Call for Papers

AI is becoming ubiquitous, emerging from specialized niches to broad utility across societal, governmental, and public sector applications. However, AI in Government at the federal, state, and local levels, and related education and public heath institutions (hereafter referred to as Public Sector) faces its own unique challenges. AI systems in the public sector will be held to a high standard since they must operate in support of the public good. These systems will face increased scrutiny and stringent requirements for ethical operation, accountability, transparency, fairness, security, explainability, cost-effectiveness, policy, regulatory compliance, and operation without unintended consequences.

How can the development, deployment, evaluation, refinement, and use of AI systems in the public sector be managed to ensure they meet these requirements by design and in practice? How can their use be proactively monitored, independently audited, and continuously validated to ensure their operations continue to meet these requirements? This symposium will discuss and present current solutions and challenges to such questions in the unique environment of the government and public sector.

We invite thoughtful contributions, either through papers, speakers, panel proposals, or posters that present novel technical approaches to meeting these requirements or lessons learned from current implementations.

Technical papers that advance the state-of-the-art on applying AI in public sector applications describing innovative approaches to solving the problems of building applications that meet the challenges described above, including: Trust and Transparency, Bias and Fairness, Verification and Validation, Privacy and Safety, Robustness and Resiliency, Accountability and Responsibility, Interaction Paradigms, Human-Machine Teaming, AI Open-Source Innovation, AI for Accelerating Discovery.

Practice papers that describe, demonstrate, analyze, or evaluate current or potential uses of AI in the public sector, including: Successful Transitions, Engineering Best Practices, Challenges and Lessons Learned, Systematic Approaches and Methodologies, Translating from .com to .gov, Early Areas of Adoption (Early Adopters), Role of Public/Private Partnership, Using AI to Encourage Public Service Innovation, Cultivating AI Literacy, Incentivizing AI, Acquisition of AI.

The symposium will include presentations of accepted papers in oral, poster and panel discussion formats, together with invited speakers and demonstrations. Potential symposium participants are invited to submit either a full-length technical paper or a short position paper for discussion following AAAI format. Full-length papers must be no longer than eight (8) pages, including references and figures and are required for those submitting technical papers as described above. Short submissions can be up to four (4) pages in length and can be used for practice papers as described above, work in progress, system demonstrations, or panel discussions.

Please submit via the AAAI EasyChair.org site choosing the AAAI/FSS-21 Artificial Intelligence in Government and Public Sector track: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fss21#

Please submit by August 30, 2021.

Erik Blasch (USAF) Co-chair, Mihai Boicu (GMU) Co-chair, Nathaniel D. Bastian (USMA), Lashon Booker (MITRE), Michael Garris (MITRE), Mark Greaves (PNNL), Michael Majurski (NIST), Kathy McNeill (DoL), Tien Pham (ARL), Alun Preece (Cardiff University), Ali Raz (GMU), Peter Santhanam (IBM), Jim Spohrer, Frank Stein, Utpal Magla (IBM)

Contact: Mihai Boicu (mboicu@gmu.edu)