Today, more than ever, the political environment is impacting an organisation’s long-run strategic objectives. From the regulation of new technology to the impact of international relations on trade – varying national responses to global challenges have created major uncertainty across Europe.¹ Public affairs is the management of policy change and organisations are keen to get involved. In Brussels alone, there are an estimated 25,000 individuals engaged in government relations.² However, the policy environment is a rapidly changing space. This can make it difficult for public affairs professionals to manage the demands of policy engagement and communications processes.

The management and structure of the public affairs function has become a critical component to this. As opposed to ad hoc approaches, structured public affairs systems offer a range of benefits derived from their unique features. These allow for smoother and more consistent public affairs engagements with higher ROIs. This article outlines how structured public affairs systems work and how these systems can be developed to benefit an organisation’s approach to policy intervention over successive policy cycles.

A Framework for Public Affairs

The first important feature of a structured public affairs system is the framework it creates around the public affairs process across the organisation. This explicit definition and communication of the system allows for organisational-wide understanding of how public affairs processes function, while also building recognition for the importance of public affairs engagement. This links to an organisation’s approach to government relations and helps reduce the forms of ambiguity and confusion that can arise from public policy efforts.³

The main benefit of this feature relates to staff engagement in the public affairs process. For staff working directly in public affairs initiatives, it is easier to understand how their work fits into the wider goals of the organisation and see the benefit of their actions. For those working outside the public affairs function, it is easier to see how public affairs is crucial to the overall achievement of the organisation’s objectives, and how and when they can lend support. Altogether, these features lead to a higher ROI across public affairs activity as the organisation becomes more involved in the policy environment.

Formalised Training & Development

Another important feature of a structured public affairs system is its inbuilt training and development processes. While a range of organisational resources are required, often the main bottleneck or resource shortage relates to expertise and communication skills.⁴ As a result, a major challenge for policy engagement initiatives is staff availability rather than budgetary resources. Structured public affairs systems place training and development at the heart of processes and ensure that staff are being trained in public affairs best practices at various levels across the organisation.

The major benefit of formalised training programmes is obvious. Given the shortage of skilled and experienced public affairs executives, and the ongoing battle for talent across industries, having an inbuilt process to improve internal capabilities and public affairs knowledge across the team is crucial. This is particularly relevant to overcome the difficulties that arise when highly valued staff leave a role during an ongoing policy engagement. In this way, an internal training and development programme smooths these times of transition and prevents the loss of ground on initiatives that may otherwise be experienced by staff attrition.

Project System Integration 

A structured public affairs system also helps executives by integrating directly with the project management system of the organisation. By making a public affairs system more explicit, a structured approach allows policy initiatives to be formalised as projects or programmes within the organisation’s project portfolio. This allows for a more direct management of policy initiatives and helps the public affairs function to move in tandem with existing change activity in the organisation as a whole. Depending on how the public affairs system is designed, it is possible to integrate it with classical waterfall, agile or even hybrid project methodologies.  

When a structured public affairs system is combined with a detailed project management system, an organisation benefits from stronger portfolio management. In turn this improves the follow through of policy initiatives and helps organisations to track activity over the policy cycle. This will increase efficiency in policy interventions while also reducing timelines, assuming the robustness of the underlying project management system is sound. Finally, an indirect but powerful benefit of project system integration, comes in the smoothing of relationships with external partners and coalitions. By integrating with project management methodologies, a structured public affairs system will also explicitly recognise the project management approach of external partners and coalition members, adjusting accordingly when partners take a different approach.

Knowledge Management

A powerful feature of a structured public affairs system is the manner in which it enables knowledge management. The explicit nature of the system allows for more information and data capture on public affairs initiatives, which would otherwise be lost using an ad hoc design. The structured nature of the system also outlines the various sensors and sensory arenas in which the organisation will gather and harness information and intelligence. Importantly, a structured approach ensures that information is gathered and stored on all public affairs activities, no matter how they are deemed to have progressed public policy objectives.

Structured public affairs systems, and their ability to drive knowledge management, benefit organisations in several ways. Firstly, the knowledge captured on successful policy interventions allows organisations to hone and develop their capabilities ahead of future policy engagements based on tried approaches and proven results. Secondly, the knowledge captured on failed interventions allows information to be put to use in identifying problematic issues or areas of concern. This informs public policy professionals and helps them to evolve their approach. Thirdly, knowledge management empowers public affairs teams working across policy areas and arenas to build on the work of others. This saves time, reduces costs and helps executives to identity opportunities for policy engagement faster. 

 

Integrated Sensors & Systemised Intelligence

Intelligence, developed through information capture and policy analysis, is an important aspect of the public affairs process. Intelligence informs decision-making and helps organisations to keep up with the rapid pace of policy change. However, public affairs professionals often struggle to deal with the sheer scale of information capture necessary, with information overload a common problem. A leading feature of structured public affairs system relates to their inbuilt sensors, which serve to systematise the filtering, gathering and analysis of stakeholder intelligence and policy data.

While sensors can take many different forms and are ultimately shaped to each individual organisation and its needs, the real benefit comes in their design, formalisation and if possible, automation. Some sensors, particularly the ones grounded in digital data and analytics, can be highly automated. Others, based on individual interactions and face to face intelligence exchange, can still be codified and routinised. This allows for the development of sophisticated sensory processes that can be retained at the organisational level and is related to how a structured public affairs system integrates knowledge management with training and development. The leakage of policy intelligence can be minimised as information is processed more efficiently. These sensors can also allow executives to make sense of policy change faster than ad hoc approaches, as assumptions and emerging patterns can be tested and triangulated. Ultimately the routinisation and automation possible here, leads to much stronger intelligence capture and stronger consistency across sources of data and information as the policy engagement progresses.

A Portfolio Approach to Policy Engagement

Another important feature of a structured public affairs system, related to its integration with project management processes, is the way policy engagements can be managed as a portfolio of initiatives rather than isolated actions. Given the complex nature of policy landscapes, and the tendency for stakeholders and coalitions to collaborate on a range of policy issues simultaneously, it is a mistake to consider policy engagements in isolation. Instead best practice is to understand the overlapping and contributing effects policy engagements have on one another. Where ad hoc approaches are fragmented and fail to capitalise on opportunities stretching across policy initiatives, a structured approach to public affairs will explicitly identify and manage them through the engagement portfolio.

By understanding the range of policy engagements as a portfolio, several powerful benefits can be attained. To begin with, the interaction effects across two or more policy engagements can be more easily identified, allowing for better management of initiatives. Also, it is easier for public affairs professional to understand and plan for the resource requirements of engagements over time, identifying when peak demand and resource shortages may occur due to overlapping policy cycles across arenas. Another important benefit relates to the management of coalition development in a more systematic manner. While there is no standardised approach to coalitions, which take shape at various stages of the policy development process and evolve alongside policy throughout the policy cycle, the portfolio approach allows for clearer and more explicit coalition boundaries.⁵ This is particularly useful when coalition partners agree on some initiatives and diverge on others. Together, these benefits of a portfolio approach allow for less unnecessary conflict with external partners while also identifying opportunities for greater gains in policy intervention.

Public Affairs KPIs & ROI

Another important feature of a structured public affairs system is how it helps organisations to calculate their ROI from public affairs initiatives, while measuring and tracking their performance across a range of tailored KPIs. This comes at a time when organisations continue to increase their public affairs activity. For example, the total number of organisations listed on the European Transparency Register grew by 33% between the years 2016 and 2020, from 8,983 to 11,938 in total. Digging deeper into this trend, Figure 1 highlights the number of organisations that met with Commission staff, held Parliament passes and established a Brussels office.