Welcoming three new members to the TPSDA board

We are delighted to announce that Dr Mila Gascó-Hernández, Florian Keppeler and Manoela Vilela Araújo Resende are joining the board of Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age. Their appointments mark the next chapter for TPSDA, as we build on the foundations laid by our founding board members, and continue our work preparing public servants for the realities of governing in a digital era. Between them, our three new board members bring expertise in digital government research, public workforce reform and education policy - spanning the United States, Europe and Latin America.

We would like to thank our departing founding board members, Prof. Dr. Ines Mergel and Tom Steinberg, whose generosity and vision made TPSDA what it is today. And we would like to warmly welcome Mila, Florian and Manoela to the board.

Dr. Mila Gascó-Hernández

Mila Gasco-Hernandez holds a MBA and a PhD in public policy evaluation. She is the Research Director at the Center for Technology in Government as well as an Associate Professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, both at the University at Albany – SUNY. Recently she has also been appointed Interim Associate Director of the new University at Albany’s AI & Society College. Before joining SUNY, Dr. Gasco-Hernandez served as a senior researcher at the Institute of Governance and Public Management (currently known as ESADEgov - Center for Public Governance) and the Institute of Innovation and Knowledge Management, both at ESADE Business & Law School in Spain.

The main general research question at the center of Dr. Gasco-Hernandez’s research agenda is: why and how does technology-driven innovation happen in the public sector? Most of her research in the last six years has focused on the topics of open government, public sector innovation, smart cities and communities, and artificial intelligence in government, which she has addressed using a comparative an international approach. In these areas, she has published six books, more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, 19 peer-reviewed book chapters, and more than 60 peer-reviewed conference papers. She has been invited to deliver more than 80 keynotes worldwide and has been awarded more than 15 grants in external funding competitive calls and more than 25 consultancy/applied research projects. She is part of the Standford University Top 2% Scientists ranking.

Dr. Gasco-Hernandez has also considerable consulting experience. In this respect, she has worked for a wide variety of organizations worldwide such as the United Nations Development Program, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the Latin American Centre on Management for Development, the World E- Governments Organization of Cities and Local Governments, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Google.

Florian Keppeler

Florian Keppeler (florian-keppeler.com) is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University (Denmark) and work at the King Frederik Center for Public Leadership. He is also an affiliated scholar at The People Lab, Harvard Kennedy School. Much of his work focuses on the people who deliver public services:  how to attract them, how to support them, and how AI can help public managers make better decisions. He co-designs studies with government partners to ensure that research is useful to practitioners and adopted at scale. His research uses large-scale field experiments and causal inference methods. It focuses on the following topics:

• Recruiting, selecting, and retaining the public workforce

• The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in public policy and government

• The motivation of citizens to contribute to public goods

Manoela Vilela Araújo Resende

Manoela Vilela Araújo Resende holds a PhD in Education from the University of Coimbra (Portugal), a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Development from the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of Brasília (Brazil).

A federal public servant, she spent 11 years at Brazil’s Ministry of Education leading evaluation, innovation, and large-scale education programs. She currently coordinates the national research agenda in education policy at Ipea, a federal government think tank.

Her work centers on digital transformation in government, evidence-informed policymaking, and digital public infrastructure. She has contributed to national digital government initiatives, including a partnership between Brazil’s Secretariat for Digital Government and University College London (UCL) to train 1,000 federal civil servants in digital transformation. She also coordinates the Master of Public Administration program at the Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research (IDP) in Brasília, the largest MPA program among private institutions in Brazil.

Looking ahead

Our new members join us at an important moment, and the questions educators and practitioners are grappling with have never felt more pressing. How to teach AI responsibly; how to build capable digital public services; how to prepare civil servants for careers that will span decades of technological change.