AI in Public Affairs – The Adoption Challenge. The Internal Side of Public Affairs (54)

By Alan Hardacre, PhD

Co-Founder Advocacy Academy, Advocacy Strategy

As AI becomes increasingly integral to the world of Public Affairs, a subtle yet significant challenge is emerging—not around whether to adopt AI or indeed for what to use it, but how it's being adopted internally. My recent work with clients reveals a consistent pattern: AI usage often begins and remains at the individual level, rarely maturing into fully integrated team or organisational capabilities. This gap is starting to represent a core obstacle to unlocking the true value of AI in Public Affairs.

Moving Up the AI Value Chain

I am starting to think of AI use in Public Affairs as a value chain:

• AI Chatbot Use – Quick wins in productivity through tools like AI-enhanced writing or research support. Easy to do and cheap (for an individual subscription).

  
  

• AI Agent Creation – More advanced use cases such as building custom GPTs or fine-tuning models for stakeholder analysis or policy monitoring or other core Public Affairs tasks.

  
  

• AI Workflow Integration – The highest-value applications where AI is embedded into team workflows, decision-support systems, and knowledge management. Often challenging and requires resources and support.

  
  

Most Public Affairs professionals are operating at the base level—leveraging AI chatbots for personal productivity. But moving up this chain is where real strategic value lies. It’s the difference between AI as a clever assistant and AI as a systemic team enabler. How many times do I hear that people discover that colleagues have developed great uses for AI but (for all sorts of different reasons) this has not been shared or used for-with the team. This is but one example of a failure to move along the value chain – even at the basic level of AI chatbot use.

The Silo Trap: Individual vs. Organisational Use

Even more telling is where within the organisation AI adoption sits:

• Individual Use – Experimentation by forward-thinking professionals.

  
  

• Team-Function Integration – Coordinated use across public affairs functions, enabling shared learning and consistent approaches.

  
  

• Organisational Integration – Enterprise-wide strategy with defined roles, risk management, and a long-term view of AI capabilities.

Currently, the bulk of AI use remains siloed and individual. This creates inconsistencies, duplicated efforts, and missed opportunities for both team and institutional learning. It also means AI remains a tool of convenience rather than a catalyst for transformation. The key question right now for Public Affairs teams should be how we make this a team project / endeavour. At the very least how do we capture and learn from what everyone is doing individually. 

What’s Holding Us Back?

From what I can see several barriers explain why Public Affairs teams struggle to move up this value matrix:

• Lack of Strategy – AI use often begins bottom-up, without clear guidance from leadership. To move to the level of the team requires strategic thinking and a solid process.

  
  

• Governance Concerns – Issues around data privacy, accuracy, and other risks can limit team and broader integration. Often people are using non-sanctioned AI tools given the lack of internal options (or the poor performance of internally adopted tools).

  
  

• Skill Gaps – Many teams lack the capacity or confidence to experiment with more complex AI applications. To move up the AI Value Chain you need to be trained and supported. 

  
  

• Cultural and Time Factors – A preference for human judgment over machine support persists - but perhaps more importantly there are very few examples of good trial and error AI adoption approaches. We need to create time and space for people to experiment with AI (within a team context) to learn what we can do with it.

A Call for Intentional Integration as Public Affairs Teams

The next phase of AI in Public Affairs isn’t just about smarter and/or new tools—it’s about smarter systems and how the Public Affairs Team uses AI together. Public Affairs leaders must now focus on:

• Building shared AI capabilities that serve whole teams

  
  

• Making this a team challenge to be tackled together – through training / dedicated time and reflection

  
  

• Fostering a culture of experimentation, supported by training and internal champions.

  
  

• Aligning AI adoption with clear Public Affairs priorities.

Like many things in Public Affairs AI will not simply boost your efficiency and productivity by itself. You will need to invest time, energy, and resources to get the right strategy - and then look to execute, train and support your team. All of this to say this is a major project - but if you want to unlock any of this (almost) mythical AI promise then this is the only way to go. This is a real internal side of public affairs game changer if you can do this right.