Faglighed under AI forandring?

The project researches how artificial intelligence (AI) affects professional expertise, work practices, and professional judgment among public sector employees.

The Danish public sector has ambitious plans to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into public administration in order to improve efficiency and help ensure the long-term sustainability of the welfare state. AI systems are currently being developed and implemented across the public sector and are gradually becoming an integrated part of employees’ daily work. This raises a number of fundamental questions of interest to employees, citizens, researchers, and labor unions: How does the use of AI in everyday work challenge, support, or reshape professional expertise? What role does professional expertise play in a data-driven public sector, and how do employees experience these changes in their working lives?

This project establishes a survey panel in collaboration with five Danish labor unions with the aim of generating systematic, empirical knowledge about how the use of different types of AI tools affects professional expertise among employees in Danish public sector organizations.

The project addresses a current gap in the research literature by examining how AI is integrated into employees’ daily practices and how this interaction shapes task performance, professional judgment, conceptions of quality, perceived competence, and professional identity across different professions and organizational contexts. In doing so, it contributes comparative and longitudinal insights into the evolving relationship between AI and professional work.

Through the survey panel, we aim to build a research and dissemination infrastructure that can improve understanding of how working life changes over time across professional groups, while creating opportunities for dialogue and insight into how technology is transforming work.

Seneste nyt

10.08.2026

Workshop on August 10: Co-Developing the Survey with Labor Unions

The project is being developed in close collaboration with the participating labor unions. All partners are actively involved in designing the survey to ensure that it is both relevant and comprehensive across different professional groups.

To support this goal, we hosted a half-day workshop at CAISA on August 10, where participants jointly discussed both the structure and content of the survey questionnaire. The workshop brought together representatives from IDA, HK Stat, HK Kommune, the Danish Nurses’ Organization (DSR), and DM.

The survey aims to go beyond simply mapping whether or why public sector employees use AI. Instead, it focuses on understanding how AI affects various aspects of professional work, including employees’ experiences of professional autonomy, work processes, and the quality of service delivery, as AI becomes increasingly integrated into everyday tasks and responsibilities.

Through workshops and pilot testing conducted in collaboration with the labor unions, we ensure that the survey captures the real needs and experiences that public sector employees encounter in their daily work. Our shared ambition is that the findings will generate actionable insights that can support the meaningful and sustainable integration of AI across the public sector.

Project Managers:

Jakob Laage-Thomsen jalaa@dtu.dk

Lisa Reutter Larsen lire@samf.ku.dk

Proect Assistant:

Emma Johanne Poulsen Siig cxg540@samf.ku.dk

Digital sovereignty is multidimensional and requires priority

In a time of geopolitical instability and rapid AI development, control over digital infrastructure and data has become critical. While there is broad agreement on the need for action at the national, Nordic, and EU levels, a shared language around digital sovereignty is still lacking. This lack of alignment leads either to inaction or to narrow technical solutions without strategic direction. The core argument of the brief is that digital sovereignty is a multidimensional concept, involving both principled positions and pragmatic choices. Reducing it to technical solutions risks overlooking the values and trade-offs that determine who controls and benefits from these systems. Conversely, focusing solely on values leads to abstract principles without practical implementation or real impact. Digital sovereignty is rarely about choosing between full self-sufficiency and total dependence. Rather, it is about balancing often competing demands for openness, security, competitiveness, growth, values, and rights in a world where capabilities are unevenly distributed. This means that it is necessary to define who or what is to be protected or promoted, within the domains of security, economic growth, or citizens’ rights, and to recognize that choices in one domain may strengthen or undermine another. The brief focuses on AI as the area where digital sovereignty is most acutely at stake, but the concepts apply more broadly to digital infrastructure and data. It provides decision-makers with tools to navigate these dilemmas by presenting:

- A conceptual framework for identifying who or what should be digitally sovereign.

- An overview of how digital sovereignty is prioritized around the world.

- An understanding that sovereignty can be exercised through three control regimes: ownership, expertise, or regulation – but that none of these are sufficient on their own.

The central implication of the brief is that digital sovereignty requires an integrated strategy that combines ownership, expertise, and regulation, while managing the interdependencies and trade-offs between security, economic growth, and citizens’ rights through clear objectives. Without this holistic approach, there is a risk of ineffective regulation, unusable infrastructure, or a lack of capacity to develop, maintain, and apply solutions in practice, potentially undermining security, growth, or rights.