Senior Expert, Demos Helsinki
João Sigora is a senior expert at think tank Demos Helsinki whose expertise lies in governance innovation and new forms of policymaking. He has several years of experience managing multi-stakeholder projects and advising senior officials in the public sector on innovation and digitalisation topics. Most recently, he was Coordinator of Innovation Projects at the Brazilian government’s pioneer innovation lab – GNova, where he engaged cross-government teams in projects combining design methodologies, behavioral sciences and digital transformation to deliver better public services. João holds a Master’s degree in public policy from the University of Oxford.
What should determine the pace and extent of automation in the public sector? Should it be technology, law, policy, ethics? If technology does not set limits, is there a point at which governments nevertheless should say that automation should stop and the human role should be maintained? Our panellists, with experience from the public and private sector, as well as academia, from a range of countries, with backgrounds in law and policy, examine these questions. Rather than trying to give clear answers, they help us to ask the correct questions. This is a territory that transgresses a number of disciplines, that requires an ability to understand topics as different as philosophy, psychology, technology and law, and that contains questions that every government will increasingly have to deal with.
