News | Public Sector Communications lagging behind on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The largest study of public sector communications technology shows how far behind the sector is falling on artificial intelligence with only 9% of organisations having a policy for its use. 

The study of over 215 organisations conducted by Seashell Communications which covered councils, police forces, fire services and NHS trusts showed that nearly half the organisations had AI projects in train. However, in only a third of AI projects were PR professionals part of the project board.

Study author Mandy Pearse, Seashell Communications, said: “This is really worrying. Public sector AI projects will have major impacts on UK citizens. There are major risks for organisational reputation. PR professionals should be on the Boards to look out for biases and raise ethical issues. They also need to plan for engaging the stakeholders and public on the use of AI.”

The study also noted that although most public sector PR professionals had experimented with free AI  tools that lack of budgets were cited by 77% as a barrier to adopting new technology. 

Technology was mainly deployed for content creation, social media scheduling and news distribution but 38% of respondents had no media monitoring technology in place.

Measurement and evaluation was another area where the public sector lagged behind commercial counterparts hampering efforts to show value and return on investment. Most of those surveyed focused on simple output measures such as social engagement, website traffic and audience reach.

Pearse, a former CIPR president, added: “It is disappointing that despite the efforts of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and AMEC to focus the profession towards outcome and impact measures to see limited progress. It makes it so much harder to avoid budget cuts when you can’t link work to organisational outcomes.”

Training continues to be an issue for the public sector with budgets squeezed or absent.

However, despite all the limitations respondents did show how much the sector does with limited resources. The average organisation was managing more than seven social media channels, providing a weekly email newsletter and delivering 14 Integrated campaigns a year as well as wider work managing reputation, providing media relations, internal communications and stakeholder engagement.