Stakeholder engagement
Summary: Keeping stakeholder engagement throughout the AI project is essential to building AI systems responsibly.
Type of pattern: Governance pattern
Type of objective: Trustworthiness
Target users: Project managers
Impacted stakeholders: Development teams
Lifecycle stages: All stages
Relevant AI ethics principles: Human, societal and environmental wellbeing, human-centered values, fairness, privacy protection and security, reliability and safety, transparency and explainability, contestability, accountability
Context: Stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations that may affect or get affected by the outcome of AI projects. Stakeholders may have various ethical concerns about the development and use of AI systems, such as the trustworthiness of AI systems and the potential impact of AI on humanity.
Problem: How can we manage the needs and expectations of stakeholders?
Solution: Keeping stakeholder engagement throughout the AI project is essential to building AI systems responsibly. Stakeholder engagement allows AI systems to better reflect needs and expectations of stakeholders. There are various ways to engage stakeholders, such as interviews, online and offline meetings, project planning and review, and participatory design workshops.
Benefits:
- Improved trust: Stakeholder engagement aligns the development of AI systems with societal expectations and helps to build stakeholders’ trust in AI projects.
- Reduced risk: Stakeholders may help the project team identify potential RAI risks before they become threats.
Drawbacks:
- Conflicting opinions: There may be conflicting opinions from different stakeholders.
- Increased cost: Addressing the needs and expectations from the stakeholders may incur unexpected cost.
Related patterns:
- Diverse team: Project teams need to continuously engage in communication and collaboration with stakeholders throughout the entire project lifecycle. Diverse teams can improve the communication efficiency by increasing understanding towards the needs and concerns of different stakeholders.
Known uses:
- Association for project management (APM) has published ten key principles of stakeholder engagement.
- Australian Public Service Commission has published guidelines on effective stakeholder engagement.
- Deloitte has published a report on stakeholder engagement.