ASPA 2025 Annual Conference:
Not Robots Yet: Keeping Public Servants in Public Service
Like all professions and fields, public service operates in an environment where the only constant is change. Technological change has been especially fast paced, heralding the fourth industrial revolution and substantially shifting our field—in delivering public services, building smart cities, forecasting threats to the public good, anticipating emergencies for better preparedness, recruiting and managing the “best and brightest,” conducting high quality research and teaching the next generation of public service professionals.
Each passing day brings new digital tools. Some are introduced without a hitch and increase efficiency and outreach. Others gum up the works and pose new problems for service delivery. Some take humans out of the equation, relegating them to an oversight, behind-the-scenes role to ensure the tools behave as planned. Others still need humans, but perhaps fewer than before. All of them enable new forms of interaction, yet also can alienate some groups systematically. Above all, they require a different mindset for how we approach “serving the public.” ASPA’s 2025 Annual Conference will dive deep into how our profession can embrace today’s tools as enablers without being dominated by them.
The conference will take place at a time of immense challenge for public service. Tools are a critical example and there are others. Elections taking place in the United States and abroad. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Global shifts in governance and democratic norms. Cross-national cooperation. All are transforming how leaders and policymakers exercise their powers and how public administrators conduct their work. In building an effective and responsive public sector, we must cope with fundamental changes to how we serve the public good. That is why we not only invite proposals related to the conference theme, but also those examining these shifts and their impacts, both known and unknown.
This year’s conference will look at all aspects of these challenges: ethics, accountability, trust, human resources management, equity, diversity, fairness, economic impact, service delivery—plus the technology itself and best practices that are developing and evolving as their use grows. Six tracks will shape these conversations.
We are seeking proposals for sessions, individual papers or topics and workshops that will delve into this theme and its related tracks. These proposals will form the bulk of the sessions presented during the conference and provide attendees with learning objectives throughout the event.
Click the buttons below to learn about the tracks, read our presenter guidelines and review our frequently asked questions for more information.
Conference Co-Chairs: Sukumar Ganapati (Florida International University) and Mila Gasco Hernandez (University at Albany, SUNY).