Ten Steps to Creating an AI Policy

Summary

The Corporate Governance Institute's practical roadmap transforms the daunting task of AI policy creation into a manageable, step-by-step process. This 2024 guide cuts through academic theory to focus on what organizations actually need: clear stakeholder definitions, actionable governance structures, and decision-making frameworks that work in practice. Unlike high-level AI ethics statements, this resource provides concrete guidance for building policies that can be implemented, enforced, and evolved as AI technologies mature within your organization.

The Ten-Step Blueprint

The guide structures AI policy development around three core phases: Foundation Setting (steps 1-3), Framework Building (steps 4-7), and Implementation Preparation (steps 8-10). Each step includes specific deliverables, from stakeholder mapping exercises to risk assessment templates. The approach emphasizes starting with organizational readiness rather than jumping straight into technical requirements—a common pitfall that leads to policies that look good on paper but fail in practice.

Key phases include establishing your AI governance team, defining decision-making authority, creating accountability mechanisms, and building feedback loops for policy evolution. The guide particularly excels at addressing the "who decides what" question that trips up many organizations.

Why This Approach Works

Most AI policy efforts fail because they either focus too narrowly on technical compliance or create such broad ethical statements that they provide no practical guidance. This resource strikes a middle ground by treating AI policy as an organizational design challenge. It recognizes that effective AI governance requires clarity about roles, responsibilities, and decision rights—not just principles and aspirations.

The step-by-step format prevents organizations from becoming overwhelmed while ensuring nothing critical gets missed. Each step builds on previous work, creating natural checkpoints for stakeholder buy-in and course correction.

Who This Resource Is For

• Primary audience: Corporate governance professionals, chief risk officers, and compliance teams tasked with developing their organization's first AI policy or significantly updating existing ones.
• Also valuable for: Legal teams supporting AI governance initiatives, executive leadership sponsors of AI policy projects, and consultants advising organizations on AI governance structures.

The resource assumes some familiarity with corporate governance concepts but doesn't require deep AI technical expertise.

• Not ideal for: Organizations looking for sector-specific AI policy guidance (healthcare, financial services, etc.) or those needing detailed technical implementation guidance for specific AI systems.

Getting Started Checklist

Before diving into the ten steps, ensure you have:

• Executive sponsorship and budget allocation for policy development
• A designated project lead with authority to coordinate across departments
• Basic inventory of current and planned AI use cases within your organization
• Access to legal, IT, and business stakeholders who will need to implement the policy

The guide recommends allowing 3-6 months for initial policy development, depending on organizational complexity and existing governance maturity.

Watch Out For

The resource's global perspective is both a strength and limitation—it provides broadly applicable guidance but may miss jurisdiction-specific requirements. Organizations in highly regulated industries should supplement this framework with sector-specific guidance.

The guide also assumes a traditional corporate structure; organizations with flatter hierarchies or matrix management may need to adapt the stakeholder role definitions accordingly.