AI POLICY & GOVERNANCECo-design a living AI policy
We guide leadership, staff, and experts to build clear guidelines for safe, transparent, and responsible AI use.
Your organization needs an AI policy because your team is already deciding how, when, and where to use and respond to AI. Make sure everyone is aligned.
We guide your organization through a participatory design process to build practical, safe, and transparent AI guidelines.
Together, we create a policy your people understand, trust, and continually improve.
FROM DOCUMENT TO PRACTICE
Policy lives in action.
Effective policy streamlines decisions, mitigates risk, and aligns actions with your mission.
Off-the-shelf templates may be compliant, yet leave teams unsure how to apply them. Without shared guidance, your staff improvise rules that lead to shadow use, stalled pilots, hidden risks, redundant debate, and decision burden.
Which data can enter AI tools?
Who oversees AI-assisted decisions?
Which applications are approved?
When is disclosure required?
We start by defining what policy must achieve: reduce risk, clarify boundaries, enable responsible testing, protect core work, and advance your goals.
We then co-design policy documents and governance practices. Policy establishes purpose, rules, and limits; governance provides the roles, routines, and feedback loops to adapt them as AI evolves.
SERVICE PACKAGE C: POLICY & GOVERNANCE
Co-Design AI Policy & Governance
We offer a structured, facilitated program that brings together executives, team members, and experts to establish a functional AI policy and the adaptive governance mechanisms to sustain it.
Delivery Format:
Our engagement is designed for a multidisciplinary cohort of 6 to 12 participants collaborating over four to six weeks, tailored to match your organization's scale, risk tolerance, and compliance landscape.
Discovery interviews with key sponsors and organizational leadership
Comprehensive audit of current AI usage, tools, and regulatory policies
Interactive workshops and iterative testing grounded in actual operational scenarios
Custom AI policy documentation, acceptable-use guidelines, and disclosure statements
Defined governance roles, escalation workflows, and review schedules
Actionable rollout strategy, refinement steps, and internal communication plan
OUR APPROACHProactive AI governance is grounded in lived experience and built through practice.
We use a relational, participatory co-design approach so that the people affected by policy can shape it through their lived experience, practical knowledge, and understanding of the work.
Through participation, people develop a shared understanding of why the policy exists, what it asks of them, and how it can guide decisions as technology and organizational needs evolve.
01 DISCOVEROrient, listen, and map
We start with your mission, goals, and risk profile, mapping existing and desired AI use, affected relationships, and support needs to distinguish what your policy needs from ongoing governance in practice.
02 DISCUSSDeliberate together
Participants tackle real scenarios and seek to collectively understand the technical, legal, and relational consequences. We explore privacy, IP, disclosure, bias, human review, and evolving roles, aiming to resolve differences before they cause conflict or harm.
03 CO-DESIGNBuild policy & practice
We facilitate a co-design process that turns the group’s learning into a connected policy and governance approach: shared principles, practical protections and permissions, clear accountabilities, decision paths, and implementation support.
04 REFLECTPractice, learn, evolve
Teams test policy drafts on real cases, role-play, and practice decision-making. Chosen stewards and feedback loops keep policies adaptive to new tech, regulations, and organizational needs.
WHAT WE CAN BUILD TOGETHERClear direction, practical safeguards, and continuous learning
Tailored to your organization's needs, we work with you to build a cohesive system of components designed for the unique context, risks, and responsibilities of your organization.
01Principles
Core AI principles and acceptable-use framework
02 Protocols
Data protection, privacy, and information management protocols
03 Standards
Transparency, attribution, and human oversight standards
04Guidelines
Tool evaluation criteria and safe experimentation guidelines
05Structures
Accountability structures, decision rights, and issue escalation paths
06Processes
Governance responsibilities, review cadences, and policy iteration processes
WHAT CHANGES
From compliance to collective capability.
We guide organizations away from fragmented, ad-hoc choices toward a unified strategy—transitioning from unmonitored experimentation to structured learning, and transforming static policy documents into an active governance practice.
Key deliverables for your organization include:
A tailored, practical policy directly linked to your core mission and daily operations
A common vocabulary, defined operational boundaries, and explicit permissions
Reduced decision-making fatigue alongside safer environments for testing and innovation
Explicit roles for ownership, accountability, and escalation pathways
A continuous loop for learning and adapting as context and technology evolve
Teams gain full clarity on allowed activities, areas requiring caution, decision-making authorities, and procedures for raising new inquiries. Well-designed policy anchors shared commitments, while proactive governance ensures ongoing agility.
In this way, policy functions as vital infrastructure for coordinated strategy and organizational growth.
Meet Your Facilitators
Lo Smith
Researcher, policy and governance specialist, and co-design practitioner.Lo has spent more than 15 years working across research, policy, and practice in over 14 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, translating evidence and normative guidance into national policies, programmes, and tools.
She has led the co-design of global policies and strategies for multiple United Nations agencies, alongside other humanitarian organizations.
Lo’s work involves helping others navigate complex governance arrangements spanning government ministries, multilateral agencies, civil society, and communities, with close attention to the power relations that shape whose knowledge counts.
Her PhD at the University of Toronto applies critical discourse analysis and decolonial theory to the global governance of child wasting.
Reflexive praxis grounds her work, serving as both an ethical commitment and a method for how she designs, facilitates, and learns alongside others.
JP King
Organizational learning consultant, systems designer, and educatorFor more than two decades, he has designed learning experiences, tools, frameworks, and participatory processes across nonprofits, universities, creative organizations, public institutions, and systems-change initiatives. At Dark Matter Labs, he co-led organizational development, governance, and learning. He has taught art and design at the University of Toronto, using inquiry, experimentation, visual thinking, and studio-based learning to help students engage with complex social and environmental questions. His training in Gestalt psychotherapy and Co-Active coaching shapes how he approaches uncertainty, resistance, group dynamics, and the human experience of organizational change.
AN INVITATIONStart shaping your organization’s approach
Tell us about where your organization faces uncertainty, risk, or opportunity. In an initial conversation, we will discuss your situation and determine if a participatory policy process can help.