By Saad Parachas
As the region lays out its digital highways, governments must learn in real time. Artificial intelligence tools can help public servants deliver better services.
Public institutions influence how easily a business can obtain a license, how quickly a passport is issued, how reliably citizens can access social services, and how efficiently taxes are collected and used. Their performance shapes economic growth, public trust, and quality of life. Reforms often focus on new systems, new policies, or new technologies. But reforms succeed only when people know how to apply them in practice. Artificial intelligence and other digital tools can help.
Capacity building is central to public sector performance. Yet there is a persistent imbalance in how learning is designed and funded.
Research in professional development consistently shows that most skills are developed through experience and interaction with colleagues, not only through formal instruction in classrooms. Public servants learn by handling real cases, solving problems with colleagues, and applying guidance in their daily work. Formal training is important, but it is only one part of the learning ecosystem.
In much of the public sector, however, investment and focus still centres on structured courses and events. There is limited follow-up once participants return to work, and lessons are often not reinforced inside their existing work practices. Knowledge gained in one reform effort is rarely captured and reused systematically.
This gap is becoming more visible as digital transformation accelerates across Asia and the Pacific.
Revenue authorities are introducing data analytics tools. Procurement systems are becoming more transparent. Digital identity platforms are expanding access to services. Climate reporting frameworks are becoming more complex. Artificial intelligence is beginning to support risk analysis and decision support. These changes affect not only IT departments but teachers, nurses, engineers, regulators, local officials, and financial managers.
In this environment, learning must be continuous and closely linked to real work. At the same time, digital transformation is increasingly being shaped by the idea of a “digital highway” across the region—an interconnected ecosystem of data infrastructure, platforms, and services that enables information and innovation to flow across borders. For public institutions, this means that learning is no longer purely domestic: capabilities must evolve in tandem with regional systems, standards, and networks.
Digital technology and AI can help rebalance the system.
First, they strengthen learning in the flow of work. Instead of relying only on periodic sessions, officials can access short guidance modules while processing a procurement case or reviewing a compliance report. AI-enabled tools can provide reminders, checklists, or clarifications when needed. This supports on-the-job capability, where most professional learning happens. As digital public infrastructure expands, these tools can also be embedded directly into shared regional platforms, ensuring that guidance and cross-border standards and practices evolve together.
Second, technology enhances peer learning. Digital communities of practice allow officials across provinces or countries to share challenges and solutions. AI tools can help summarize discussions, highlight recurring questions, and surface useful examples. Regional cooperation becomes more practical when lessons from one country can be accessed and adapted by another. When practical solutions travel more quickly across borders, it can reduce duplication and speed up reform.
Third, formal learning itself can become more responsive. Microlearning formats allow officials to engage in short, focused sessions on their phones. AI can tailor content based on role and experience, ensuring that a municipal engineer, a tax auditor, and a health administrator receive material that’s relevant to them. Learning and development teams can use AI to update content quickly as regulations change and to translate materials into multiple languages.
This advances inclusion. Flexible digital formats can reach officials in remote areas who may struggle to attend centralised programmes. Modular content can support those balancing work and caregiving responsibilities. Mobile access and multilingual tools lower barriers to participation. As connectivity improves, the digital highway can help extend these benefits to underserved areas, linking local officials to regional knowledge networks that were previously out of reach.
Importantly, this is not about replacing human interaction. Mentoring, leadership, and dialogue remain essential. But digital tools can reinforce these elements over time, preserve institutional memory despite staff turnover, and connect learning more directly to performance.
Closing the digital divide in Asia and the Pacific is not only about expanding infrastructure. It is also about strengthening the capability of public institutions to use technology effectively and responsibly. When learning reflects how people work and how they actually learn, reforms are more likely to deliver tangible improvements in services, public finance management, and the business environment.
Using AI to strengthen public sector learning is ultimately about aligning investment in capacity with real-world practice. When experiential learning, peer exchange, and formal instruction are supported together, public institutions are better equipped to adapt, perform, and serve. At a regional level, this also supports a more connected and resilient public sector—one that can rise to the shared challenges and opportunities across Asia and the Pacific.
Saad Parachas is Senior Public Sector Specialist (Lead GovTech), ADB
