Public-Sector Stakeholder and Political Landscape Mapping

Purpose

business-case-and-analysis:stakeholder-analysis-and-raci gives the general power/interest mapping method and RACI structure. In a public organization, "who's the sponsor" rarely has one clean answer the way it often does in a private company: authority is split across elected officials, career civil servants, and sometimes external oversight bodies, each on a different clock and answering to a different kind of pressure. This skill adds the actor-type map and veto-point logic that makes the generic method actually work in this setting.

Method

1. Separate the four recurring actor types

Actor type	What drives them	Typical veto point	Time horizon
Elected officials / political leadership	Re-election, public perception, party platform	Budget approval, public vote, policy sign-off	Election cycle (often 2-4 years)
Civil servants / administration	Operational continuity, legal defensibility, workload	Implementation sign-off, procurement process, day-to-day veto by inaction	Career-length, largely cycle-independent
Unions / staff representative bodies	Job security, working conditions, role change	Formal consultation rights where they exist, informal resistance	Contract-cycle length
Oversight and audit bodies	Legality, fairness, correct process	Can halt or reverse a decision after the fact	Reactive, triggered by complaint or audit
Citizens / community groups / service users	Direct impact on their access to a service	Public opinion, formal consultation, media attention	Immediate to long-term, depends on visibility

Map every real stakeholder against these five types, not against a generic "sponsor / influencer / user" template — the type determines which lever actually moves them.

2. Locate every veto point before proposing a timeline

A private-sector project usually has one or two approval gates. A public-sector AI initiative typically has several, often sequential and non-negotiable in order: administrative sign-off, budget approval, sometimes a formal consultation or union process, sometimes an oversight or legal review, and only then implementation. List every veto point this specific initiative will pass through and who holds it — a timeline built without this list will be wrong, not just optimistic.

3. Read the political and administrative clocks separately

Elected leadership operates on an election cycle; a mid-cycle proposal carries different risk than one made right after an election. Administration operates largely independent of that cycle but is bound by budget-year timing. When scoping a project, ask explicitly: where are we in both clocks right now, and does that change what's fundable or politically safe to propose this year versus next?

4. Distinguish formal power from practical influence

The nominal decision-maker (a board, a council) is not always the actor whose informal buy-in actually determines the outcome. Career staff who will operationally own the system after launch often have effective veto power through implementation quality even without formal sign-off authority. Map both the formal RACI and an informal "who can quietly kill this" layer.

5. Feed into RACI, don't replace it

Once actor types and veto points are mapped, build the formal RACI in ../../../../business-case-and-analysis/skills/stakeholder-analysis-and-raci/SKILL.md as normal — this skill's output (actor-type tags, veto-point list, clock-position note) becomes input to that RACI, not a separate deliverable that competes with it.

What this skill does NOT do

• Doesn't replace the core RACI/power-interest method — it's an input layer for it.
• Doesn't tell you how to navigate procurement process itself — see ps-procurement-and-public-funding-navigation.
• Doesn't predict election outcomes or specific political dynamics — it structures the questions to ask locally, not a generic answer.

Refinement notes

The five-actor-type table is a working synthesis for this pack. If the owner has direct engagement experience with a specific type of public body (municipal vs. national agency vs. regional administration), the veto-point column should be refined with that experience rather than left as a generic placeholder.

Continue from here

• Formal stakeholder mapping: ../../../../business-case-and-analysis/skills/stakeholder-analysis-and-raci/SKILL.md
• Procurement/funding constraints: ../ps-procurement-and-public-funding-navigation/SKILL.md
• Presenting to the decision body once mapped: ../ps-decision-readiness-and-public-communication/SKILL.md

References

• ../../references/source-notes.md

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Reminder: frontmatter has only name and description. Everything else goes into skills_index.json (run scripts/generate_index.py).