Intelligent Institutions (II) is a governance lab for network-native public institutions.

 

We’ve been running the 21st century on 20th-century operating logic. Over two decades, “digital transformation” promised better services and more efficient government, but often delivered portals and interfaces layered onto paper-era bureaucracies.  Public life went network-native; most institutions did not.

 

As state action becomes increasingly mediated by AI, automated workflows, and algorithmic interfaces, this mismatch reaches a breaking point. It creates a Legitimacy Gap: a widening distance between the speed of institutional action required and our ability to explain, audit, contest, or update it without breaking trust.

 

Digitalization without governability only accelerates failure. We don’t just need better software; we need a new operating model and institutional form.

 

There is another path: intelligent institutions, governable by design.

 

Institutions must evolve from static bureaucracies into network-native systems that can sense, decide, and act at modern tempo while remaining:

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• Legible: Providing a clear account of what happened, why, and who was responsible.

• Contestable: Offering a meaningful way to challenge decisions, not just a complaint form

• Upgradable: Allowing rules to be tested, reversed, or improved without breaking the system.

• Interoperable: Built to scale across agencies and jurisdictions while allowing local rules and values to be expressed

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Our lab builds state capacity for the age of AI . We design and test the building blocks of intelligent and governable public institutions: protocolized processes, shared standards, digital public infrastructure, and privacy-preserving proof.  We learn in the field, turn what works into open toolkits, and build coalitions so solutions spread across institutions and jurisdictions.

 

If you’re working to keep public power accountable as it becomes digital and AI-mediated, we’d love to meet you.