"One of the things that weirdly happens with the discourse around AI is; this future promise is increasingly mistaken for existing capability. So when we keep saying let's prepare by reshaping our infrastructure to accommodate AI, we're asking to reshape this infrastructure for a hypothetical future. And that hastens the conditions for that future, regardless of whether it ever arrives."

#ErykSalvaggio, 2025

https://techpolicy.press/doge-and-the-united-states-of-ai

(1/?)

#MOLE #AI #PublicPolicy

🙏 Thanks to everyone who joined yesterday’s RESPOND event on rethinking the concept of corruption

🔎 See you again today at 3 PM with new experimental insights from Lithuania, Hungary and Moldova
👉 https://www.eu-respond.eu/events/awareness-of-corruption-and-attitudes-toward-socio-economic-inequality-experimental-evidence-from-lithuania-hungary-and-moldova/

📷 Image by Endrik Severin Meitinger

#RESPOND #EUProjects #HorizonEurope #ResearchAndInnovation #PoliticalCorruption #Transparency #SocioEconomicInequality #PublicPolicy #AcademicEvents #RespondSeminarSeries

@CssC @alice_mattoni

"The problem is that governments and businesses serve vastly different purposes. If public policymakers start mimicking business founders, they will undermine their own ability to address complex societal challenges.

For startups, the highest priority is rapid iteration, technology-driven disruption, and financial returns for investors. Their success often hinges on solving a narrowly defined problem with a single product, or within a single organization. Governments, by contrast, must tackle complex, interconnected issues like poverty, public health, and national security. Each challenge calls for collaboration across multiple sectors, and careful long-term planning. The idea of securing short-term gains in any of these areas doesn’t even make sense.

Unlike startups, governments are supposed to uphold legal mandates, ensure the provision of essential services, and enforce equal treatment under the law – more important today than ever. Metrics like market share are irrelevant, because the government has no competitors. Rather than trying to “win,” it should focus on expanding opportunities and promoting the diffusion of best practices. It must be long-term minded, while achieving nimble and flexible structures that can adapt."

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/government-should-not-act-like-a-startup-or-business-by-mariana-mazzucato-and-rainer-kattel-2025-04

#Governments #StartUps #PublicPolicy #PublicAdministration #PublicInterest

Big shakeup at the SSA under Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE):
📉 87% of regional staff cut
📲 All public communication now routed exclusively through X (formerly Twitter)
🚫 Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity? Gone.
🔄 Oversight functions reassigned or absorbed

Critics warn this shift could:
・Alienate seniors and vulnerable communities
・Increase fraud risk due to lack of clear communication
・Undermine transparency and public trust

Whether you see this as innovation or erosion of public service, it’s a dramatic pivot in how vital government programs connect with citizens.
#DigitalGovernment #PublicPolicy #AI #SocialSecurity #ElonMusk #TechInGov #Accessibility
https://www.wired.com/story/social-security-administration-regional-office-elon-musk-x

Social Security Administration Moving Public Communications to X

https://www.wired.com/story/social-security-administration-regional-office-elon-musk-x/

#HackerNews #SocialSecurity #Administration #X #Communications #ElonMusk #PublicPolicy #TechNews

"The first step may be to finally recognize that “running government like a business” has always been a red herring. The government is not a business — it is the thing that makes business possible. Unregulated markets frequently fail to produce good businesses so long as we define “good” as beneficial to their customers. And unregulated businesses, as we’ve recently been forced to witness, are even worse at producing good government. As the economist Mariana Mazzucato has long argued, the libertarian CEO types now running Washington are willfully ignorant of just how dependent their industries are on the backbone of public services like roads, telecoms, courts and publicly-funded research — services they have enjoyed largely for free since financial liberalization and business tax cuts have allowed them to shelter the vast majority of their profits.

Step two is much harder: articulating some positive idea of an activist government in the marketplace. For Doctorow, as for many others, this begins with “a very aggressive antitrust agenda” aimed at breaking up the monopolies that have become powerful enough to capture — and try to replace — the federal government under Trump. “You cannot have a referee who is weaker than the players on the field,” he told me.

“Anti-government nihilism cannot be countered without a defense of the government’s role in daily life.”

But there are other, more constructive roles the government could play. Doctorow suggested a federal jobs guarantee that would put a meaningful floor on the value of labor. Or a database of publicly funded, patent-free research, which would compel corporations to support interoperability — what Mazzucato has called, in the context of AI, a “decentralized innovation ecosystem that serves the public good.”"

https://www.noemamag.com/the-good-society-department/

#USA #NewDeal #PublicAdministration #BigGovernment #PublicPolicy #PublicInterest

🔔 Reminder: Two RESPOND seminars next week!

📅 Apr 14 – Prof. Ceva on conceptualising corruption
📅 Apr 15 – Dr. Ivanov on corruption & inequality
📍 University of Bologna or online

🔗 Full info: https://www.eu-respond.eu/events/

See you there!

#RESPOND #EUProjects #HorizonEurope #ResearchAndInnovation #PoliticalCorruption #Transparency #SocioEconomicInequality #PublicPolicy #AcademicEvents #InstitutionalTrust #DigitalSociety #RESPONDProject #RespondSeminarSeries #AcademicTalks

@CssC @alice_mattoni