In recent years, technology has become the default response to nearly every public problem. Automation is used to speed up slow processes. Data is deployed to rebuild trust. New digital tools are introduced to address declining participation, often in the name of efficiency.
Sirene Abou-Chakra has spent her career working inside public systems where these choices have direct consequences, including elections, emergency relief programs, and housing assistance programs.
When these systems work properly, most people barely notice them, but when they fail, the impact falls hardest on those without time, money, or support to fix the problem.
Through her work in global technology companies and city government, Abou-Chakra has seen how quickly decisions are made and how little margin for error exists. In these settings, technology determines timelines, limits options, and affects outcomes for people waiting on the other side of a process.
Over time, she observed a consistent pattern. As public systems became faster and more automated, it became harder for individuals to understand decisions, challenge outcomes, or correct mistakes once they occurred.
For Abou-Chakra, the defining challenge of civic technology is building systems that can scale quickly while preserving transparency, recourse, and public trust.
The Invisible Architecture of Participation
Abou-Chakra believes technology plays an important role in everyday civic life, directly influencing how democracy is practiced and experienced.
“I view technology not as a suite of products, but as a digital ‘commons’ or a civic instrument,” she explained. “In a healthy democracy, technology’s role is to reduce the friction of participation and to bridge the information gap between the governed and the governors.”
That perspective developed early in her career at Google, where she spent more than a decade working on civic engagement and elections during a period of rapid growth in digital political advertising.
Campaigns were beginning to use data and modeling to reach voters at unprecedented scale, often faster than shared standards or guardrails could develop.
“When I led digital strategies for presidential campaigns at Google, the goal wasn’t just ‘efficiency,’” she said. “It was about using data and modeling to reach voters responsibly, ensuring they had the information needed to engage in the democratic process.”
That responsibility required restraint. Expanding reach alone did not increase participation if entire communities were overlooked or misunderstood. The work demanded close attention to who had access to digital tools, who did not, and how information traveled through different communities.
As technology began to influence decisions about housing, public safety, and economic stability, she applied the same lessons she had learned in elections.
“Strengthening a system means making it more accessible, not just faster,” Abou-Chakra said.
Different Contexts, Same Risks
Over the course of her career, Sirene Abou-Chakra has held leadership roles at Google, Dataminr, Airbnb, and the City of Detroit.
At Dataminr, she built the AI for Good program from the ground up, working closely with nonprofits and humanitarian organizations. The program used AI to support human rights monitoring, crisis response, sustainability, and early warning systems.
These tools were designed to identify critical information quickly, sometimes before the public was aware. That meant careful decisions had to be made about who received the information and how it was used.
To guide that work, Abou-Chakra established a global advisory board to embed ethical oversight from the start.
“Governments often get it wrong by failing to demand this level of responsible governance from their partners,” she said.
By addressing questions about data use, appropriate applications, and system limits before deployment, the program treated oversight as a foundational requirement rather than a corrective step.
At Airbnb, her work focused on policy, product, and data as cities looked for better ways to manage compliance, tax impact, and collaboration at scale. The City Portal was created to give cities and the company access to the same information, reducing confusion caused by mismatched assumptions.
Instead of treating regulation as an obstacle, the work framed transparency as a practical tool for problem-solving, helping move conversations away from conflict and toward shared accountability.
Those ideas became clearer during Abou-Chakra’s time in Detroit, where she served as Chief Development Officer and worked directly on large investment strategies, public-private partnerships, and crisis response efforts.
During emergency relief initiatives, she helped mobilize $384 million by coordinating work across multiple city and state agencies. Success depended on strong oversight, shared responsibility, and clearly defined roles.
“The technology was secondary to human coordination and fiscal oversight,” she said.
In later initiatives, her team raised $1.1 billion by building lists of vetted partners and shared systems that allowed leaders to track where funds were going and what impact they were having in real time.
These were not theoretical models. They were practical answers to urgent questions like who was responsible, how money was being spent, and whether the right people were getting the support they needed.
“Where I see governments and institutions consistently fail is in treating technology as a ‘magic wand’ for systemic issues,” she explained. “They often chase the efficiency of a tool while ignoring the equity of its application.”
Digitizing a broken process does not solve the underlying problem. It simply speeds it up, often with less visibility and fewer opportunities for correction.
Designing for the Margins
Abou-Chakra evaluates public-sector technology using standards shaped by firsthand experience. One of the first questions she asks is whether a system is intentionally inclusive.
In Detroit, that question became especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 30 percent of residents lacked home broadband, limiting their ability to access timely information, apply for relief, and keep up with rapidly changing public programs.
“If a tool doesn’t work for the person with the oldest smartphone and the spottiest connection, it isn't ‘public good’ tech,” Abou-Chakra noted. “It’s an ‘elite efficiency’ tool.”
Another critical test involves recourse. As automated systems play a larger role in decisions about housing, permits, and public benefits, people need a clear way to challenge those decisions.
“The greatest danger of the Agentic AI wave we’re seeing in 2026 is the erosion of human appeal,” she said.
If an algorithm denies assistance, people must be able to understand why and speak to someone who has the authority to review or change the outcome. Transparency without accountability leaves individuals trapped inside systems they can’t question.
Abou-Chakra also pays close attention to how data is handled.
She believes that any information collected through public systems should remain a public asset. Communities should retain access to insights generated from their own data, rather than losing control of it to outside organizations or optimization goals.
Durability is the final measure. Technology evolves, models change, and social conditions constantly shift. In response, updates to the EU AI Act and new U.S. state laws in 2026 now require ongoing review instead of one-time approval.
Her most direct test brings all of these concerns together.
“If you cannot explain the criteria under which you would dismantle the technology because it no longer serves the public, then you aren't an executive, you're a salesperson,” she explained. “Real stewardship requires the courage to say that sometimes, the best technological solution is to not use the technology at all.”
Innovation Without Exploitation
In Abou-Chakra’s experience, governments are still trying to govern modern technology using timelines built for a much slower world. Laws can take years to pass, while digital systems can change in months.
Rather than viewing regulation as a barrier to progress, she sees it as necessary infrastructure.
“Think of it like building codes,” she explained. “We don't tell architects which hammer to use, but we mandate that the building doesn't fall down. Governance should be the safety code for the digital world.”
Regulatory sandboxes help narrow the gap between innovation and oversight by allowing governments and companies to test new tools together under real conditions. Versions of this approach are already appearing under the EU AI Act and in state-level pilots across the United States.
Clear rules, she argues, reduce uncertainty rather than create it.
“If your innovation requires a lack of oversight to succeed, it’s not an innovation,” she said. “It’s an exploit.”
Looking ahead, Sirene Abou-Chakra sees civic participation becoming less tied to scheduled meetings and more embedded in daily life. Technology allows residents to interact with public services as they use them, offer feedback in real time, and better understand how decisions are made.
AI systems can help people navigate complex forms and translate policy language, lowering barriers that have long limited participation. But these benefits only exist when guardrails are in place.
“Technology is never neutral,” Abou-Chakra said. “It scales the intent of the institution using it.”
For Abou-Chakra, the future of public technology will be shaped less by speed and more by whether institutions are willing to slow down enough to remain accountable to the people whose lives these systems affect.
