For the last months I have been working analysing the public procurement of artificial intelligence solutions in Public Administration. The results have now been published as a playbook: Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence. A Mission-Oriented Playbook.
The general goal of the research, fostered and commissioned by ParticipationAI, is whether AI is just a regular technology that can be purchased yet as another commodity, or is it “something else”. Our thesis is that, effectively, it is much more than something else. And that, at least, two crucial aspects should be taken into account:
- Purpose, aimed at the public interest.
- Impact, as it has a high transforming potential.
In both cases, we believe that the meaningful concurrence of a plural diversity of actors is strictly necessary at all stages of the life cycle of AI. Thus, Ai procurement needs quite a different framework from that of traditional procurement:
- Deal with it like the investment in a digital public infrastructure.
- Think of the concurrence of many different actors, and have a strategy on how to best engage them.
- Organise governance of AI procurement as a mission-oriented policy.
Resources:
Abstract
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a general-purpose technology with significant potential for transformation at all levels. The public sector is increasingly adopting it for a range of purposes – from improving public service delivery to designing and implementing policies – including promoting and shaping the technology itself in the public interest.
However, this potential does not come without challenges. The deployment of artificial intelligence has revealed serious issues, notably the quantity and quality of data required, the difficulty in training algorithms and understanding their inner workings, and the need to ensure compliance with administrative procedures and human rights more broadly. Ultimately, there is a persistent struggle to control its entire lifecycle.
As a result, the procurement of AI has diverged significantly from the conventional acquisition of standard technologies, as new complexities emerge in defining its purpose, shaping its delivery, and ensuring the transparency, predictability, accountability, and measurability of its impact.
To gain insight into this shift, we conduct expert interviews and a thorough literature review on the public procurement of artificial intelligence solutions and carry out interviews with key actors directly involved in the process.
Preliminary findings suggest that a comprehensive model is still lacking, although it draws heavily on previous experiences in data governance and digital privacy, particularly in relation to delivery.
However, the road ahead – especially beyond the strictly technical domain, in terms of purpose and impact – has been explored but remains largely uncharted, although there appears to be emerging consensus around the importance of meaningful stakeholder engagement, both quantitatively and qualitatively: the field is too vast and dynamic to be managed solely by public administrations or their contractors, and too complex to be addressed without the involvement of a diverse range of actors and publics, spanning various approaches, frameworks, disciplines, and roles.
In this playbook, we propose a future direction that identifies the key stages at which, and the ways in which, stakeholder engagement can add value to the entire process of public procurement of artificial intelligence solutions
Executive summary
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping economies, institutions, and societies at unprecedented speed and scale. As a general-purpose technology, AI holds significant potential for transformation – yet it also poses complex challenges, particularly in the context of democratic governance and the public sector.
Public administrations are increasingly adopting AI to enhance service delivery, optimise internal operations, and inform public policy. However, the integration of AI into public decision-making processes introduces new risks around transparency, accountability, equity, and public trust, among others. These challenges are particularly pronounced in the procurement and deployment of AI systems within the public sector.
A complex transformation
Unlike traditional technologies, AI systems evolve, interact with large-scale datasets, and often operate as opaque decision-making tools. Public procurement processes – typically designed for static, well-defined goods or services – struggle to accommodate the dynamic, systemic, and high-risk nature of AI systems. Existing procurement guidelines often do not capture the full lifecycle of AI or account for its institutional, ethical, and societal implications.
In addition, the governance of AI in the public sector is frequently confined to technical or legal compliance frameworks. While such frameworks are necessary, they are insufficient on their own to ensure that AI systems align with democratic values and deliver public value. What is needed is a broader governance perspective that includes not only rules and risks but also public purpose, institutional change, and meaningful engagement with affected communities and stakeholders.
Moreover, AI is coming — it’s coming fast, perhaps too fast for existing systems to keep up. Its development spans so many fronts that no single institution or sector can hope to stop it, let alone contain it. The pace and scope of this technological wave exceed the capacities of public administrations acting alone, just as they do those of the private sector. Navigating this complexity requires a collective effort: all actors — governments, industry, academia, and civil society — must come together, coordinate their actions, and share responsibility in shaping an AI future that serves the public good.
Purpose of this playbook
This playbook addresses a key governance gap in current practice: the limited integration of stakeholder engagement into the public procurement of AI. It seeks to support governments in designing more inclusive, anticipatory, and mission-oriented approaches to AI governance.
Its core argument is twofold. First, in the diagnostic dimension, the playbook contends that AI systems deployed by public administrations function as digital public infrastructure (DPI). These systems are not merely technological tools but foundational, enabling structures that underpin the delivery of public services, reorganise institutional workflows, and generate far-reaching societal effects through network externalities and data flows. Second, in terms of governance and solution design, the playbook advances the adoption of a mission-oriented policy approach as the most appropriate framework for steering the development and use of AI as DPI. This approach enables public institutions to define collective objectives, mobilise cross-sectoral resources, and embed public values such as transparency, inclusion, and accountability into AI governance. From this dual perspective, the playbook explores how stakeholder engagement can be systematically integrated across the full lifecycle of AI procurement—from problem framing and needs assessment to deployment, monitoring, and evaluation.
Approach
This playbook builds on:
- A comprehensive review of literature on AI governance, digital public infrastructure, and public procurement in Public Administrations.
- A qualitative analysis of 10 expert interviews with practitioners from public administration, the private sector, international organizations, academia and civil society.
- Conceptual frameworks in the field of public governance, public innovation, policy design and stakeholder engagement.
The report is structured around three interrelated pillars:
- Lifecycle framing of AI procurement, split in two parts: the state of the question of AI procurement according to the experts; and how an optimal, comprehensive approach could be organised into three phases: Purpose, Delivery, and Impact. And the proposition to deal with the procurement of AI solutions as an investment in digital public infrastructure.
- Stakeholder ecosystem mapping, disaggregating roles and functions across government, civil society, academia, and industry.
- Governance tools, applying a mission-oriented policy model, and including canvases and engagement instruments, tailored to support public institutions in implementing mission-oriented AI strategies.
Key insights
- AI in public administration is more than a tool; it is infrastructure.
Its systemic effects – on internal processes, interdepartmental coordination, and societal norms – require strategic governance beyond standard procurement procedures.
- Current procurement models are not fully aligned with AI’s characteristics.
Most existing guidelines emphasise legal compliance and cost-efficiency, but fall short to address the public interest, complex environments, evolving risks, ethical trade-offs, or the long-term impacts on institutional capacity and public trust.
- Stakeholder engagement is underdeveloped and inconsistently applied.
Despite frequent references in strategy documents, engagement practices are often ad hoc, generic, or limited to consultation phases without meaningful influence on decision-making.
- A mission-oriented approach provides a robust governance framework.
Missions allow public institutions to align AI adoption with long-term societal goals, coordinate actors across sectors, and embed inclusion, transparency, and accountability by design.
- Governments need new instruments to operationalise engagement.
These include:
- Actor maps to identify relevant stakeholders and their roles;
- A toolbox of participatory mechanisms, categorised by degree of institutionalisation and democratic function;
- Governance canvases for aligning purpose, design, delivery, and evaluation phases with engagement practices.
Policy implications
To ensure that AI serves the public interest and strengthens democratic governance, public institutions are encouraged to:
- Reframe AI procurement as public policy, not just technology acquisition.
Position AI systems as components of digital public infrastructure with strategic, ethical, and organisational implications.
- Adopt lifecycle-based governance models.
Move beyond narrow procurement windows and embed oversight, auditability, and stakeholder feedback mechanisms throughout the AI system’s lifespan.
- Invest in stakeholder engagement capabilities.
Build internal capacity for mapping, involving, and co-creating with diverse actors, including underrepresented communities, domain experts, and civil society organisations.
- Use missions to structure cross-sectoral coordination.
Apply mission-oriented innovation frameworks to define clear objectives, share responsibilities, and monitor outcomes in an adaptive and participatory manner.
- Develop engagement standards and frameworks.
Establish benchmarks for inclusive, meaningful, and proportionate stakeholder engagement in AI procurement, drawing on best practices from other environments.
Bibliography
The 157 references used to pen this report/playbook can be found at https://ictlogy.net/bibliography/reports/bibliographies.php?idb=158
Downloads
I here present my communication for the 4th Congress of Economics and Business of Catalonia 2025 organized by the College of Economists of Catalonia. The communication is titled New Public Governance in practice: a toolbox model for public policy in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity and proposes and applied model to transform public Administrations in order to face this new era of complexity, uncertainty and networks.
The theoretical background is that of New Public Governance that has been building momentum for the last 20 years approximately. The intended contribution of my paper is not to build up on theory, but how to bring all this theory into practice, how to provide something public managers can cling on to foster the much needed transformation of public Administrations.
The original paper is in Catalan, but can also be downloaded in English and Spanish — automatically translated, with just some minor revisions, so some errors may remain.
The communication will formally be presented on April 8th, 2025, 18:00h, at the College of Economists of Catalonia.
Abstract
With the decline of the great ideologies of the 20th century and the ongoing revision of the socioeconomic model and social contract in the 21st century, the concept of an entrepreneurial administration has gained significant momentum. This administration is envisioned as one capable of dialogue and engagement with other actors in its ecosystem, asserting its voice in designing a constituent process centred on the general interest, as well as economic, social, and environmental sustainability in an increasingly dynamic, complex, and uncertain environment. Although conceptually framed as “New Public Governance,” this model still faces substantial challenges in practical implementation. These challenges arise both within internal organizational structures—such as procedural inefficiencies, scope of competencies, and relationships between units and different administrations—and in the delivery of public policies and services, including effectiveness, efficiency, and citizen engagement. This article examines the critical factors necessary to implement this model, drawing on a constellation of instruments designed to drive profound transformation. These instruments aim for systemic impact beyond immediate results, recognizing the inherent difficulties in establishing clear causal relationships, reaching unanimous diagnoses, and charting stable paths of action. Our analysis is structured around six key levers of change: governance, organization, talent, processes, quality in management, and democratic quality. The findings point toward an administration that focuses less on direct execution and more on enabling: acting as a platform that facilitates, articulates, energizes, and structures ecosystems of actors to achieve broadly shared objectives and impacts. Ultimately, this approach seeks to open the public system to greater collaboration with the civic, economic, political, and social ecosystems.
Downloads
Bibliography
Brest, P. (2000). “
The Power of Theories of Change”. In
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2000, 47-51. Palo Alto: Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.
Brouwer, H., Woodhill, J., Hemmati, M., Verhoosel, K. & van Vugt, S. (2016).
The MSP Guide. How to design and facilitate multi-stakeholder partnerships. 3rd edition. Wageningen: Wageningen University and Research, WCDI, and Rugby, UK: Practical Action Publishing.
Col·legi d'Economistes de Catalunya (Ed.) (2018).
El sector públic a la Catalunya del futur. 3r Congrés d'Economia i Empresa de Catalunya. Cap a un model eficient i equitatiu. Barcelona: Col·legi d'Economistes de Catalunya.
Connell, J.P. & Kubisch, A.C. (1998). “
Applying a Theory of Change Approach to the Evaluation of Comprehensive Community Initiatives: Progress, Prospects, and Problems”. In Fullbright-Anderson, K., Kubisch, A.C. & Connell, J.P. (Eds.),
New approaches to evaluating community initiatives: Theory, measurement, and analysis. Volume 2. Queenstown: Aspen Institute.
Cortés Carreres, J.V. (2021). “
Carrera horizontal y evaluación del desempeño”. In Cantero Martínez, J. (Coord.),
Continuidad versus transformación: ¿qué función pública necesita España?, Capítulo 14, 401-446. Madrid: Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública.
Font i Llovet, T., Barrero Rodríguez, C., Díez Sastre, S., Galindo Caldés, R., Rivero Ortega, R., Solé Vilanova, J. & Vilalta Reixach, M. (2023).
Repensar el govern local: perspectives actuals. Col·lecció Institut d'Estudis de l'Autogovern, 16. Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis d'Autogovern.
Greenway, A. & Loosemore, T. (2015).
The Radical How. London: UK 2040 Options Nesta, Public Digital.
Keane, T., Caffin, B., Soto, M., Chauhan, A., Krishnaswamy, R., Van Dijk, G. & Wadhawan, M. (2014).
DIY Toolkit. Development Impact & You. Practical tools to trigger & support social innovation. London: Nesta.
Peña-López, I. (2023a). “
La gestión integral del talento en la Administración centrada en la política pública de impacto”. In Gairín Sallán, J. & López-Crespo, S. (Coords.),
Aprendizaje e inteligencia colectiva en las organizaciones después de la pandemia, Capítulo 3.2, 131-137. Comunicación en el Simposio "De la función pública al Servicio público: hacia un nuevo modelo de aprendizaje y desarrollo" del VII Congreso Internacional EDO 2023, 18/05/2023. Madrid: Praxis-La Ley.
Ramia, I., Powell, A., Stratton, K., Stokes, C., Meltzer, A. & Muir, K. (2021).
Roadmap to social impact: Your step-by-step guide to planning, measuring and communicating social impact. Sydney: The Centre for Social Impact.
When considering sustainability, scalability and the transformative impact of citizen participation, it becomes strategic the promotion and articulation of a global participation ecosystem that shares the same values, vision and objectives. This model of participation, in addition to being shared, must be effective and efficient, which is why one would consider necessary that it also has a globally shared set of infrastructures in the field of participation. These infrastructures are, among others, an Administration coordinated at all levels so that it can optimize the available resources, a business sector that shares the participation model and collaborates in its improvement, consensus methodologies, technologies that incorporate these values ??in their design and methodologies and, finally, a network of training actors that share frameworks of skills, concepts and learning resources.
Public facilities network within an ecosystem of citizen participation
The Administration (taken as a whole) has several networks of public facilities —telecentres, libraries, civic centers, centers for young and old people, etc. An ecosystem of citizen participation can collaborate with the Administration’s networks of public facilities by superimposing a (new) layer of democratic innovation on the existing equipment networks. It is, then, not about creating a new network of facilities, but rather offering the existing ones a portfolio of services related to citizen participation, democratic quality and social innovation in politics and democracy, so that they enrich and complement what they currently offer to the citizen.
At the same time, it is about contributing to the transformation of public facilities that has already begun: from facilities that provide services to facilities that become citizen infrastructure.
The entry into the Information Society, as well as the advances in all areas of the social sciences, mean that the mission and organization of these facilities are in the process of being redefined. Among others, there are some aspects of this redefinition process that we want to highlight:
- The evolution towards more citizen-centered models, where assistance and accompaniment also give way to empowerment strategies.
- The equipment governance model as an important factor in achieving its mission, the organizational design and the services it offers.
- The inclusion of elements of social innovation for the co-design and co-management of the centers.
- The incorporation of ethical and integrity codes, as well as democratic quality both in the operation and in the intrinsic values ??of the services.
We here propose a set of strategic and operational goals that could lead the development of a network of public facilities within an ecosystem of citizen participation.
Goals of the network of public facilities within an ecosystem of citizen participation
Strategic goals
- Convert civic facilities into reference spaces in the municipality in terms of citizen participation.
- Raise citizens’ awareness about democratic quality, citizen participation and innovation in political and democratic processes.
- Support local administrations in projects of citizen participation and social innovation in political and democratic processes.
- Support citizens in citizen participation processes, increase their participation and open up the sociodemographic range of the participants.
- Promote social innovation projects in the field of civic action, politics and democracy.
Operational goals: participation processes
- Train the facilitators of public facilities in Open Government: transparency, open data and participation.
- Creation of a digital mediation protocol on citizen participation for public facilities in the Administration, with the aim of supporting citizens with less digital competence in online participation processes.
- Support citizens who have more difficulties to participate in citizen participation processes on digital platforms.
- Involve citizens who are experts in digital participation platforms to support citizens who are less knowledgeable about the platforms or who have greater difficulties using them.
Operational goals: social innovation in politics and democracy
- Train the facilitators of public facilities to be agents promoting the creation of democratic innovation projects.
- Help citizens define, pilot, replicate and scale social innovation projects in the field of civic action, politics and democracy.
- Promote and support the development of democratic innovation projects within the logic of social innovation.
- Articulate networks of social innovation in democracy at the local level.
- Standardize and enable replicability and scalability of democratic innovation pilots.
Three years ago, I published Open Government: A simplified scheme as a way of presenting the three tiers of open government in a practical, reality-based way:
- Transparency.
- Participation.
- Collaboration.
Two years later, in Open government: where to begin with? A showcase I suggested some ways to initiate the road towards open government, especially at the local level. In that case, I combined the former three tiers of open government with five stages of decision making:
- Diagnosis.
- Deliberation.
- Negotiation.
- Vote.
- Assessment.
My experience during the last year is that these initiatives can work, but sooner or later they need to be mainstreamed into the very structure of the organization. That is, that the Department of Open Government becomes the Department of Public Administration and the Department of Public Administration becomes the Department of Open Government. Otherwise, while the Open Government Department only deals with open government stuff, it will hardly prevail and/or hardly have any impact. In fact, open government strategies will find themselves at odds with public administration strategies, especially in those fields where tradition or inertia is strong and people’s mindsets do not embrace (or are against) change and new values — not to speak about specific personal or party interests.
These conflicting strategies between open government and public administration rely on the fact that they talk about very different spheres. On the one hand, open government deals about how, while public administration deals about what to do, which can be summarised as:
- Planning and monitoring: what do we want to do.
- Staff and organization: what are the resources that we got.
- Relations with citizens: what is our relationship with citizens depending on what they need.
How to put implement an Open Government Department that takes into consideration the principles of open government while it adheres to the needs of public administration organization? Let us try and combine the three tiers of open government (transparency, participation, collaboration) and the three tiers of public administration (planning, resources, citizens).
The image above highlights the nine sectors resulting from intersecting open government with public administration. What follows is a list of functions to be performed by an open government department. These functions can be performed by a single body or several ones, not necessarily coinciding with the list of functions. Indeed, some of them can be performed by the same body, while others will be split or developed across different bodies, some of them not even being part of the public administration:
- Data: (public) decision-making should be based on evidence. Caring for the gathering and production of evidence begins with caring for the gathering and production of (public) data. Data protection, open data and official statistics should have a common strategy, including creating protocols for anyone producing data at the public sector: hence, data governance.
- Planning: strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation and assessment should have the concurrence of all relevant actors. Participation in policy-making should begin at the design level, which at its turn begins with a good diagnosis where everyone can name and frame the issue at stake.
- Evaluation and assessment: there is a part of evaluation and (especially) assessment that necessarily needs to be performed outside of the Administration. It can take the form of an independent evaluation agency or not, but at least the Administration should open and facilitate external evaluation from relevant stakeholders and, when possible, establish binding relationships with such external evaluations. Some Administrations already have an independent body for such tasks.
- Ethics and accountability: ethics is to public servants (especially top executives) what planning is to policy-making. One should plan how their teams will be, and that plan is ethics. Transparency is how one tells the citizen how policies were designed, executed and evaluated. Accountability is how people did that, which brings us back to ethics. Transparency in open government can only come after a deep commitment with ethics at the people level and vice-versa.
- People (and their tools): this is probably the core of implementing an open government department. It is unlikely that any kind of open government strategy takes place without a transformation of how public servants work. For open government to settle and mainstream it is essential to adapt the way people is recruited, the way people work (do their own work and work with others), they way incentives are drawn or the kind of tools people and teams use (including procedures, protocols, a culture of work, etc.). And, of course, nothing of this will happen without the appropriate training and professional development. Open government begins with internal participation by the public servants themselves.
- Capacity enhancing:
- Public procurement: when talent and tools cannot be found inside the organization, they have to be sought outside of it. This can be accepted as an unavoidable externalization, or as an opportunity to establish public-social-private partnerships/networks of collaboration. The kind of ethics applied to these relationships will determine the balance between a mere client-contractor agreement or a real partnership.
- A skilled pool of public servants: Seems like a good idea that someone, outside the Administration (or just besides it) tries to keep up with the upfront of public administration theory (and practice) through research and training. A School of Public Administration could be such someone.
- Talking with the citizen: talking to and talking with the citizen are different things. The second approach requires a lot more empathy. That is what an open government culture should bring. Open Government seen as putting much more mere information in the hands of the citizen is probably not open government, but sheer fulfilment of one’s duty.
- Listening to the citizen: we’re told, from our earliest days, that one should listen before speaking. Well, that’s it with participation in open government. It is easier said than done. That is why it should become transversal to all policy-making. That is way it should be mainstreamed in everything public administration does.
- Working with the citizen: the last tier of open government, collaboration (co-design of public policies, co-management of initiatives, a devolution of sovereignty, etc.) is hardly possible without the former advancements or transformations in how public administration works. It is about the Administration stepping back from the arena and instead of leading it, facilitating it, making collective decisions possible among citizens without interfering but enriching them.
This list of functions had in mind mainstreaming open government across a whole public administration. And it had in mind how most public administrations are structured nowadays: with a whole department devoted to the internal organization of the Administration (receiving names like department of Interior, of Public Administration, of Governance, of Interior and many other denominations, even Presidency). The goal of this proposal was to put together the values of open government within the usual tasks of an actual department managing public affairs such as strategic planning, personnel and citizens.
But, to achieve total mainstreaming, the managing offices of all other departments should, to some extension, mimic the same structure. As there is a department that manages the budget (Treasury, Public Economics, Public Finance, etc.) and an office in each department to manage their budget, same should happen when it comes to open government: each managing office of each department should take into account planning and monitoring, staff and organization, and relations with the citizen. And do it with the transversal values of open government as it has been explained above in a coordinated and consistent way with the proposed Open Government Department.
