A clear-eyed guide to governing with algorithms, this book explains how AI is reshaping the state from the inside out. Instead of hype or doom, it offers a practical lens to judge when code should decide, when people must, and how to keep public power accountable. You will learn the simple but rigorous framework at the heart of the book — mandate, data, model, oversight, remedy — and how to apply it to real services such as benefits, licensing, housing allocation, and public safety.
Drawing on political science, law, sociology, technology studies, and design, the chapters show how data choices become policy, how models quietly make rules, and how legitimacy must come before accuracy. You will see how to build explainable interfaces citizens can challenge, write contracts that prevent vendor lock-in, run sandboxes without risking harm, and develop safety cases that stand up in scrutiny. Throughout, the focus is on durable concepts, not regulatory minutiae, so teams can act with confidence across shifting contexts.
For policymakers, technologists, service designers, journalists, and engaged citizens, this is a field manual for the digital state. It replaces slogans with templates, checklists, and scenarios you can use tomorrow: registers and audits that matter, due process in a digital queue, resilient operations for crisis conditions, metrics that measure public value instead of vanity. If you need to build or oversee AI-enabled institutions that are fast, fair, and contestable, this book gives you the language, patterns, and guardrails to do it well.