Dan Slee

Language matters. We all use it and getting it right can unlock doors to reach communities we can unwittingly lock out. Bradford District & Craven Healthcare Partnership have published a superb resource on accessible language that can work across the public sector. Sophie DiMauro and Shak Rafiq explain why and what it does.

As communicators we have a crucial role to play in fostering a culture of inclusion and belonging, this starts with understanding the power of language and making sure we are the conscience for our organisations and the wider systems we work in. 

As communicators our outputs should be outcome focused and this means focusing on getting people to think or act differently based on the messages we craft and the way we get these to our audiences. In an increasingly volatile and, at times, polarised world we have a duty to get it right especially for those groups where assumptions and stereotypes lead to marginalisation and disempowerment.

Language matters and by using inclusive and empowering language we can help to tackle conscious and unconscious biases.

Language can build trust

There is power in words and language. In any organisation, it is crucial that the language and words we use reflect our values, beliefs and work as a system. Language and the way we communicate is an important aspect in building trust and connection, helping to empower and include people if we get it right. 

“Inclusive language has the power to bring underrepresented voices to the forefront while making people feel included and valued.”

– Emily Lennon, King’s Fund.

Inclusive language teaches us to value other people for who they are, more than this it is about understanding our audiences and talking to them in a way that builds credibility and trust. The language we use has an impact, and we need to move beyond simply thinking about a list of acceptable words and communicating with sensitivity, accurately and celebrating the differences that defines us as humans.

As communicators we are driven by purpose and we as professionals provide corporate conscience. Inclusive language is everyone’s business but as the strategic function responsible for setting the tone and developing narratives it starts with us, and we must lead the way…

Learning the impact of words

As communication professionals, it’s important to understand the impact of the words and phrases we use and how, when used incorrectly or in the wrong context, they can exclude groups and individuals. How people chose to identify is a personal choice and always needs to be respected. We have a responsibility for the language we use and we must be deliberate in eliminating words that oppress people.

Language matters, but we also recognise that it is complex and ever-changing. There is a wealth of information out there that can advise us on the right language to use but it can be overwhelming and difficult to know where to start. That’s why, together with partners, representatives and allies specialising in race, gender, LGBTQ+ and disability, we codesigned our ‘Inclusive language – your reference guide’.

We wanted something specific for the public sector and wanted to start locally. Our inspiration came from a fantastic guide developed by Oxfam as well as our own conscience as communicators telling us that we can and must do more. Across West Yorkshire we are committed to being anti-racist as signalled by our Root Out Racism movement but we knew we must do more for other groups and communities that can be excluded, marginalised and be misrepresented – often starting with language that excludes. Our individual values aligned with our partnership’s vision of creating a fair society for all, was the catalyst to make this happen. 

A need for a national document

Having circulated the guide, it is clear from colleagues across many organisations locally but also nationally, that there was a strong need for a document like this. When people have no guidance or support, they can say the wrong things and marginalise others. For any marketeers out there, this could be seen as spotting a gap in the market, albeit through the lens of inclusion, belonging and corporate (and personal) conscience

The inclusive language guide is primarily for communications and involvement professionals but can be used by wider workforce colleagues. It may be helpful to use this guide when onboarding new staff, or as a reference point when communicating with our diverse audiences and communities, with a focus on inclusion and belonging.

The power of words can change lives, let’s make sure this is for the better and change the way we, and the people we are communicating with, view the world. Inclusivity starts with language – is inclusive language part of your communications?

You can view the Inclusive language – your reference guide here: www.bit.ly/InclusiveLanguageBDC 

Sophie DiMauro is communications manager at NHS Bradford Districts Clinical Commissioning Group and Shak Rafiq is strategic communications and stakeholder engagement lead – Act as One programme at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Here’s a thing… what’s the most effective content on Facebook?

Facebook’s own data confirms the death of posting links directly to an update from a page. A fatal 0.0 per cent of people’s timeline is made up of this content.   

So what will work?

Well, firstly, there’s a few work-arounds.  Post the link in the comments, tell the story on the platform, take out an ad, cross-post to a Facebook group or using a different channel can all work.

But beyond that, what content works best as a post?

I decided to take a look to the a snapshot. I looked at 197 posts from public sector pages in the Midlands. Some rural and some urban to give it a mix. 

I looked at the amount of engagement for every post. That’s likes, reactions, shares and comments as a marker of how engaged people are with it. The yardstick for good content according to Adobe is 2 per cent engagement.  

The findings when I crunched the data were pretty clear cut. 

Some kinds of content like artwork and toolkit content just don’t work.

The basic numbers are that pictures came out top engaging 0.81 on average of overall followers. Reels came second on 0.65 per cent, video on 0.60 per cent and toolkit content – that’s the generic national messages – reached a paltry 0.05 per cent. Locally generated artwork reached 0.02 per cent.

That’s poor.

Content with artwork doesn’t work

Chief amongst the failing content in 2024 is artwork. This is content often with logo, dates, times and a key message. It’s starting point is print and it often applies the rules of print to the social web. It’s often not accessible without ALT text.

It’s easy to see why this is done. It is branded-up. It ticks a marketing box but the level of engagement in the study at just 0.02 per cent against an Adobe yardstick of two per cent for what makes this ‘good’ tells a story. It ticks a box. 

It is social media as bus shelter and I’d love to see some evidence that it works. 

Here’s an example. I’ve anonymised the example. 

Content with pictures works especially if they tell a human story   

What does work is unbranded pictures. They’re often of real people such as staff and they can be celebratory.

This taps straight into the heart of the tried and tested rule that news is people that served newspapers well for more than a century. People like people. On social media people really like people. 

On average there is 0.81 per cent engagement the healthiest in the survey. 

Reels video can work 

Next to Reels video which is Meta’s portrait-shaped reply to the powerful rise of TikTok. 

This is used far less in the study. No doubt it takes longer to create. But at 0.65 per cent it is 32 times more effective than the disappointing numbers for artwork updates.

Reels is also content that is strongly rewarded by the algorithm.  

Video also works

Half of all time spent on Facebook is spent watching video so it’s highly likely you need to be doing more with video. 

In the study, this reached 0.6 per cent measured against a benchmark of good being two per cent. It’s neck-and-neck with Reels as the most effective content. 

But you do need to be creative and hook people from the opening second and you do need subtitles to make it accessible.

Toolkit content really doesn’t work 

I’ve been noticing for some time the worst performing content of all is toolkit content. Nationally-generated very often these missives are posted without local colour or flavour. 

Engagement is poor and here they reached 0.05 per cent. 

Often when I’m talking in a social media review people will roll their eyes and admit they know it doesn’t work but are pressed to do it. Often they’d be better off not bothering posting the toolkit content. It is a false economy. It swaps the reward of speed for poorly performing content that does not connect. This harms the algorithm for the next pieces of content that are posted so it is in the page admin’s interest to be a gatekeeper by and large for this.

If the campaign in question is worth doing make your own with a local voice to deliver it.    

Conclusion

In short, the content that is posted can make or break the message.

This data is a snapshot and I’d ask everyone looking at delivering their own to look closely how their own is performing. The numbers don’t lie. Use that data to insist on high standards.  

Toolkit content and its near neighbour artwork don’t work. It is a relic of a bygone age. Worse than anything it gives the illusion of having worked when the numbers would suggest it is not connecting with people.

You have a national campaign aimed at encouraging people to visit their pharmacy? Get someone on video telling why this is important, Better still a pharmacist from your area. The lessons learnt during the worst of COVID were hard won and easily forgotten. For it to work, it takes work. The Afro Caribbean GP addressing the Afro Caribbean community connected. The national poster did not.

Of course, time is precious and resources are scarce. I suspect the answer is less is more when it comes to pumping out Facebook – and other – content.       

I carry out TRAINING and SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEWS to help you improve what you do.

 

When I started as a press officer in local government I used to think that I needed to protect the good name of the council at all times… and then I met councillors. 

Now, I don’t mean this as disparagingly as this may sound. Let me explain.

Councillors are people who get elected to make decisions on behalf of their community. Some of them are great, some average and some poor. If you are poor there’s a strong chance you won’t get re-elected.

I had a moment of clarity a few years into that local government comms job. In short it was this: ‘I can give advice but if they want to ignore it that’s on them.’ 

It was a real transformational moment. So, when Councillors made poor decisions after advice that was on them. 

As a result of this moment of understanding, when live streaming meetings became a thing in local government I was intensely relaxed. ‘What if Councillor X speaks? I was asked. ‘He can come over as an idiot. And Councillor Y? She’s even worse.’ 

Well, maybe democracy is better served by seeing just how much of an idiot they are.

We have seen this before. ‘You do not have the authority, Jackie Weaver,’ roared a Handforth Parish Councillor in a viral internet clip. As we saw, poor behaviour can get called out.  

And so, we come to Warwickshire County Council. Or rather certain Warwickshire County Councillors at the January 25 children and young person’s scrutiny committee. The issue of the spiralling costs of special needs help in schools was brought up. 

As a country, we are better at diagnosing children and we have a better idea of what tools are needed. It’s just austerity has cut budgets to the bone so the help desperately needed isn’t readily available. Lockdown has also caused a tsunami of mental health problems for UK school children.  

The BBC have covered the news story of the out-of-touch Councillors here. Step forward Cllr Jeff Morgan who wondered if this was just children ‘behaving badly’.  Councillor Brian Hammersley wondered if there was ‘something in the water’ while Councillor Clare Golby noticed darkly when she went online that parents were ‘swapping notes on how to get their children diagnosed’ as if this was some kind of tax fraud. 

‘There must have been better ways of dealing with them back them,’ was another quote.

It’s worth remembering that back then people were put into asylums for life where they were mistreated. In Glasgow, children were put in Lennox Castle, built in 1830, where they were threatened, mistreated. They were left there for decades. The site only closed in 2002. There were scores of places like this.

As others have said, we didn’t see them when we were at school because they were often locked up elsewhere and out of sight. There’s always been special needs. 

As the parent of a child who has special needs my hand hit my forehead in despair. The laziness and reckless lack of curiosity here is reckless. For elected members who are making decisions it is dangerous bordering on malfeasance. It is causing real harm.

To answer those questions: No, it’s probably not. No, it definitely isn’t and yes, parents do swap notes to help them jump through hoops because the hoops are made deliberately difficult to put parents off. In the UK, the wait for an autism diagnosis is 10 months just to be seen. That’s the first meeting in a long process that takes years to complete. Without the diagnosis there is often little help and the child suffers. 

Other parents with children have also felt this with fury. On TikTok, a creator who is from the West Midlands but now lives in the US, launched a broadside:

Elsewhere, on the internet the reaction from parents was similarly marked.

Where this plays out 

In the olden days, this may have been a newspaper letters column. Today, it is Facebook groups for parents whose children with special needs online and in traditional media. 

It’s also TikTok and in large numbers. There is a community of parents with children with special needs who came to the fore during this story.

But it only gets taken seriously when it leaks through to the traditional media as it did here. BBC news picking this up made it a story. Other news organisations followed.

So, is this a reputational disaster for the council? 

This is where it gets interesting because it depends.

Having the three Councillors show their ignorance on it’s own is a great service to the community. The community can then act accordingly at the ballot box. Democracy dies in darkness, as the Washington Post says. 

If this stimulates a debate that shows the harm that kids are suffering then maybe some good will come out of it. 

I’m not going to go into a critique of what Warwickshire County Council does next. No shade to their comms team. It’s a hard enough job and they have some good people. 

The principles of crisis communications need to be the compass are here.

Most organisations set-up social media in and around 2010 and haven’t really gone back to look at what they’re doing since then. 

There’s been more change in the last 12-months than the last 12 years and now high time to polish how you are delivering your communications. 

Here’s 10 questions for you to reflect on 

1. X, formerly Twitter, has announced that its a video first platform. How are you fixed for this?

2. Facebook has crippled posts from a page with a link. What six ways can you combat this? 

3. Video accounts for half of all time spent on Facebook. How are you fixed with this?

4. Reels accounts for half of al, time spent on Instagram. How are you fixed with this?

5. In a crisis, people turn to traditional media. How can your team handle a media query?

6. Good comms planning is timeless and can make a huge difference. How is your comms planning skills?

7. What do you have in place to support staff who are dealing with online abuse every week?  

8. The first couple of seconds of a TikTok can make or break your content. How can you stop people scrolling?

9. How can you use WhatsApp Channels more effectively? 

10. How do you know when to engage online and when to monitor?  

Here’s some training I offer. 

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER. This is the all rounder that looks at media landscape, comms planning and evaluation, creating content, new channels, Facebook groups, LinkedIn and dealing with online comment,. Criticism and abuse.

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED. This is the all rounder that gives you the basics for planning, shooting, editing and posting effective content.  

ESSENTIAL TIKTOK AND REELS. This looks at making effective content for these portrait-shaped video channels. 

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS. This looks at how to pitch ideas to journalists as well as dealing with media queries.  

That’s the day-to-day tactics. I’ve also blogged 10 reasons why you should carry out a social media review. 

If I can help I’d love to chat. 

There’s been a real awakening of late that Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore. 

Social media is changing and evolving almost by the day.

But your to do list isn’t getting any shorter but the need for a social media review is getting more pressing. 

Here’s 10 questions for you to reflect on

1. There’s only so many hours in the day. Are you wasting time doing the wrong thing?
2. There has been more change in the last 12 months than the last 12 years. When was the last time you took a step back and took a hard look at what you do?
3. Twitter isn’t Twitter anymore. It’s reach is declining. How are you tackling that?
4. What’s your most important audience and what channels do they use now? 
5. Facebook groups are now the most important channels for people to find out what their council is doing. How many do you have in your area and how are you connecting with them? 
6. Would channels like TikTok, WhatsApp Channels or Mastodon reach your audiences?  
7. How are you now going to communicate in an emergency? 
8. Have you communicated confidently the changes to the rest of the organisation? 
9. How is your local media using social media?
10. What can AI do to me and for me and how can I understand what’s coming over the hill?  

Now, if you can ask all these questions and run your own review that’s fantastic. We are entering a cycle of likely political change and having some answers ready in relatively calmer times would be astute. All of those questions are ones to consider right now.

That’s the big strategic picture. I’ve also blogged 10 reasons why you should polish your training. 

If I can help I’d love to chat.

Here’s something public sector people need to know… X, formerly Twitter, has declared that it video first. 

Yes, that’s right. It’s focussing on promoting video as a way to engage with people. 

Whether the move will arrest the decline of the platform is an entirely different matter.

Let’s look at what we know. 

X, formerly Twitter made the announcement on a blog post that set out what it did in 2023 and where its going in 2024.  

Buried in the text is the all-important line…

• X is now a video-first platform, with people watching video in 8 out of 10 user sessions. 
• We launched a new surface: Immersive Video, which now has over 100 million daily users – more than half of whom are Gen Z, the fastest growing audience on X.
• We enabled long-form video uploads. In December alone, people watched 130 years’ worth of videos 30 minutes or longer.

X, formerly Twitter, blog post

Now, as an advocate of video as a driver of traffic, this has piqued my interest. 

But I’m not totally sold that this will change the platform for the better.

What this does mean, aside that I’m updating my training slides, is that video has become even more important as a wider communications tool. 

The platform are looking to give more space to video and have also revealed that video posts get ten times the engagement than ones with text.

The bottom line is that simply posting text and a link won’t cut it in 2024.

It’s not 2020 anymore and we’re not in Kansas.   

Here’s a reminder of some of what I do…

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER 
ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

I’m always interested to see the stats when I post something. If its a hands on practical thing for today people love it. Write something you need to know soon and people hesitate.

Mustafa Suleyman in ‘The Coming Wave’ talked about pessimism avoidance. In other words if it sounds big and scary people will avoid it.  

With that in mind, here’s a post you’ll find useful. I’d encourage you to read it and have a play around. 

The best ideas are human + AI 

Here’s the good news. Academic research has shown that the best ideas are not from sitting back and letting AI do all the work. It’s humans plus AI.

The full research can be found in the work of three researchers at the University of Pennsylvania ‘Prompting Diverse Ideas: Increasing AI Idea Variance.’  

How so humans plus AI? 

Well, the research showed the best ideas come from a human using then refining the questions they ask the AI tool.

THis means you can let out a sigh of relief. There is still a role for you.

In simple terms, the questions asked of AI tools like Chatr GPT are called ‘prompts’. It’s the prompts that generate the ideas. 

Am I allowed to get good at prompts?

The good news if you are working in the UK public sector is that the UK Government have set out a set of guidelines on how they expect people to use AI. They are unusually helpful. They’re especially helpful because they encourage people in the public sector to practice and learn. Just be careful not to be practising with personal idea or anything that can identify people. 

How can I get good at prompts?

You get good at prompts by practicing within UK Government’s safe parameters using a generative AI tool like Chat GPT, Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Copilot or several other tools. 

There’s a lot out there on writing better prompts and I’m loath to link to a lot of it for you. 

What I can say is that Ethan Mollick, who is one of the co-authors to the academic research, has written a good piece on improving prompts that I suggest you take a look at. 

All I can say is that you know your patch well. Use the tools available and see what questions you can ask to see if the ideas come back with a bit more inspiration. 

The bottom line

The bottom line for me is that AI won’t replace a comms person but a comms person with AI skills will be replacing comms people with no skills. The same happened when social media emerged. Those that started to use it thrived and those that didn’t by and large have either left or can’t get another job.

As the legend goes, if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London the kingdom will fall.

Nine of the birds can be found living in the precincts of the castle their wings clipped against a sudden dash for freedom. 

Landmarks come and go. Just ask shipbuilders of the Clyde, the South Wales miners and East Midlands hand loom weavers. What looks permanent can fall. 

In the Black Country, an unexpected landmark has fallen. The Express & Star newspaper has left its 1.75 acre city centre Queen Street offices in Wolverhampton and moved remaining staff into smaller quarters in the nearby Mander centre.

Once, the Express & Star building dominated the city centre. The largest regional paper outside London the paper’s illuminated logo proudly displayed on the cityscape and on the Castle Street walkway that connected the sprawling site. You could peer through the windows and see the press halls power through the print run. It was a majestic sight.

In its pomp, the Express & Star sold more than 200,000 copies a day.

Its editor sent a reporter to Afghanistan when the Russians invaded in 1979. One surprised foreign correspondent in Kabul greeted him with the words “Express & Star? They’ll be sending Exchange and Mart next.”

But the Star was a collosus. It sent a reporter and photographer when the British Army went into Basra in 2003. A young Boris Johnson was sent on work experience to Queen Street as a favour between the family who owned it and Johnson’s father. . He failed to measure up sent back with a recommendation that he’d never make a reporter.

Until a few years ago, it sent a reporter to every council meeting.

Today the title sells barely 13,000 and has been sold by the family-run Midland News Association to the ailing National World chain. 

The sad thing is the Express & Star had a chance and it blew it. It was an early internet pioneer but a senior executive dismissed the rise of the web as ‘a fad like CB Radio.’

Even sadder were the friends who still worked in the Queen Street head office sharing sombre last thoughts on Facebook as the last shift there came to an end. I know some of them. They are good people. 

‘This is shit’ 

For me the sale of the building was mixed feelings. I worked in a district office so I only ever went to Queen Street to be bollocked. It’s newsroom ran through a culture of fear. A colleague who started in a district office remembered sending a story electronically and having it returned from a news editor with the words: ‘This is shit.’ 

After careful review he re-sent the story. 

‘Still shit,’ came the anonymous reply followed by a more personal dressing down over the internal phone. 

This sink or swim approach created two career paths. The first path saw people exit journalism with dreams shattered.

The second path created effective reporters who could dictate a front page lead in nine minutes from court, council or roadside car crash. No, sorry, not a car crash but a collision between vehicles. This legally neutral terms was used to avoid apportioning blame. Even writing the words makes me fear the inernal phone ringing.

As I think back, my finest hour there was also my darkest hour. The Lee Hughes trial at Coventry Crown Court saw me and a colleague file rolling copy for six days. Rolling copy? Dictating a fresh story practically every half hour for First edition, Staffs, Town, Dudley, Sandwell and finally the City edition. 

‘Miss anything and you are dead,’ was the inspiring message passed down the chain of command. 

Today, those editions have gone. There is one edition whose deadline is the day before with the paper printed somewhere in the North West.

For me, the sale of the Express & Star building is more than the sale of a building. It is the Berlin Wall falling. It is the symbolic end of that particular kind of journalism where every council meeting was covered, every court checked and the working man enjoyed his paper in his armchair at the end of a working day.  

The end and also the beginning 

The end of Queen Street makes me feel sad. But not half as sad as seeing the Express & Star district office I worked in close a few years back.

Black Lake in West Bromwich was the Express & Star print works. It built in the 1970s with 40-foot high print towers that would shake the building. The editorial office was open plan. When I first worked there there were 12 Express & Star reporters and three photographers. We would run through brick walls for Ken the chief reporter and Dave his deputy. It is the best office I ever worked in and ever will work in. 

The enemy? The enemy was always the editor in Queen Street not the rival Evening Mail. 

The future of news may be email 

Reach plc’s head Jim Mullen this month spoke of there being maybe five years of profitability left in print newspapers. 

What the future of local journalism may look like could be found in Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool. According to this model, the future isn’t print its daily emails and a paid for bonus email funded by subscribers. 

You can sign up for The Mill that covers Manchester here for free, The Post for Liverpool here, The Tribune for Sheffield here. There’s free news and a paid for element. Expect longer form posts with a handful of stories covered rather than everything the Express & Star used to do.

At the minute there are low thousands of paid subscribers. The danger is that local news becomes a minority pastime. But hey, at least its there.

One skill that’s transferrable

Those who worked on newspapers have one powerful skill in their back pocket that I’m convinced will be an asset in a future landscape scorched by the internet and AI.

The ability to tell a story is just as important today as it was when the presses rolled in Queen Street. Who, what, where, when, why and how, Kipling’s six good men who taught him all he knew, are even more powerful today than they were.

Someone who can come up with human stories with a human face is a powerful asset to have. That’s not any kind of sop to my former newsroom colleagues that’s a fact.

On it’s own that’s worth a front page lead and picking up a tray of cakes for the office from Firkins as I come back from court.

Picture: Rcsprinter123 used under a creative commons licence.

Who you feature in your content can have a MASSIVE impact on whether or not it will be a success.

We know this instinctively yet we pay very little attention to this in the actual delivery.

Often this is because of a long established framework that governs content and that has never been challenged. In local government when I workled there it was a) quote the cabinet member and b) quote the officer when the cabinet member isn’t around or doesn’t want to.

The impact of this is to have someone wholly unsuited fronting your communications.

I do remember listening to the local radio phone-in hearing an officer with the charisma of mud massacre what was a council reasonable position.

One way to give better advice is to site data.

The Edelman Trust Barometer has been published and it is the UK data that I turn to.

We trust ‘someone like me’ far more than the chief exec, government leaders or journalists

The screen shot from the Edelman Trust Barometer UK version shows 73 per cent trust scientists, 71 per cent someone like me, 59 per cent the company technical expert, 45 per cent non-hovernmental organisation representatives, 33 per cet the chief exec and government leaders and 31 per cent journalists.

In other words, we trust people who look like us.

So, if you are looking to reach new parents, use a new parent. If you are after members of the Polish community use a Pole.

It’ll take longer but it may just work.

UK Government has released a hugely document that sets a path for comms teams and others to use AI safely.

The Generative AI Framework for HM Government is 74-pages and published by the Central Digital and Central Data Office. It sets out exactly how you can and can’t use generative AI. On other words, tools like ChatGPT that create text, audio, video and images. 

What’s also striking is that there is a commitment to update the document as our collective understanding changes and evolves. That’s really good to see so it won’t stay preserved in aspic.

Here’s what they say.

The 10 principles of ten common principles to guide the safe, responsible and effective use of generative AI in government organisations

Principle 1: You know what generative AI is and what its limitations are

This encourages people to learn about AI to understand what you can do, can’t do and what the risks are. Generative tools are not accurate but are designed to be plausible. 

Principle 2: You use generative AI lawfully, ethically and responsibly

This puts a responsibility on you to act within the law whether that be copyright, data protection. It also makes the point about AI not replacing strategic decision making. 

The principle also should also use the AI regulation white paper’s fairness principle which states that AI systems should not undermine the legal rights of individuals and organisations. And that they should not discriminate against individuals or create unfair market outcomes.

Principle: Fairness

Definition and explanation

AI systems should not undermine the legal rights of individuals or organisations, discriminate unfairly against individuals or create unfair market outcomes. Actors involved in all stages of the AI life cycle should consider definitions of fairness that are appropriate to a system’s use, outcomes and the application of relevant law.

Fairness is a concept embedded across many areas of law and regulation, including equality and human rights, data protection, consumer and competition law, public and common law, and rules protecting vulnerable people.

Regulators may need to develop and publish descriptions and illustrations of fairness that apply to AI systems within their regulatory domain, and develop guidance that takes into account relevant law, regulation, technical standards, and assurance techniques.

Regulators will need to ensure that AI systems in their domain are designed, deployed and used considering such descriptions of fairness. Where concepts of fairness are relevant in a broad range of intersecting regulatory domains, we anticipate that developing joint guidance will be a priority for regulators.

A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation, UK Government, 2023

Principle 3: You know how to keep generative AI tools secure  

This talks about the importance of allowing AI tools to use the data you want it to and not give it free reign across areas where sensitive personal data is stored. This recommends checks to guard against malicious intent and are not leaking data.   

Principle 4: You have meaningful human control at the right stage

This talks about the need for humans in the process. Someone i needed to review the outputs to make sure they are producing as well as the tools and data that were fed into it in the first place. 

Principle 5: You understand how to manage the full generative AI lifecycle 

This looks at the importance of knowing what a number of terms are. Such as AI drift. This is the term that describes a loss in focus of the tool and deviation from the original purpose. It also covers hallucinations where fake newspaper stories or academic research, for example, can be conjured up to prove a point or argument.   

Principle 6: You use the right tool for the job

This looks at the importance of selecting the right tool for the job. It encourages the use of generative AI when it is the best place tool. In order to do this it implicitly encourages the user learn and experiment in safe spaces. How else would you know what the best tool is if you don’t know how to use them?

Principle 7: You are open and collaborative

This encourages people to work with other parts of Government who are experimenting in the field. 

Principle 8: You work with commercial colleagues from the start

This encourages working with people outside of Government to understand the limitations of generative AI tools. It shouldn’t just be people in Government playing into that decision making. 

Principle 9: You have the skills and expertise that you need to build and use generative AI

Using generative AI needs skills like the ability to ask a question – also known as a prompt. Prompt engineering – or polishing the questions asked is one such skill that’s needed. 

Principle 10: You use these principles alongside your organisation’s policies and have the right assurance in place

There needs to be governance of the AI process. You need to understand the risks and mitigate them early in the process.

Conclusion

UK Government has been keen to develop the UK as a place where AI innovation takes place. This document is a useful tool for it to be used responsibly and in a way that people inside and outside the organisation can be reassured by. 

The 10 principles are available as an anchor point for responsible AI use.

You can use them in the rest of the public sector but you’ll probably have to explain them. But what you can do is point to a trusted organisation as the basis for what you are doing.

Of course, if you’re not in the UK you’ll have to look at your own home government’s approach.

Trust is the absolute issue when it comes to adopting AI. There is suspicion of AI in the wider population and using tools that people don’t understand with no safeguards in place is not only reckless it is also career limiting. 

One dilemma does face me. People in the comms and PR community are not especially keen on AI. There is not the space and capacity for people to learn. There are no Google Fridays that allow self discovery and experimentation. With that in mind, learning under your own steam is to be encouraged no matter how difficult.