Rethinking the Civil Service in the Age of AI: Leadership for Transforming Public Governance

Public administration is often treated as the passive end user of AI, yet civil servants increasingly shape how AI reconfigures the epistemic, organisational and normative foundations of governance. AI does not simply automate routines; it redistributes authority, reframes what counts as knowledge and alters the conditions under which public values are enacted. This paper argues that the future of democratic governance will depend less on technological design and more on how senior civil servants interpret, contest and embed AI within institutional practice. Building on insights from the Austrian Future Skills 3 initiative, the paper conceptualises civil servants as active intermediaries who stabilise or disrupt the institutional implications of AI. While emerging competence demands matter, the central argument is that leadership becomes the primary site where these transformations are governed. Senior leaders must become learners themselves, able to rethink assumptions, engage with uncertainty and revise inherited routines. At the same time, they must cultivate organisational environments that enable collective learning, support responsible experimentation and allow staff to develop the judgement needed for AI supported governance. The paper demonstrates why leadership, understood as both self learning and institution shaping, will determine whether AI strengthens or weakens the core building blocks of public governance. This is a co-authored paper with Isabell Grundschober, Stephanie Nestawal (both University for Continuing Education Krems) and Mag. Ursula Rosenbichler (Austrian School of Government).