AI adoption in government is a reality.

Over the past year, the pace of public-sector innovation has been striking, and so has the effort behind it. You can see the momentum in just the past six months alone, with new AI initiatives emerging in Virginia, San Francisco, Massachusetts, Boston, New Jersey, and Mississippi. 

As states and cities pivot from learning the basics of what AI is and how to use it, the conversation is pivoting toward a deeper question: Is our use of AI actually creating public value? 

That is very different from asking whether a tool increases efficiency. In government, public value is the real test: whether residents are better served, programs reach the people who need them, decisions remain accountable and fair, and public money is used wisely.

Public professionals are deciding whether and how those tools, built for other purposes, can be turned toward public purposes, and that requires a different kind of expertise than commercial AI adoption has developed.

Accelerating the use of AI for public value is the focus of our Fall 2026 live learning offerings at InnovateUS. 

Accelerating the use of AI for public value is the focus of our Fall 2026 live learning offerings at InnovateUS. 

Workshops are free, one-hour virtual learning sessions led by expert faculty, designed to help public professionals build practical skills they can apply right away while learning with and from peers. 

Across 11 new series and 50+ workshops, we will explore how governments can assess whether AI is creating public value by measuring the right things, governing wisely, and keeping people at the center.

Measuring the right things

The core question of the season: Are we only asking whether AI performs well, or whether people are better served? Measuring public value means looking beyond speed and efficiency to ask whether outcomes are improving, decisions are accountable, programs reach the people who need them, and public trust is strengthened.

Three series will focus on:

Practical Approaches to Evaluating AI for Public Benefit (September, five sessions) opens the season by exploring how governments can evaluate whether AI is actually improving public outcomes. The series looks beyond simple measures such as time saved to examine how agencies can benchmark performance, monitor tools over time, and use evidence to decide whether an AI system should be adopted, improved, scaled, or set aside.

We will also explore one of the most consequential uses of AI in government: prediction. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Predictive AI (October, three sessions) will look at where predictive tools can create value, where they fall short, and what safeguards are needed to keep human judgment at the center. It will also ask when prediction is the right approach to a public problem — and when it may create new risks.

Working with AI Agents in the Public Sector: What Works (and What Doesn’t) (November and December, four sessions) on one of the fastest-moving areas of AI adoption. AI agents are already being discussed as tools for research, case preparation, application review, workflow coordination, and public service navigation. But not every chatbot is an agent, and not every workflow needs one. 

Governing wisely

Public professionals are making consequential decisions about AI tools, vendors, workflows, and infrastructure. Many of these tools are built outside the government, but the responsibility for using them well rests inside public institutions. 

Governing wisely means asking the right questions before adoption, protecting public trust, and making sure AI serves public purposes.

Five series will focus on:

AI, Energy, and the Environment: Use, Policy, and Tradeoffs (September, three sessions) will examine the growing relationship between AI, infrastructure, and environmental decision-making. As data centers, energy demand, water use, land use, and environmental impacts become more central to AI adoption, governments must balance economic development, affordability, reliability, sustainability, and community needs. 

AI for Public Sector Procurement (September, three sessions) will explore how procurement professionals can use generative AI to improve their work while making better decisions about the tools they buy. This three-session series complements our upcoming at-your-own-pace course AI for Public Sector Procurement (link)

Using AI in Public Sector Legal Practice (October, three sessions) explores how government legal professionals are using AI. The series will also examine the questions these uses raise around accuracy, confidentiality, professional responsibility, transparency, and the role of human judgment in legal decision-making. It builds on our earlier legal series and complements the course Responsible AI for Public Sector Legal Professionals.

AI Insourcing and the Government Product Model (November, five sessions) will explore how governments can move beyond simply purchasing technology toward building and continuously improving digital products that better serve residents. As public-sector teams gain new capacity to design, prototype, and improve solutions from within government, agencies face new questions about when to buy, when to build, and how to organize the teams, governance, and procurement practices needed to support that work.

AI and Cybersecurity in the Public Sector for the Non-Expert (December, three sessions) will address the practical security questions public professionals face when adopting AI tools and services. As AI decisions increasingly involve program managers, analysts, procurement officials, communications staff, and agency leaders, cybersecurity can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue. 

Keeping people at the center

AI implementation depends on people: the workers who use it, the residents affected by it, and the public professionals responsible for making it work.

AI adoption affects how people work, how services are delivered, how agencies communicate, and how governments build and maintain public trust.

Four series will focus on:

Worker-Centered AI Adoption in the Public Sector (October, three sessions) will explore how agencies can involve workers as genuine partners in AI adoption. Frontline employees understand the realities of public work, and their expertise is essential to successful implementation. When workers are engaged early and meaningfully, AI adoption is more likely to serve agencies, employees, and the public well.

AI in Public Health (October, three sessions) will examine how AI can support public health work beyond clinical care. While AI is already transforming parts of health care, its use in public health remains in its early stages and holds untapped potential. This series will help public health professionals understand where AI may support prevention, planning, service delivery, communication, and community well-being — and where to begin.

AI for Public HR Professionals (November, three sessions) will focus on how HR teams can use AI to improve recruiting, hiring, onboarding, workforce planning, employee communications, and talent management. The series will also address the questions that matter most in public HR: fairness, transparency, privacy, accessibility, compliance, and professional judgment.

Amplify: Mastering Public Communication in the Age of AI (December, three sessions) will continue InnovateUS’s work on clear, credible, and effective public communication. As residents receive information through more fragmented channels, public communicators face greater challenges: explaining complex policies, communicating about AI in ways that build trust, and designing messages that work for diverse audiences and needs.

Across the Fall 2026 live learning series, the goal is to build the capacity to make better judgments about AI: when to use it, when not to use it, how to govern it, and how to know whether it is creating public value.

Across the Fall 2026 live learning series, the goal is to move beyond introducing more AI tools. It is to build the capacity to make better judgments about AI: when to use it, when not to use it, how to govern it, and how to know whether it is creating public value.

In every workshop, we will return to that question: what public value is being created, for whom, and how do we know?

Registration for Fall 2026 workshops is open now. All sessions are free and open