In Search for New Concepts

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Md Eyasin Ul Islam Pavel
January 9, 2026

Whenever I look back at how concepts have developed in public administration, I am always struck by one thing: big technological moments always leave behind new concepts. That was the case during the digital revolution, when governments were suddenly using websites and databases for tasks that had been paper-based for a century. We did not set out to create a concept like e-governance. It formed itself out of necessity. We simply did not have the old language to explain what was happening.

Now I feel we are standing at that same kind of threshold again. Artificial intelligence is expanding so quickly that it is almost hard to grasp. And in the middle of all this uncertainty, I see a strange kind of opportunity emerging. AI is giving us fertile ground to imagine new concepts, ones that might guide public administration in the coming decades. But to understand how these concepts form, it helps to revisit how they emerged the last time around, when digitalization reshaped government.

Recognizing the Force That Shifts the Ground Beneath Us

In the 1990s and early 2000s, most governments were still figuring out computers. The shift did not happen all at once. One day it was paper forms, the next it was PDFs on a website, then suddenly whole city services were moving online. At some point, scholars and practitioners realized something bigger was happening. Digitalization was not just convenient; it was changing the behavior of public agencies, the rhythm of administrative work and the expectations of citizens.

Today AI feels very similar, but also more intense. Instead of just speeding up communication, AI is altering the cognitive side of governance, how decisions are made, how problems are interpreted and how needs are predicted. Public administrators are no longer working around technology; they are working with something that almost feels like a collaborator. And even if we do not fully understand where this will lead, we can sense that the ground is shifting again.

Seeing Where Old Ideas No Longer Explain Reality

Once digitalization took hold, it became clear that the traditional vocabulary, bureaucratic hierarchy, paperwork and routine discretion, did not capture what governments were actually doing. Administrators were interacting with citizens online, integrating databases and using electronic tools to make decisions. So new terms emerged. “E-government.” Then “e-governance.”

AI is pushing us into that same uncomfortable corner. Many of our current frameworks assume human-based judgment. They assume that a public servant weighs information, interprets it and reaches a decision. But what happens when a predictive model assigns risk levels before a human even looks at the file? What do we call discretion when it is divided between a person and an algorithm? When accountability trails into a black box? That is usually the point where a new concept begins to form, right at the edge of what we can no longer explain with the traditional language.

Naming the New Logic of the Era

Concepts stick when they capture the deeper logic of the time. With e-governance, the underlying logic was digital: information flowed differently, processes became decentralized and communication gained speed and transparency. Once the digital logic was named, everything else started to make sense around it.

AI’s logic is something different. And honestly, we are still figuring it out. But we can already see a few patterns. AI brings prediction into routine administrative tasks. It changes the meaning of expertise, because the system “learns” from data instead of relying only on human reasoning. This is a new kind of administrative logic, one that does not replace digital logic but moves beyond it. Maybe the right term will be “AI governance.” Or maybe something entirely different will emerge. Naming it will not be easy, but history shows that the concept will eventually settle once the logic becomes clearer.

Tracing the Consequences That Make the Concept Real

Concepts are not born the moment someone coins a phrase; they mature when consequences become visible. Digitalization made changes that people could feel, faster services, online access, transparency dashboards and new forms of civic engagement. Over time, e-governance became a stable idea because it described things everyone could see.

AI’s consequences are starting to show as well. They are subtle in some places and bold in others. Hiring systems are being screened by algorithms. Fraud detection uses machine learning. Citizens interact with chatbots for services. All of this quietly reshapes what governance is. The concept that eventually emerges from all this, whether we call it AI governance or something more nuanced, will need to capture these consequences: the blending of human and machine judgment, the ethical tensions, the uneven risks and the new administrative possibilities.

AI brings uncertainty, yes. But also a strange kind of creative space. A place where new ideas can grow because the old ones are no longer enough. AI comes with new administrative patterns that scholars need to identify and validate as new concepts.

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Author: Md Eyasin Ul Islam Pavel is a PhD student in Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Dallas.

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