The need for qualified people to manage the digital transformation in public administration is tremendous. University curricula require adjustments to qualify graduates adequately. Business and engineering departments run practice-oriented university courses to tackle real-world digitalization challenges. In doing so, they shaped digital transformation in many companies. While potentially effective, such approaches remain rare in public administration teaching. It is unclear how to combine a contemporary, practice-oriented training approach towards digitalization with the contents of public administration curricula. The paper outlines the structure and methods employed in a course offered to public administration students at a German University. The preliminary evidence shows that the course was successful among students and practice-partners. Overall, the paper illustrates how public administration universities can contribute towards digital transformation by collaborating with municipalities and by empowering students to manage and drive digital transformation in the public sector.

Case and knowledge management systems are spread at the frontline across public agencies. However, such systems are dedicated for the collaboration within the agency rather than for the face-to-face interaction with the clients. If used as a collaborative resource at the frontline, case and knowledge management systems might disturb the service provision by displaying unfiltered internal information, disclosing private data of other clients, or revealing the limits of frontline employees’ competence (if they cannot explain something) or their authority (if they cannot override something). Observation in the German Public Employment Agency shows that employment consultants make use of various coping strategies during face-to-face consultations to extend existing boundaries set by the case and knowledge management systems and by the rules considering their usage. The analysis of these coping strategies unveils the forces that shape the conduct of employment consultants during their contacts with clients: the consultants’ own understanding of work, the actual and the perceived needs of the clients, and the political mission as well as the internal rules of the employment agency. The findings form a twofold contribution: First, they contribute to the discourse on work in employment agencies by illustrating how the complexities of social welfare apparatus demonstrate themselves in singular behavioural patterns. Second, they contribute to the discourse on screen-level bureaucracy by depicting the consultants as active and conscious mediators rather than passive interfaces between the system and the client.

Workplace learning is used to train employees systematically, e.g., via e-learning or in 1:1 training. However, this is often deemed ineffective and costly. Whereas pure e-learning lacks the possibility of conversational exercise and personal contact, 1:1 training with human instructors involves a high level of personnel and organizational costs. Hence, pedagogical conversational agents (PCAs), based on generative AI, seem to compensate for the disadvantages of both forms. Following Action Design Research, this paper describes an organizational communication training with a Generative PCA (GenPCA). The evaluation shows promising results: the agent was perceived positively among employees and contributed to an improvement in self-determined learning. However, the integration of such agent comes not without limitations. We conclude with suggestions concerning the didactical methods, which are supported by a GenPCA, and possible improvements of such an agent for workplace learning.