Improvising Accountability: The Everyday Governance Work of Responsible AI in the Public Sector

Abstract

Public sector organisations are increasingly expected to operationalise Responsible AI (RAI) principles such as transparency and accountability. Yet translating these principles into everyday practice remains challenging and underexplored, particularly in public sector settings. In this study, I explore how accountability practices around transparency requirements are navigated inside a Dutch regulatory agency developing AI systems for risk-based inspections, drawing on my 1.5 years of organisational ethnography. The preliminary findings highlight how public sector practitioners engage in everyday governance work – creating accountability processes through improvised practices when formal structures are absent. This work contributes to a practice-based understanding of RAI and challenges assumptions about organisational maturity as the solution to operationalisation challenges.