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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Why I Serve: From Coal Country to Public Service

When people think about public administration, they often think about government offices, regulations, budgets, and policies. While those are certainly important parts of the profession, my experience has taught me that public administration is ultimately about people. It is about ensuring that workers return home safely to their families, that communities remain strong, and that Government fulfills its responsibility to serve the public good.


I currently serve as a Mine Safety and Health Inspector with the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor. MSHA’s mission is to prevent death, illness, and injury from mining and promote safe and healthful workplaces for America’s miners. Every inspection, investigation, health survey, and enforcement action supports that mission. The work often takes place far from public view, but its impact is measured in lives protected, injuries prevented, and families kept whole.


For me, this work is deeply personal.


I was raised in southern West Virginia, where coal mining is woven into the identity of our communities. Mining is more than an industry in Appalachia. It has shaped our towns, schools, churches, and families for generations. Many of us grew up knowing miners, working alongside miners, or having family members whose livelihoods depended on the mines.


My connection to mine safety began long before I ever became an inspector. My grandfather worked for MSHA and spent his career helping protect miners throughout the region. Growing up, I heard stories about inspections, accident prevention, and the responsibility that comes with ensuring workplace safety. I did not fully appreciate it at the time, but those conversations were my first introduction to public administration in action. My grandfather showed me that
Government could make a direct and meaningful difference in people’s lives. He demonstrated that public service was not simply a profession—it was a calling.


That legacy eventually inspired me to pursue a career with MSHA myself.


I entered federal service through the Pathways Program, which provides opportunities for students and recent graduates to begin careers in public service while developing the technical knowledge and practical experience necessary to succeed. The program allowed me to combine my academic background, interest in public policy, and commitment to worker safety into a career that directly serves the public.


A defining moment in that journey was attending the National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beckley, West Virginia. Located just miles from where I grew up, the Academy serves as the central training facility for federal mine inspectors and mine safety professionals from across the nation. It is responsible for training the next generation of inspectors who will carry out the mission of the Mine Act, the Miner Act, and protect miners in every mining region of the country.

As a member of the Mine Training Technician Program, I spent months immersed in training that covered every aspect of mine safety and health for metal/nonmetal and coal mines. The Academy’s curriculum includes inspection procedures, accident prevention, investigations, industrial hygiene, emergency response planning, mine technology, and management techniques. Students train in simulated underground mines, specialized laboratories, and hands-on environments designed to prepare inspectors for real-world conditions.


The training was demanding, but it reinforced something important: mine safety is about far more than enforcing regulations. Effective inspectors must understand mining operations, recognize hazards, communicate effectively, and build credibility with miners and operators. The goal is not simply to identify violations. The goal is to prevent accidents before they occur.


Graduating from the National Mine Academy remains one of the proudest moments of my career. Standing alongside fellow graduates from across the country, I realized that we were joining a long tradition of public servants dedicated to one purpose: ensuring that every miner has the opportunity to return home safely at the end of the day. It was especially meaningful knowing that I was continuing a legacy that my grandfather had helped build decades earlier.


My commitment to mine safety was further shaped by one of the defining events in modern Appalachian history: the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster.


Like many people in southern West Virginia, I lived near the communities affected by the tragedy. On April 5, 2010, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine claimed the lives of twenty-nine miners and became the deadliest U.S. coal mining disaster in nearly forty years. For people outside the region, it was a major news story. For those of us who lived here, it was deeply personal.


The effects of the disaster extended far beyond the mine itself. Families lost fathers, sons, brothers, and friends. Churches held memorial services. Schools supported grieving children. Entire communities mourned together. In southern West Virginia, it often seemed that everyone knew someone who was connected to Upper Big Branch.


The tragedy served as a painful reminder that behind every safety standard, every inspection, and every regulation is a human story. Safety requirements do not exist because someone decided to create more paperwork. They exist because previous generations paid a terrible price for lessons learned through injury, illness, and loss of life.


That lesson stays with me every time I enter the mine.


When I conduct an inspection today, I am not simply evaluating compliance with federal regulations. I am helping ensure that history does not repeat itself. Every citation issued, every hazard corrected, and every conversation about safety has the potential to prevent an injury or save a life.


One of the most meaningful aspects of my work is that success is often invisible.

When a hazard is corrected before an accident occurs, there is no headline. When equipment is repaired before it fails, no one outside the operation may ever know. When ventilation systems function properly, when miners receive appropriate training, or when health hazards are addressed before workers become sick, those successes rarely attract public attention.


Yet these preventative outcomes represent public administration at its very best.


The public often notices the government when something goes wrong. As public servants, however, much of our work is dedicated to ensuring that things do not go wrong in the first place. Whether it is a mine inspection, a public health program, an emergency management plan, or infrastructure maintenance, successful public administration often means preventing problems that never become visible to the public.


This perspective became even clearer during my graduate studies.


While serving with MSHA, I completed a Master of Public Administration at Marshall University. My studies exposed me to the broader field of public service and helped me understand how mine safety fits into the larger mission of government. Courses in public management, ethics, organizational leadership, budgeting, policy analysis, and governance reinforced what I was seeing in the field every day: effective government creates public value.


My education also strengthened my belief that public service requires both technical competence and human understanding. Data matters. Technology matters. Regulations matter. But none of those things are the mission themselves. They are tools that help us serve people more effectively.


That lesson has become increasingly important as Government enters an era defined by rapid technological change. I have a strong interest in emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and innovation in public administration. These tools have tremendous potential to improve decision-making, enhance safety, and increase government effectiveness. However, technology should never replace the fundamental human purpose of public service.


Whether using advanced analytics or conducting a mine inspection, the mission remains the same: protecting people and improving lives.


Outside of my federal service, I have continued to seek opportunities to contribute to the broader public service community. Through my involvement with the American Society for Public Administration, Young Government Leaders, and AFGE Local 3181, I have had the opportunity to connect with public servants from across the country who share a common commitment to service.


Recently, I was honored to be selected as the Local Y.O.U.N.G. Coordinator for AFGE Local 3181, helping engage the next generation of federal employees and public servants. The role focuses on leadership development, inclusion, mentorship, and ensuring that younger workers have opportunities to contribute their ideas and perspectives to the future of public service.

These experiences have reinforced something I have come to believe strongly: the future of public service depends on our ability to prepare the next generation of leaders while preserving the values that have guided previous generations.
If there is one lesson I would share with future public servants, it is this: never lose sight of the people behind the policy.


Every regulation affects a worker.


Every budget affects a family.


Every decision affects a community.


The best public servants understand both the technical and human dimensions of their work.


They pursue excellence in their profession while remaining grounded in empathy, integrity, and
service.


My journey—from growing up in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, to following in my grandfather’s footsteps at MSHA, to attending the National Mine Academy, earning an MPA, and serving miners across the region—has taught me that public administration is ultimately about stewardship.


We inherit institutions built by those who came before us. We learn from the successes and failures of the past. And we carry a responsibility to leave those institutions stronger than we found them.


That is why I serve.


I serve because every miner deserves to return home safely.


I serve because strong communities depend on effective public institutions.


I serve because public service can make a real difference in people’s lives.


And I serve because the lessons learned through generations of sacrifice, including tragedies like Upper Big Branch, must never be forgotten. Through vigilance, professionalism, and a commitment to service, we honor those lessons and help build a safer future for the communities we call home.

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Summary of the ASPA National Capital Area Chapter 2026 Annual Meeting

The 2026 Annual Meeting of the ASPA National Capital Area Chapter highlighted the importance of public service, innovation, leadership, and community engagement across all levels of government. Chapter President Whitney Meerhoffer opened the meeting by recognizing board members, longtime chapter leaders, new board members,
and volunteers whose dedication supports the chapter’s mission of connecting people to improve government and promote the value of public service.

Keynote Address: Mayor Emily Jabbour

The featured keynote speaker was Emily Jabbour, the newly elected mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, and a former federal civil servant with 19 years of service at the Administration for Children and Families. Mayor Jabbour reflected on her transition from federal service to local government leadership, emphasizing that meaningful systems change can occur at every level of government—not just in Washington. She discussed how her experience as a federal performance officer shaped her commitment to data-driven decision-making, accountability, and communicating public value to citizens.

Mayor Jabbour highlighted several themes:

  • Performance and Accountability: Citizens want to understand how the government uses their tax dollars and what results are being achieved.
  • Innovation in Local Government: While local governments often lack the resources available at the federal level, innovation can be achieved through partnerships, technology, and learning from peers.
  • Technology and AI: AI and data analytics can improve government operations, though many essential public services will always require human involvement.
  • Community Engagement: Listening to residents through surveys, office hours, and public meetings helps reduce conflict and improve policy outcomes.
  • Public Service Leadership: Success depends on maintaining clarity of mission, building trusted networks of advisors, and remaining committed to public service values despite challenges and political pressures.
  • Mayor Jabbour also shared her personal journey into public service, which began through advocacy on gun violence prevention after witnessing an active shooter drill in her daughter’s preschool. Her involvement with Moms Demand Action eventually led to her election to the Hoboken City Council and later to the mayor’s office.

Chapter Service Award

The chapter recognized Paula Asdourian for over a decade of service to ASPA and nine years of leadership on the chapter board. Paula’s contributions included managing communications, newsletters, member engagement, and supporting chapter operations. President Meyerhoeffer praised her professionalism, dedication, and positive
impact on the organization.

Student Essay Contest Winners

Vice President Joshua Lier announced the winners of the chapter’s annual student essay contest, which received more than a dozen submissions on contemporary public administration issues. All their papers can be found on the NCAC Website.

Third Place:

Marcos Fabian – Language and Robots, Children Words, Adult Prompts, and the New Human Capital Explored language, generative AI, and implications for human capital inequality.

Second Place:

Lydia Woodley – The Storm Ends: Bureaucracy Begins: Rebuilding Recovery Around Social Equity Examined disaster recovery, social equity, and policy reforms.

First Place

Zara Casar – Rethinking the Role of Bureaucrats in Democratic Governance: The Case of Social Welfare Policy in the United States


Argued that modern bureaucrats play critical roles beyond implementation, serving as policy influencers, negotiators, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Her presentation highlighted the evolving relationship between democracy and bureaucracy and emphasized the need for accountability, transparency, and public value in contemporary governance.

State of the Chapter

In her State of the Chapter remarks, President Whitney Meyerhoeffer reflected on the value of public administration as a profession and the role ASPA NCAC plays in supporting practitioners, scholars, students, and public servants. She emphasized that public administration often works quietly behind the scenes but remains essential for implementing policy, delivering services, and maintaining public trust.

Looking ahead, the chapter plans to:

  • Expand programming focused on innovation, AI, and practical governance challenges.
  • Strengthen partnerships with organizations such as Young Government Leaders.
  • Continue hosting member-driven discussions through its popular “Drinks and Conversations” series.
  • Enhance chapter governance, sponsorship opportunities, and member engagement.
  • Foster collaboration among practitioners, academics, and students across all levels of government.

Overall Theme

The meeting underscored a common message echoed throughout the keynote, award presentations, student essays, and chapter updates: effective public service depends on mission-driven professionals who combine expertise, innovation, accountability, and community engagement to improve government and create public value. Whether at the federal, state, or local level, public administrators remain essential stewards of democratic governance and institutional trust.

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America’s AI Moment

Written by NCAC Board Member, Ryan Heimer

Innovation, Infrastructure, and the Future of Democratic
Governance

The Next Great Test of American Governance

Every generation inherits a challenge that forces it to rethink how institutions serve the public. For the Founders, it was designing a republic capable of balancing liberty with effective government. For later generations, it was preserving the Union, building an industrial economy, expanding opportunity, and navigating the rise of global power.

Today’s challenge arrives not in the form of a foreign army or economic depression, but through a technology advancing faster than the institutions responsible for governing it.

Artificial intelligence is often described as a technological revolution. Yet the more important story may be institutional rather than technological. AI is forcing governments, businesses, schools, healthcare systems, and communities to confront fundamental questions about decision-making, accountability, expertise, and trust. It is reshaping how information is produced, how services are delivered, how work is performed, and how citizens interact with the organizations that govern their lives.


The executive orders and policy initiatives emerging from Washington over the past several years reveal a growing recognition that AI is no longer simply another innovation. Increasingly, it is being treated as a strategic national capability that will influence economic competitiveness, workforce development, healthcare delivery, national security, and the future of public administration itself.


The story of American AI policy is therefore not merely a story about technology. It is a story about whether our institutions can adapt to a new era while remaining faithful to the principles that have sustained the republic for nearly 250 years.

From Research Initiative to National Strategy

The modern federal AI effort began in 2019 with the Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. At the time, policymakers largely viewed AI as an emerging technology with extraordinary economic and scientific potential.


Federal agencies were directed to prioritize research and development, improve access to government data, cultivate technical talent, and reduce barriers to innovation. The objective was straightforward: ensure that the United States remained the global leader in a technology likely to define the future.

A year later, the focus expanded. The Executive Order on Promoting the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Government acknowledged that leadership alone would not be sufficient. Public trust would also be necessary.


Innovation and governance would need to advance together. This balance between technological advancement and democratic accountability would become the central tension of the next phase of American AI policy.

The AI Race Accelerates

By 2025, the conversation had evolved dramatically.


The Trump Administration’s executive orders on removing barriers to AI leadership, streamlining federal procurement, expanding AI education, accelerating data-center permitting, and exporting the American AI technology stack reflected a broader strategic vision.


AI was no longer viewed primarily as a research initiative.


It was becoming a national project.


The federal government increasingly began treating artificial intelligence the same way earlier generations treated railroads, electrification, aerospace, and the internet—not merely as technology, but as critical infrastructure tied directly to economic growth, national security, and geopolitical influence.


Yet even as policymakers focused on competition and innovation, another challenge was emerging: preparing institutions and people to operate effectively in this new environment.

The Human Side of Artificial Intelligence

Technological revolutions are often described through machines, inventions, and infrastructure. But history suggests that transformation ultimately depends on people.


This reality is particularly evident in the workplace.


Research by Dr. Priyanka Dave of Oregon State University suggests that successful AI adoption is not primarily a technology challenge. It is a cultural challenge. Employees do not embrace new tools simply because they are available. They need environments that encourage learning, experimentation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.


Her research identifies psychological safety, managerial reinforcement, peer learning, opportunities for application, and aligned incentives as the key ingredients of successful adoption. Organizations that lack these conditions often find themselves purchasing technology faster than employees can meaningfully use it.


This lesson is especially relevant for government agencies.


The success of federal AI initiatives will not be determined solely by the sophistication of algorithms. It will depend on whether public institutions can prepare employees to work alongside those systems effectively.


The future of AI, in many respects, is a workforce challenge.

Modernizing Government in the AI Era

The workforce challenge intersects directly with another national priority: government modernization.


Federal agencies face increasing workloads, growing public expectations, workforce constraints, and rising demands for responsiveness. AI offers opportunities to improve service delivery, strengthen data analysis, streamline administrative processes, and support evidence-based decision-making.


Recent disclosures from the Office of Management and Budget reveal more than 3,600 active or planned AI applications across federal agencies, a dramatic increase from previous years.


These applications touch nearly every aspect of government operations.


Yet the rapid expansion of AI has also exposed an important governance challenge.


How do citizens maintain confidence in systems they do not fully understand?


The answer, many experts argue, lies not in slowing innovation but in strengthening transparency, accountability, and public engagement.


The rise of AI is creating what some observers describe as an “AI state.” Whether that development increases public trust or erodes it will depend on how institutions manage the transition.

Healthcare: A Preview of the Future

Few sectors illustrate these challenges more clearly than healthcare.


Healthcare is simultaneously one of the most promising and most complicated areas for AI deployment. Administrative systems already assist with scheduling, claims processing, documentation, and patient communications. Clinical applications increasingly support diagnostics, medical imaging, disease detection, and treatment recommendations.

The promise is extraordinary.

Yet healthcare also demonstrates the complexity of governing AI in high-stakes environments.


Questions about liability, privacy, transparency, regulation, reimbursement, and patient safety remain unresolved. Multiple federal agencies share oversight responsibilities, while states continue developing their own approaches.


The result is a policy landscape that mirrors broader challenges facing AI governance across government.


How can regulators encourage innovation while protecting the public?


How can institutions move quickly without sacrificing accountability?


Healthcare may ultimately become the testing ground for answering those questions.

National Security and Strategic Competition

If healthcare highlights AI’s promise, national security highlights its stakes.


Recent debates surrounding advanced AI systems such as Anthropic’s newest models demonstrate how quickly AI has become intertwined with questions of cybersecurity, intelligence, and defense.


Policymakers increasingly view frontier AI models as strategic assets comparable to advanced semiconductors, aerospace technologies, or critical infrastructure.


This perspective reflects a growing recognition that leadership in artificial intelligence may influence the global balance of economic and political power throughout the twenty-first century.


Consequently, discussions surrounding export controls, cybersecurity safeguards, model access, and international competition are likely to become increasingly central to American AI policy.


The question is no longer whether AI has national security implications.


The question is how democratic societies should govern technologies that possess such significant strategic value.

Stewarding the Future

The conversation surrounding artificial intelligence often gravitates toward extremes. Some see limitless opportunity. Others see existential risk. The reality, as is often the case in public administration, lies somewhere in between.


Technology does not determine outcomes on its own. Institutions do.


Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly reshape government, healthcare, education, business, and civic life. Yet whether those changes strengthen society depends upon decisions being made today by public servants, policymakers, educators, business leaders, and citizens.

The executive orders discussed throughout this article represent more than a collection of policy directives. They reveal an emerging recognition that America is entering a new phase of national development—one in which intelligent systems will increasingly shape public life.


But history reminds us that technological leadership alone is never enough.


The nations that endure are those capable of transforming innovation into public value. They build institutions that are trusted, adaptable, and resilient. They prepare their people for change while ensuring that progress remains aligned with the common good.


As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, artificial intelligence presents an opportunity to demonstrate that democratic governance remains capable of meeting the challenges of a new age.


The future of artificial intelligence will be written in code.


The future of the republic, however, will still be written by people.

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ASPA NCAC Honors Paula Acevedo for Outstanding Service and Leadership

The ASPA National Capital Area Chapter is proud to recognize Paula Acevedo for her outstanding service, leadership, and dedication to both the chapter and the public service profession.

Paula has been a member of ASPA for 11 years and served on the NCAC Board of Directors for nine years, from 2017 to 2026. During her tenure, she played a critical role in supporting the chapter’s communications and member engagement efforts, serving as Communications Chair, Newsletter Managing Editor, and website manager.

Throughout her years of service, Paula consistently demonstrated a commitment to excellence and a willingness to step forward wherever support was needed. Her contributions helped strengthen communication with members, enhance the chapter’s visibility, and ensure important chapter information remained accessible and engaging.

Beyond her volunteer leadership, Paula exemplifies the values of public service in her professional role as a Grants Management Specialist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. During the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, she continued to serve with dedication and professionalism while maintaining the positive, can-do attitude that colleagues and fellow board members have come to know and appreciate.

Paula’s leadership has been marked not only by her hard work and reliability, but also by her kindness, resilience, and unwavering commitment to supporting others. She has been a valued colleague, a trusted board member, and a role model for both public servants and ASPA members.

On behalf of the ASPA National Capital Area Chapter, we extend our sincere gratitude to Paula for her years of service and congratulate her on this well-deserved recognition.

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Marcos Fabian Wins Third Place in the 2026 Student Essay Contest

NCAC congratulates Marcos Fabian for winning Third Place of the National Capital Area Chapter’s (NCAC) 2026 Public Administration Student Essay Contest for the essay Language and Robots: Children Words, Adult Prompts, and the New Human Capital

Marcos Fabian is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and, along with the distinction of winning the Chapter’s Essay Contest, will receive a cash award of $750 that we hope will go toward furthering your education and a three-year membership to the American Society for Public Administration.

Marcos joined us at our Chapter’s Annual Meeting on June 4.

A link to view the recording of the meeting will be posted when we have it.

Congratulations, Marcos, on winning Third Place for your essay in our Chapter’s 2026 Student Essay Contest!

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Lydia Woodley Wins Second Place in the 2026 Student Essay Contest

NCAC congratulates Lydia Woodley for winning Second Place of the National Capital Area Chapter’s (NCAC) 2026 Public Administration Student Essay Contest for the essay The Storm Ends, Bureaucracy Begins: Rebuilding Recovery Around Social Equity

Lydia Woodley is a master’s student at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University and, along with the distinction of winning the Chapter’s Essay Contest, will receive a cash award of $1,500 that we hope will go toward furthering your education and a three-year membership to the American Society for Public Administration.

Lydia joined us at our Chapter’s Annual Meeting on June 4.

A link to view the recording of the meeting will be posted when we have it.

Congratulations, Lydia, on winning Second Place for your essay in our Chapter’s 2026 Student Essay Contest!

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Emerging Technologies and America’s Future: Why Public Servants Need a New Playbook for the AI Age

Written by NCAC Board Member, Ryan Heimer

Nine seconds.

That is reportedly how long it took an artificial intelligence agent to delete production databases and associated backups after encountering a routine credential problem. When investigators later examined the incident, the AI’s explanation was as startling as the damage itself:

“I guessed instead of verifying.”

For many readers, the story may sound like another Silicon Valley mishap—a cautionary tale for software engineers and technology startups. Yet the implications stretch far beyond a single company or a single AI system. The incident offers a glimpse into a future where artificial intelligence increasingly moves from providing recommendations to taking actions, often at speeds that outpace traditional forms of human oversight.

For public servants, this should command attention.

The real lesson is not that an AI system made a mistake. Humans make mistakes every day. The lesson is that the system possessed the authority to act before governance mechanisms had an opportunity to intervene. In many ways, this was not an artificial intelligence failure at all. It was a governance failure.

Throughout American history, technological revolutions have forced institutions to adapt. Railroads transformed commerce but required new safety regulations. Automobiles expanded mobility but demanded traffic laws and licensing systems. The internet reshaped communication while creating entirely new concerns around cybersecurity, privacy, and information integrity.

Artificial intelligence presents a similar challenge, but at a much faster pace.

The Stanford Emerging Technology Review describes AI as a foundational technology with the potential to reshape economies, public services, national security, and society itself. Yet researchers also caution that today’s AI systems continue to exhibit unpredictable behavior, hallucinations, reliability failures, and hidden biases. The technology is advancing rapidly, but the institutions responsible for governing it are often struggling to keep pace.

The PocketOS incident highlights this growing gap.

While headlines focused on the AI agent, the deeper issue was data governance. A recent report titled AI Redefines the Governance of Data Based on Use argues that organizations are entering a new era in which traditional approaches to governance are no longer sufficient. Historically, data governance focused on protecting information from breaches, unauthorized access, and theft. Security was the primary concern.

Artificial intelligence changes that equation.

Today, the challenge is not simply protecting data. It is governing how data is used.

Modern AI systems are extraordinarily data hungry. They draw information from structured databases, documents, emails, reports, images, and other sources. Increasingly, they combine information from across organizations without regard for traditional organizational boundaries. The result is a new governance challenge: ensuring that information is used responsibly, ethically, and for its intended purpose.

This shift, from data security governance to data use governance, may be one of the most important developments in the AI era.

For decades, organizations asked whether data was secure.

Now they must also ask whether data is being used appropriately.

Just because a system can access information does not mean it should.

The OneTrust report argues that responsible governance requires understanding four forms of context surrounding data: technical context, consent context, regulatory context, and business purpose. Together, these elements determine not only whether data can be accessed, but whether its use aligns with legal requirements, ethical standards, and organizational objectives.

Public administrators may recognize this concept immediately.

Government agencies rarely make decisions simply because information exists. Public servants operate within legal authorities, policy frameworks, ethical obligations, and public expectations. Data alone is not enough. Context matters.

An MSHA inspector may possess extensive operational information about a mine. However, that information must be used within the framework established by the Mine Act, agency policy, and principles of due process. Similarly, agencies handling citizen information cannot simply feed data into an AI model because it is available. They must consider why the information was collected, whether consent exists, and whether the proposed use aligns with law and public trust.

These concerns become even more significant as AI systems increasingly act on information rather than merely analyze it.

The Stanford review notes that emerging AI agents are capable of carrying out multistep tasks with limited human supervision. Yet researchers continue identifying reliability concerns, including goal drift, overconfidence, memory limitations, and unpredictable behavior. When combined with broad access to data, these weaknesses create new forms of organizational risk.

The PocketOS incident demonstrates exactly why.

The problem was not merely that an AI guessed incorrectly.

The problem was that governance mechanisms allowed it to guess at all.

This is where public administration has something important to contribute.

The Government has spent generations developing systems designed to manage risk. Internal controls, financial audits, workplace examinations, accident investigations, separation of duties, ethics rules, and regulatory oversight all emerged from the same underlying principle:

Trust matters.

Verification matters more.

In mining, ventilation standards exist because experience taught painful lessons about what happens when hazards go undetected.

Workplace examinations exist because assumptions can be deadly. Lockout/tagout procedures exist because relying on good intentions alone is insufficient when safety is at stake.

AI governance increasingly requires a similar mindset.

Organizations cannot rely solely on prompts, guidelines, or user instructions. Governance must be embedded into systems themselves through permissions, audit logs, approval requirements, policy enforcement mechanisms, and continuous oversight.

The OneTrust report describes this transition as a movement toward programmatic governance. Traditional compliance models rely heavily on manual reviews, audits, and after-the-fact assessments. AI systems operate too quickly for those approaches to remain effective. Governance increasingly must occur at machine speed.

This may represent one of the defining governance challenges of the next decade.

Human-speed oversight cannot effectively govern machine-speed decision making.

Institutions must adapt.

The implications extend beyond technology departments. Public trust is increasingly at stake. Surveys consistently show that citizens remain concerned about how organizations collect, store, and use personal information. Many are uncertain whether their data is being handled responsibly. For government agencies, these concerns carry special weight because trust is central to democratic legitimacy.

Citizens deserve answers when automated systems influence decisions affecting their lives.

Why was this decision made?

What information was used?

Who approved the system?

How can errors be corrected?

Can outcomes be appealed?

These are not merely technical questions. They are democratic questions.

Ultimately, the PocketOS incident offers a warning, but it also provides an opportunity.

America has navigated technological revolutions before. Success has never depended solely on innovation. It has depended on building institutions capable of channeling innovation toward public benefit while managing its risks.

Artificial intelligence is no different.

The future will not be determined solely by how powerful AI becomes.

It will be determined by whether governments, organizations, and communities develop the governance frameworks necessary to guide that power responsibly.

The lesson hidden within those nine seconds is therefore much larger than a deleted database.

It is a reminder that the central challenge of artificial intelligence is not intelligence.

It is governance.

And as public servants look toward the future, that may be the most important lesson of all.

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