Blogopmaak
AI-driven Public Affairs
Caspar Pille • 3 March 2020
Polpo: AI-driven Public Affairs
The online world is growing, streams of political information have become digitalized, how could the Public Affairs domain benefit? Much has already been said around the use of online and social media in order to enhance public affairs strategies and campaigns. Yet, not much attention has been given towards chances of digitalization for automation of the more labour intensive parts of the Public Affairs workflow. How could smart systems be used to keep track of important political topics and stakeholders, in light of large volumes of online information? And how to deal with the risk of information overload?
To address these questions, we founded the AI-driven political monitoring start-up Polpo. Our goal is to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide tailormade automated monitoring services to respond these challenges. For an automated system to deliver accurate monitoring results, it is crucial to understand political context. Being able to recognize different meanings of exactly the same word. For instance regarding “energy”. An MP stating “we went on a working visit to New York last week, I really get energy from that city”, refers of course to a different “energy” than an MP stating “we should really work on new ways to produce energy”. At the core of AI-driven monitoring, therefore should be an algorithm able to understand political context. In doing so, users are given the tools to receive accurate monitoring results and prevent information overload.
We believe this is only the start of what Artificial Intelligence will bring to the Public Affairs domain. More and more, currently largely manual activities such as doing stakeholder analysis or summarizing information will be automated with the use of Artificial Intelligence. Similar as has been the case in other information heavy domains, such as customer care were Artificial Intelligence in the form of advanced text analytics has resulted in the automated analysis of large volumes of textual information. The Public Affairs professional will experience comparable efficiency gains.
Caspar Pille, co-founder Polpo
Digital Public Affairs
- Why, what, how, and what not to do?
In an always-on world, news, stories and opinions proliferate around the globe in milliseconds. Today's audiences are connected as never before, able to search, publish and converse in real time, across time-zones and regions. (Political) organisations and businesses can no longer rely on the tried and tested policy and media relations activities of the past to engage with their audiences. As public affairs is aims to influence public policy, digital public affairs uses digital means and tactics to reach public affairs goals. It is important to understand it is not just moving public affairs activities to an online environment. Instead, the nature of the internet (and social media) makes digital public affairs means a different ball game. This website will further explore how digital transformation has changed public policy analytics, engagement and influence. Perhaps it is better to use Digital Transformation instead of Digitization of Digitalisation when addressing the changes in the Public Affairs practice. Digital transformation* digital transformation is defined as changes in ways of working, roles, and business offering caused by adoption of digital technologies in an organization, or in the operation environment of the organization. This refers to changes at several levels, including the following: Process level: adopting new digital tools and streamlining processes by reducing manual steps; Organization level: offering new services and discarding obsolete practices and offering existing services in new ways; Business domain level: changing roles and value chains in ecosystems; Society level: changing society structures (e.g., type of work, means of influencing decision making). *P. Parviainen, M. Tihinen, J. Kääriäinen and S. Teppola, “Tackling the digitalization challenge: how to benefit from digitalization in practice,” International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 63-77, 2017.
Many political organizations, politicians and interest groups are anxious to learn how to best reach citizens online. I have researched how youth organizations (based in the United Kingdom) do so, both on their websites and then later on social media. It’s been interesting to gain insight into choices about web presence while keeping in mind how these organizations think about young people as citizens. I looked at two types of organizations: both those connected to government, and those focused on single issues like the environment or animal rights. Whatever the focus, I found that all organizations subscribed to a similar web strategy. The overarching goal of web content was a wish to create engaged citizens. This was accomplished in two ways: First, web content was used to provide information to young visitors. Second, organizations pursued an “inform then involve” approach to get youth engaged and participating. However, in a practical sense, both steps of this strategy consisted mainly of information provision. All organizations used their websites for one-way communication designed to educate young people about their mission and current projects. I found only small attempts to be interactive, like through polls or encouragement to email the organization. This was also the case for the “inform them involve” approach: Organizations provided calls to action, and opportunities to sign up for campaigns, but youth were not given the opportunity to express their opinions or ask questions in a virtual space. Perhaps one would assume this would change in an interactive environment like social media. As organizations adapted to Facebook, they still saw its purpose as a place to provide information. Some did encourage interaction from visitors when asking them to “like” the organization. Facebook pages provided more transparency, though the interactions with citizens were quite rare and superficial. What Facebook seemed to add was access to previously private conversations – when they were facilitated. Whatever the stated purpose of the youth organization, the ultimate goal was to create engaged citizens. But can this be accomplished without dialogue? The importance of online presence – particularly on social media – will only increase over time. But with evidence of an apparent hesitation to embrace online interactivity, what does this say about willingness to ease control of the message? And if such interaction is realized, what are the consequences for the philosophy – and even the legitimacy – of youth and other political organizations? About the author: Janelle Ward is Lead UX Researcher at Mendix. Her research and consultancy expertise has focused on user-centered research in digital environments. During her 15 years in academia she researched the political youth user experience and the practices of dating app users. Janelle is also an avid fiction writer. To learn more please visit janelleward.com