Overview

A one-week programme in Cambridge for the people who research, design, build and run public institutions in the algorithmic age: five days on the systems and structures behind digital statecraft, worked through with a small cohort of researchers and practitioners.

It is built on DSA's Algorithmic State Architecture (ASA) framework, which treats the four domains at the centre of this challenge - Digital Public Infrastructure, Data-for-Policy, Algorithmic Government/Governance, and GovTech - not as parallel initiatives, but as components of a coherent whole that depend on and shape one another.

The week builds the practical capacity to govern digital systems, and to govern with them: to use them effectively, understand what they are actually doing, inspect them independently, contest their outputs when something is wrong, enforce standards that hold up in practice, and adapt as the systems and their risks keep changing.

You leave not with a folder of slides, but with a working map of your own institution's digital architecture: where its strengths lie, where its bottlenecks sit, and what to prioritise next.

What to expect from the week

One framework rather than a survey

Rather than a tour of current topics in AI and data governance, the week works across the whole of the ASA framework: each layer, its mechanisms, its dependencies, and where it most often breaks. Real comparative material from governments at different stages of digital transformation shows how different constraints produce contrasting pathways through the same architecture.

Your own work as the material

Participants bring a live problem from their own institution or research and carry it through all five days, so the analysis you take home is about your context rather than a case study.

Why Cambridge, why residential

The week is built around in-person, hands-on work rather than sessions streamed at you. You are in the room with a small, deliberately cross-disciplinary cohort working through the same scenarios, with direct access to the scholars and practitioners behind the ASA framework, and to the wider DSA network.

A shared vocabulary to take back

Infrastructure, data, algorithmic-governance and service teams routinely talk past each other. The framework gives them a common language, and the week is where you learn to use it.

A deliberately cross-disciplinary room

The cohort mixes policy, delivery, research and advisory roles across countries: a curated peer group facing the same implementation problems from different institutional angles.

The framework

Governments everywhere are under pressure to make AI-enabled transformation work as a coherent architecture that holds together end to end. Most training in this space offers a general survey of AI and data governance. This week does something narrower and more useful.

The ASA framework sets out four layers. Its central claim is that these are not parallel developments to be run separately, but interdependent layers with enabling relationships and feedback between them.

The practical consequence is the reason the week exists: a failure or a gap in one layer propagates into the others, even when each layer is governed carefully on its own terms. Success depends on balanced development across all four, and on the integration mechanisms between them. An institution strong in one layer and weak in the one beneath it has a problem that cannot be fixed inside either.

This architecture is built for exactly this kind of analysis: assessing maturity across the layers and setting out development pathways. Published comparative work applies it to Estonia, Singapore, India and the United Kingdom, showing how governments at different stages and under different constraints have taken contrasting routes through the same architecture. Those cases run through the week as shared material.

The Algorithmic State Architecture framework sits inside DSA's wider work on digital statecraft, which sets out the principles for governing over and with digital systems. Day 1 covers enough of that framing to put the layers in context, and the ten principles are used through the week as a check on what each layer is for.

Who it is for

The programme is for anyone whose work depends on the state's capacity to govern its digital systems:

• Senior civil servants and public-sector technologists responsible for building, procuring or overseeing the infrastructure, data, algorithmic and service systems government now runs on
• GovTech, digital government and public-sector data leaders who need a shared architectural language across teams that currently work in silos
• Researchers and academics working on digital government, AI governance or public administration who want sustained, practitioner-grounded exposure to how these systems get built and where they fail
• Policy leads, regulators and oversight professionals who need the fluency to inspect and contest the systems they are responsible for
• Consultants, multilateral agency officers and advisers working across several governments who need a common framework for that work

You do not need

A technical degree, an engineering background, or the ability to write code. You do not need to be nominated by your employer, and there is no research proposal to submit.

You do need

Current or recent involvement in digital government work, whether in practice or in research, and enough English to take part in discussion and group exercises.

What to bring

One real problem from your own organisation. It does not need to be solved, or even well defined. It needs to be something you are actually responsible for, because it is the material you will work with for five days.

Faculty

The programme is taught by DSA faculty and invited practitioners drawn from the network behind the ASA framework.

You can see the people behind DSA on the who we are page.

Fee and what is included

Invoices can be issued to an employer or sponsoring institution, and purchase order details are accepted. Payment and cancellation terms, along with other practical details, are set out in the terms and conditions.

How to apply

Applications are now open. To apply you will need to submit:

• A CV
• A cover letter
• A statement of motivation, setting out what you want from the week and how it relates to your current work

We may ask for a short conversation if we need to understand your context better.

Applications are reviewed as they arrive

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and decisions are communicated without waiting for the application deadline. Places are limited, and applications may close early once the cohort is full. Early applications are therefore encouraged.

Applicants who are offered a place are asked to confirm their participation within 14 days of the notification.

How places are offered

On the quality of the application and on cohort balance across countries, sectors and levels of government. We aim for a mix of institutional contexts, because much of the learning comes from the room.

Start an application

Personal data submitted through the application form is processed in line with our privacy policy.

Key dates

Now

Applications open and reviewed as they arrive

25 November 2026

Final application deadlineApplications may close early if places are filled. Apply early if you need time for visa, travel or funding arrangements.

15 December 2026

Registration and payment deadline

24 to 30 January 2027

Residential programme in Cambridge

After the week

Participants receive a certificate of completion from the Digital Statecraft Academy (DSA).

Participants also join the DSA alumni network, which gives access to online sessions, publications and event invitations, and are eligible for the reduction on other DSA programmes set out below.

Continuing to the DSA Cambridge Fellowship or other DSA programmes

The DSA Cambridge Fellowship is the year-long programme for people setting algorithmic governance strategy and leading transformation in their institutions. It is a natural next step for practitioners who move into those roles.

Participants who complete the ASA programme and apply to any other DSA programme, including the DSA Cambridge Fellowship, within 12 months receive a 20% reduction on the fee for whichever programme they join. The reduction applies to the programme fee only and does not affect the admissions process.