Policy of Artificial Intelligence Implementation in Public Administration: Conceptual Framework of the Research (With Reference to the Cases of Moscow and Saint Petersburg)

The subject of the research is the policy of artificial intelligence implementation in public administration, considered as an independent direction of state technology policy and as an object of political science analysis. The focus lies not on the technical side of algorithm deployment, but on the institutional and strategic conditions under which AI technologies are integrated into the system of public authority. The article addresses the practices of Moscow and Saint Petersburg as cities of federal significance that serve as major testing grounds for digital solutions, although it does not claim to provide a full empirical analysis of these cases. The main research objective is to refine the conceptual and categorical apparatus required to distinguish the policy of AI implementation from the automation of management and the informatisation of public authorities. Such a distinction is necessary for a correct description of the goals, actors, and limits of state activity in this technological domain. The methodological basis of the research consists of systemic and institutional approaches, complemented by the analysis of doctrinal documents, a comparative review of national regulatory models, and a review of Russian and foreign literature. The novelty of the research lies in substantiating the political and strategic status of AI implementation policy and in formulating an original definition of the concept. The article demonstrates that AI implementation in public administration cannot be reduced to the service-level automation of individual administrative procedures, since it affects the distribution of power, the coordination of institutional actors, technological sovereignty, and the long-term parameters of state development. The author concludes that AI implementation policy should be regarded as the complex activity of public authorities and other institutional actors aimed at creating conditions for the socially acceptable, strategically managed, and institutionally sustainable application of artificial intelligence technologies. The proposed interpretation preserves the link between the normative understanding of AI and the political science analysis of the transformation of public authority institutions.