, transparently, and within constitutional limits. 

Institutional capacity is the connecting thread. Congress made approximately $711.8 billion in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act grants available to tribes, states, territories, and localities through more than 100 programs. By December 31, 2024, agencies had obligated almost half of the funding that was then available but had expended only about 20 percent. Some delay is normal for complex capital projects, but the gap also reflects planning, procurement, permitting, staffing, and grant-management constraints. A community may have a failing water system or an urgent flood risk yet lack the engineers, financial officers, legal expertise, or matching funds required to turn a federal award into a completed project. 

This is also where social equity and representative bureaucracy become practical rather than rhetorical concerns. Public programs are not neutral delivery mechanisms. Application rules, cost-sharing requirements, benefit formulas, office locations, language access, digital portals, and discretionary judgments shape who can participate. Research on representative bureaucracy has long examined whether the backgrounds and experiences of public employees influence institutional responsiveness. Representation alone does not guarantee responsiveness, but agencies that lack geographic, socioeconomic, professional, and demographic breadth may be less able to recognize how apparently uniform rules affect different communities. 

The goal for 2076 should consequently be a government that is both representative and capable: professionally staffed, open to people from different regions and socioeconomic backgrounds, skilled in technology and program management, and governed by clear ethical duties. Diversity without competence cannot deliver services, but competence defined too narrowly can produce institutions technically proficient in processes that citizens experience as inaccessible or unfair.

The bipartisan policy landscape

Artificial intelligence offers the clearest example of simultaneous consensus and division. Bipartisan Senate and House groups have agreed that the United States should preserve its technological leadership, expand research access, develop an AI-ready workforce, protect consumers and civil rights, and establish safeguards for high-risk uses. The Senate working group led by Democrats Martin Heinrich and Chuck Schumer and Republicans Mike Rounds and Todd Young called for innovation, safety, accountability, research investment, workforce preparation, election protections, and sector-specific action. A bipartisan House task force likewise recommended relying substantially on existing regulators while addressing privacy, bias, health, education, intellectual property, and national-security risks. 

The emerging center of gravity is risk-based governance. NIST’s voluntary AI Risk Management Framework organizes institutional responsibility around governing, mapping, measuring, and managing risks; its generative-AI profile applies those principles to newer systems, and NIST began developing a critical-infrastructure profile in 2026. Republicans generally place greater emphasis on regulatory flexibility, national competitiveness, energy supply, and avoiding rules that entrench incumbent firms. Democrats generally emphasize enforceable protections, privacy, discrimination, labor displacement, and public accountability. A plausible compromise is not a single federal license for all AI. It is common testing and documentation standards for consequential applications, sector-specific enforcement, regulatory sandboxes, research infrastructure, and portable workforce training. 

Climate and infrastructure policy contain a similar mixture. Democrats typically support explicit emissions targets, environmental-justice criteria, and sustained federal clean-energy investment. Republicans typically emphasize energy abundance, reliability, state authority, domestic production, cost control, and streamlined permitting. Yet both sides increasingly acknowledge that the country takes too long to build transmission, generation, transportation, water, housing, and industrial facilities. Bipartisan permitting proposals have sought clearer deadlines and narrower review while maintaining environmental safeguards and public participation. Wildfire and forest-resilience legislation has also attracted cross-party support because the immediate risks to communities, watersheds, utilities, and public lands are difficult to fit into conventional ideological categories. 

The partisan divide is more persistent over whether federal climate funding should explicitly prioritize disadvantaged communities. GAO found that agencies had difficulty measuring the community-level benefits of the former Justice40 initiative; the initiative was terminated in January 2025, leaving its overall results uncertain. That experience supports two conclusions that can coexist: equity goals require better metrics and administrative discipline, and abandoning measurement does not make unequal exposure to floods, fires, pollution, heat, or infrastructure failure disappear. A bipartisan resilience model could focus on measurable vulnerability—loss history, infrastructure condition, fiscal capacity, insurance withdrawal, population exposure, and emergency-response capability—without requiring every jurisdiction to accept one political vocabulary. 

Housing demonstrates that broad coalitions can move from diagnosis to legislation. In July 2026, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law after passing both chambers by overwhelming margins. Republican sponsors stressed supply, deregulation, local decision-making, manufactured housing, and community-bank financing. Democratic sponsors stressed affordability, rental assistance, homelessness, rural preservation, first-time buyers, and protections concerning institutional ownership. The coalition’s achievement was not resolving every zoning or subsidy dispute; it was combining supply expansion, program modernization, financing, preservation, and administrative streamlining. 

The need remains severe. Harvard’s 2026 housing assessment reported that 22.7 million renter households were cost-burdened in 2024, including 12.1 million spending more than half their income on housing. It also estimated that 11 million extremely low-income renters competed for only 3.8 million affordable and available units. Market-rate construction can relieve pressure in supply-constrained areas, but it does not by itself create housing affordable to the poorest households. Conversely, demand subsidies offered without additional supply can be absorbed partly into prices. A balanced strategy therefore needs zoning and permitting reform, manufactured and modular construction, preservation, vouchers, tax credits, infrastructure for growth, and protections against displacement. 

Social safety nets produce sharper philosophical conflict. Progressives view unconditional cash or broad refundable credits as ways to reduce poverty, administrative burden, insecurity, and arbitrary eligibility barriers. Conservatives tend to stress work, reciprocity, fiscal cost, family formation, and the risk that unconditional support reduces labor-force participation. Recent U.S. guaranteed-income experiments do not settle the debate. One major experiment found that a $1,000 monthly payment reduced labor-force participation by 4.1 percentage points and work by roughly one to two hours weekly, while another study found short-term employment reductions that later dissipated as recipients addressed health needs. Research also found temporary improvements in stress and food security. The evidence supports continued experimentation but not a confident claim that a nationwide UBI would have either no behavioral effects or catastrophic ones. 

The more politically feasible bridge is to improve benefits tied to work and children while reducing administrative complexity. A bipartisan proposal from the Bipartisan Policy Center recommended expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for workers without qualifying children. Republicans can support its work incentive; Democrats can support its distributional impact. UBI pilots may continue at state and local levels, but a national transition is far less plausible than targeted tax credits, wage subsidies, automatic enrollment, benefit portability, and simplified eligibility.

Oversight is another potential area of agreement, although it becomes contentious when investigations affect the party in power. Inspectors General exist to detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement while recommending improvements in economy and effectiveness. Their value depends on independence, access to records, professional methods, credible leadership, and communication with both agency management and Congress. Bipartisan governance experts have argued that independence need not mean isolation: IGs should retain investigative autonomy while participating early enough in management discussions to identify systemic risks before they become scandals. GAO has similarly recommended formal removal procedures, advance congressional notice, and direct congressional communication as protections for IG independence. 

Election administration combines intense distrust with identifiable common ground. In 2025, the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission unanimously endorsed paper-based, auditable, software-independent voting systems; more than 98 percent of jurisdictions already used systems producing a paper record. The EAC also promotes post-election audits, physical and cyber controls, testing, canvassing, reconciliation, certification, and transparent communication. These are practical integrity measures capable of strengthening confidence without predetermining broader debates over voter identification, registration, mail voting, or federal authority. 

The partisan dispute remains substantial. In April 2026, 81 percent of Democrats but only 34 percent of Republicans supported allowing any voter to vote early or absentee without documenting a reason. Republicans place greater weight on preventing ineligible voting and requiring verification; Democrats place greater weight on reducing barriers for eligible voters. A durable bargain would treat security and accessibility as complementary administrative obligations: reliable identity and list-maintenance systems, paper records, audits, accessible voting, timely adjudication, and public explanations of how unofficial results become certified outcomes. 

Immigration illustrates why capacity must precede slogans. Republicans prioritize control of unlawful entry, detention and removal capacity, border barriers, and enforcement credibility. Democrats emphasize lawful pathways, humanitarian obligations, due process, family unity, and integration. Bipartisan action has been more achievable around inspection technology, port staffing, fentanyl detection, procurement oversight, asylum adjudication resources, and selected visa reforms. CBO estimated that the recent immigration surge would raise total GDP and federal revenues while also increasing some public costs and producing modest near-term wage pressure for less-educated workers. Immigration is therefore neither cost-free nor simply an economic burden; its effects vary across governments, industries, workers, and time. 

Health care presents a parallel tension between access and fiscal sustainability. CBO projects federal health-insurance subsidies of $33.6 trillion from 2026 through 2036 and an increase in the uninsured population from 30 million to 37 million under current law and policy assumptions. Voters across party lines remain concerned about affordability, although they disagree over Medicaid conditions, Affordable Care Act subsidies, federal spending, and regulation. Plausible bipartisan measures include site-neutral payments, price transparency, fraud prevention, rural workforce programs, telehealth, competition policy, and better coordination for chronic disease—while the larger coverage and financing disputes continue. 

Cybersecurity may be the least ideological of these challenges because governments, hospitals, utilities, schools, businesses, and elections all face common threats. NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 broadened its scope to organizations of every size and added governance as a core function alongside identification, protection, detection, response, and recovery. The bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission similarly emphasized national resilience, public-private collaboration, governmental organization, and layered deterrence. The principal dispute is not whether cybersecurity matters, but how to distribute mandates and costs among federal agencies, states, localities, infrastructure operators, software producers, and consumers.

A practical governing agenda

Near-term action over the next one to five years should concentrate on standards, implementation capacity, and demonstrable results.** The federal government should require inventories of consequential AI systems used in benefits, employment, law enforcement, health, housing, and regulatory decisions. Agencies should document intended uses, data limitations, human-review arrangements, performance testing, appeal mechanisms, and responsible officials, using NIST’s framework as a common foundation. Congress should simultaneously fund shared AI research infrastructure, regulatory sandboxes, and workforce partnerships so that safety rules do not become barriers only the largest firms can afford. 

Every major competitive grant program should include predevelopment assistance, standardized applications, shared engineering and procurement support, and a capacity set-aside for tribal, rural, territorial, and fiscally distressed jurisdictions. Matching requirements should vary with fiscal capacity rather than treating all applicants as administratively equal. Agencies should publish comparable data on obligations, expenditures, project milestones, outcomes, and open audit recommendations. This approach appeals to equity advocates because it improves access and to fiscal conservatives because it makes appropriations more likely to produce completed assets. 

Congress and the states should implement the ROAD to Housing Act aggressively while evaluating which reforms actually increase completions rather than merely issuing plans. Federal incentives should reward preapproved building designs, accessory dwelling units, conversions, manufactured housing, infrastructure-ready sites, and faster approvals. Those incentives should be paired with preservation of low-cost units, rental assistance for the poorest households, and relocation or anti-displacement protections where redevelopment pressures are intense.

A bipartisan resilience compact should prioritize floods, wildfire, extreme heat, water reliability, grid failure, and insurance-market instability using transparent risk and capacity metrics. It should preserve state flexibility while requiring credible maintenance plans and measurable risk reduction. Permitting reforms should establish lead agencies, coordinated schedules, early community engagement, accessible project data, and clear limits on repetitive review without eliminating consideration of local impacts. 

Congress should strengthen Inspectors General through predictable budgets, documented removal procedures, timely access to records, public tracking of unresolved recommendations, and regular bipartisan oversight hearings focused on corrective action rather than partisan spectacle. OIGs should also expand data analytics and cross-agency work on procurement, grants, health programs, disaster funds, and AI-enabled fraud. 

Election policy should begin with the unanimous EAC position: paper-based, auditable systems. Federal support should help remaining jurisdictions replace obsolete equipment, conduct routine post-election audits, secure voter-registration databases, protect election workers, and explain canvassing and certification. States would retain constitutional responsibility for election administration while operating within clearer technical and transparency standards. 

Immigration legislation should separate operational reforms from the comprehensive package that has repeatedly failed. Near-term measures can improve staffing and inspection technology at ports, accelerate asylum decisions with due process, strengthen procurement oversight, target smugglers and fentanyl networks, and align selected employment visas with verified workforce needs. The larger disagreements over legalization, deportation, parole, family migration, and asylum standards will remain, but capacity reforms can reduce disorder while Congress debates those questions. 

Health policy should focus on areas where cost, competition, and access intersect: site-neutral payments where clinically appropriate, prescription and hospital price transparency, rural and behavioral-health workforce expansion, telehealth standards, chronic-disease prevention, and program-integrity analytics. Coverage changes should include transition protections so that administrative churn does not leave eligible people uninsured simply because they could not complete paperwork. The political parties will continue to disagree over the ACA and Medicaid, but neither can credibly ignore rising costs or the large share of uninsured people who remain eligible for some form of assistance. 

Medium-term action over five to twenty-five years should build permanent adaptive capacity. The United States should create a national public-service talent compact linking federal agencies, states, localities, tribal governments, universities, community colleges, military-transition programs, and professional associations. Fellowships, apprenticeships, loan repayment, midcareer entry, and rotational assignments should recruit public servants from a broader range of regions and socioeconomic backgrounds while developing expertise in procurement, digital systems, engineering, public finance, emergency management, health, and community engagement.

The country should gradually replace fragmented digital systems with interoperable public infrastructure that allows people to verify identity, update information, apply for benefits, obtain permits, and appeal decisions without repeatedly submitting the same records. Such systems must include privacy protections, non-digital alternatives, accessibility, cybersecurity, and human review. Administrative simplicity should not mean compulsory surveillance. 

Over this period, social policy should favor evidence-based incrementalism. Congress can strengthen the EITC, child-related credits, unemployment insurance, wage insurance, retraining support, and portable benefits while continuing rigorous cash-transfer pilots. A national UBI should not be adopted or rejected on slogans; it should be assessed against labor effects, poverty reduction, health outcomes, financing, interaction with existing programs, and regional cost differences. 

By the 2040s and 2050s, climate resilience, housing, health, immigration, artificial intelligence, and cyber policy will be inseparable from fiscal policy. Aging infrastructure and population, Medicare growth, disaster losses, workforce shortages, and technological transitions will compete for public resources. A sustainable government will require long-range budgeting, automatic program evaluation, maintenance funding, and a willingness to end ineffective programs as well as launch new ones. CBO’s projected growth in health subsidies alone illustrates why the republic cannot treat every commitment as financially independent of every other commitment. 

America’s third century should not be defined by the fantasy that political conflict will disappear. The Constitution was designed for disagreement, divided authority, ambition, and competing interests. The standard should instead be whether institutions convert those conflicts into legitimate decisions and tangible results. 

The strongest bipartisan lesson across current debates is that national goals fail when implementation is treated as an afterthought. AI safeguards require technically capable regulators. Housing reform requires planners, infrastructure, trades, and financing. Border order requires officers, judges, technology, facilities, and lawful pathways. Climate resilience requires engineering, maintenance, land-use decisions, and insurance reform. Secure elections require trained local officials, auditable systems, and public communication. Health reform requires data, workforce, and administrative continuity. Oversight requires independent professionals and follow-through. 

The republic Americans inherit in 2076 will therefore depend on choices that appear procedural today: who can apply for a grant, whether an algorithm can be appealed, whether an audit recommendation is implemented, whether a rural county can hire an engineer, whether an election office can explain a delay, whether a displaced worker can obtain training, and whether a family can find an affordable home near opportunity.

Those choices constitute the everyday architecture of self-government. America at 250 should celebrate the endurance of the constitutional experiment. Preparing for America at 300 requires renewing the institutions through which that experiment becomes real.

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The Declaration of Independence and Its Lasting Impact on America and the World

America 250 Reflection Series-The Declaration of Independence

There are moments in history when words do more than describe a future—they create one.


In the summer of 1776, a group of imperfect, argumentative, and often deeply divided delegates gathered in Philadelphia and produced just over 1,300 words that would alter the course of human history. They were not merely announcing independence from Great Britain. They were advancing a revolutionary proposition: that legitimate government derives its authority from the people, that liberty is not granted by kings, and that every generation bears a responsibility to preserve freedom for the next.


The Declaration of Independence became America’s first great statement of purpose. It transformed a colonial rebellion into a universal argument about human dignity, self-government, and the rights of humanity. Nearly 250 years later, its influence can be found in constitutions, civil rights movements, democratic revolutions, and public institutions around the globe. Few documents in history have traveled so far, inspired so many, or endured so long.


As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the Declaration remains more than a relic preserved behind glass in the National Archives. It is a living document whose ideas continue to shape public life, democratic governance, and the responsibilities of citizenship. It remains, as historian Gordon Wood observed, one of the most consequential statements of political thought ever produced.

More Than a Single Day

Popular memory often reduces the Declaration to July 4, 1776, but the story began months earlier. Following years of disputes over taxation, representation, and self-government, colonial leaders increasingly concluded that reconciliation with Britain was impossible.


On June 7, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution declaring that the colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” Four days later, Congress appointed a Committee of Five—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston—to draft a formal declaration explaining the reasons for independence. Jefferson, only thirty-three years old, became the principal author, while Adams and Franklin revised the text before Congress debated and substantially edited it. The final document adopted on July 4 was therefore not the work of one man but the product of collective deliberation and compromise.


That fact alone offers an important lesson. America’s founding document emerged not from unanimity, but from disagreement, debate, and persuasion. The founders argued intensely about language, philosophy, and strategy, yet they ultimately united around a common purpose. Democracy, from the beginning, was messy. It still is.

The Revolutionary Idea

The Declaration’s most enduring contribution was not independence itself, but the principles used to justify it.


Drawing upon Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, the document argued that all people possess natural rights independent of government.

Governments exist to secure those rights and derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. When governments fail in that responsibility, citizens retain the authority to alter or abolish them.


In 1776 these ideas were revolutionary.

Throughout much of the world, power flowed from kings, hereditary privilege, and divine right. The Declaration turned that model upside down. Sovereignty belonged not to a monarch but to the people.


Its most famous sentence remains among the most influential ever written:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”


Those words did more than justify independence. They established a moral standard against which future generations would measure both government and society.


Historian Pauline Maier noted that the Declaration was both an announcement and an argument. It explained not only why Americans were breaking from Britain, but what they believed government ought to be. That argument would prove more enduring than the war itself.

The Birth of a Nation

The Declaration’s immediate impact was practical as well as philosophical.


Once independence was formally declared, the United States could pursue foreign alliances and diplomatic recognition. French support would ultimately prove decisive in securing victory during the Revolutionary War.
Congress ordered copies distributed throughout the states and read publicly before citizens and soldiers alike. General George Washington had the Declaration read to Continental Army troops, transforming the conflict from resistance against British policies into a struggle for national independence.


The Declaration also accelerated the formation of state governments and helped lay the philosophical foundation for the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and eventually the Bill of Rights. While it was not itself a constitution, it provided the principles upon which American constitutional government would be built.


Yet the founders understood something larger than the immediate needs of the moment. They were not simply creating a new country. They were launching what would become the world’s most ambitious experiment in democratic self-government.

The Creed That Defines America

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that America’s uniqueness lies not in ethnicity, language, or ancestry, but in a shared commitment to a set of political ideals. Unlike many nations, America was founded on a creed.


At the center of that creed stands the Declaration of Independence.


Huntington observed that throughout American history citizens have repeatedly returned to the Declaration during moments of crisis. Whether confronting slavery, corruption, inequality, discrimination, or threats to democratic institutions, Americans have looked to the founding principles as a standard by which to judge the nation.


He described these periods as moments of “creedal passion”—times when Americans demand that the country live up to its own ideals.


The abolitionist movement invoked the Declaration.


The women’s suffrage movement echoed its language.


The labor movement adapted its structure.


The Civil Rights Movement embraced its promises.


Again and again, Americans have used the Declaration not merely to celebrate the nation, but to challenge it.

For Huntington, this was evidence of the Declaration’s enduring power. Americans may disagree about policy, politics, and priorities, but they often frame those disagreements through the common language of liberty, equality, constitutional government, and democratic self-rule. The Declaration remains the civic glue that binds together an extraordinarily diverse republic.

America’s Unfinished Promise

Yet the Declaration also contained one of the great contradictions of American history.


The document proclaimed equality while slavery existed throughout the colonies. Many of its signers, including Jefferson, enslaved human beings. Congress removed Jefferson’s condemnation of the slave trade from an earlier draft in order to maintain unity among the colonies.


The nation was founded upon ideals more expansive than its practices.


That contradiction has shaped nearly every chapter of American history.


Rather than weakening the Declaration’s significance, however, it became a source of moral leverage for future reformers. Because the founders established universal principles, later generations could demand that the nation honor them.


Frederick Douglass challenged slavery through the Declaration’s language of equality.


Abraham Lincoln made the Declaration the moral center of the Union cause during the Civil War.


Women’s rights advocates adapted its words at Seneca Falls.


Martin Luther King Jr. described America’s founding principles as a promissory note that the nation had yet to fully redeem.

Each movement found power in the same idea: that America’s highest ideals belonged to everyone.


The Declaration became not merely a statement of independence but a continuing challenge to improve the Republic.

A Document for the World

The Declaration’s influence extended far beyond America’s borders.


Historian David Armitage argues that its greatest global impact may have been its role as a model for self-determination. Across Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, peoples seeking independence drew inspiration from the idea that a nation could separate itself from an existing government and establish its own sovereign authority.


Its influence can be seen in:

  • The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
  • Latin American independence movements.
  • Democratic reforms throughout Europe.
  • Anti-colonial movements across Africa and Asia.
  • Modern human rights movements.
  • Constitutional democracies around the world.

The Declaration helped launch what historians often call the “Age of Revolutions.” It transformed liberty from a privilege granted by rulers into a claim asserted by citizens.


For the first time in history, a nation announced to the world that the government existed because people consented to it—not because rulers inherited it.

That idea changed everything.

Why It Matters for Public Service

As Americans reflect on 250 years of independence, the Declaration continues to offer lessons for those entrusted with public service.


What gives government legitimacy?


How should public power be exercised?


What obligations do institutions owe the people they serve?


These questions remain central to modern governance.


For public administrators, the Declaration serves as a reminder that government exists to serve citizens, not the other way around.


Transparency, accountability, ethical leadership, and stewardship of public trust all flow from the belief that authority originates with the people.


Whether serving in local government, state agencies, federal departments, nonprofit organizations, or community institutions, public servants continue the work begun in 1776—transforming ideals into action and principles into
practice.


The founders established the framework. Each generation must decide how to sustain it.

The Continuing American Experiment

The founders could not have imagined artificial intelligence, space exploration, global communications, or a nation of more than 340 million people. Yet they understood a timeless truth: free people, governing themselves, possess an extraordinary capacity to shape their future.


That work remains unfinished.

Samuel Huntington once argued that America’s greatest challenge was not preserving its power but preserving its identity. The Declaration of Independence provides the answer to that challenge. It reminds us that being American is not defined solely by birthplace, background, or political affiliation. It is defined by a commitment to liberty, equality,
self-government, and the belief that free people can govern themselves.


For nearly 250 years, Americans have debated, expanded, defended, and reinterpreted the ideals first articulated in Philadelphia. Every generation has inherited the same assignment: to move the nation closer to the
promise contained within those revolutionary words.


Two and a half centuries later, the Declaration remains both our inheritance and our responsibility. It is a testament to the power of ideas, a challenge to complacency, and a reminder that democracy is not a destination. It is a duty. The Declaration did more than create a nation. It created a conversation—about liberty, equality, justice, citizenship, and human dignity—that continues today.


And as America moves toward its third century, that conversation remains the foundation of the American experiment and the enduring call of public service.

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