The United Nations University – Operating Unit on Policy-driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV) will host the webinar "Lessons from the Public Sector Artificial Intelligence Adoption in Developing Countries: An AI Life Cycle Perspective" with Charmaine Distor, on 13 October 2026, from 10:00 to 11:00 (Lisbon time).
Webinar Overview
The session will explore how public-sector organisations in developing countries are adopting artificial intelligence and the challenges they face throughout the AI life cycle, from design and development to deployment.
Charmaine Distor will present the paper "Lessons from the Public Sector Artificial Intelligence Adoption in Developing Countries: An AI Life Cycle Perspective", which examines AI adoption in the Philippine public sector through a qualitative multiple-case study of seven AI initiatives.
Guided by the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and Technology Affordances and Constraints Theory (TACT) and using a qualitative multiple case study based on semi-structured interviews with 10 key stakeholders from seven Philippine public sector AI projects, the study analyzes seven cases across the AI life cycle: design, development, and deployment.
Findings reveal affordances and constraints influencing AI adoption in developing countries: strong leadership facilitates early design, but limited infrastructure, financial instability, talent attrition, and weak governance hinder development and deployment,challenges less prominent in developed contexts.
The study contributes theoretically by integrating TOE and TACT with a life cycle perspective and empirically by uncovering AI adoption in developing countries, while offering actionable recommendations for practitioners.
Speaker Bio
Charmaine Distor is a Research Consultant at the United Nations University (UNU-EGOV) since 2024. She is also currently a doctoral student and researcher at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland conducting her PhD studies on artificial intelligence in public sector organizations.
She holds a degree of Global Master of e-Government and Public Management from Yonsei University in the Republic of Korea under the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) scholarship, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Development Communication from the University of the Philippines.
Prior to working in UNU-EGOV, she worked as a Section Chief and Project Development Officer at the Department of Information and Communications Technology – Philippines, which oversees programs aiming to develop the Philippine ICT industry ecosystem. She also worked at the Municipal Government of Carmona, Cavite, in the Philippines, as the Officer-in-Charge managing its Municipal Information, Tourism, Culture and Arts Office.
Besides her experience in public service in the national and local government agencies, she is also one of the co-founders of AI4GOV, a social tech startup dedicated to improving public services and promoting citizen participation through automation, data science, and community organising. Her research interests include e-government, emerging technologies, local governance, and public administration.
Registration
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Event Link
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