Guide

Public Sector Prompt Examples

Oct 2, 2024

Here are some example prompts covering a wide range of government roles and prompting techniques, from basic to advanced. I've grouped them by role and included a variety of simple prompts, chaining, few-shot prompts, task decomposition, and other techniques. Feel free to use and modify these as you see fit in your prompt book:

Program Manager & Acquisition Prompts:

1. As a program manager for a major defense acquisition program, write a succinct one-paragraph summary of the key risks and issues the program is currently facing.

2. You are a contracting officer evaluating proposals for a new IT system. Write a list of 5 key evaluation criteria you will use to assess the technical approach in each vendor's proposal.

3. Generate a realistic 12-month master schedule for the development and testing phase of a new unmanned aerial vehicle acquisition program. Include at least 10 key milestones and deliverables.

4. Prompt 1: Identify the top 3 cost drivers in the Army's Future Vertical Lift helicopter program based on the information provided. Prompt 2: For each of those 3 cost drivers you identified, suggest a potential management approach to control or reduce costs in that area.

5. As a senior program analyst, your task is to write a convincing one-page memo to the Program Executive Officer advocating for accelerating the planned Initial Operational Capability date of the program by 6 months. Outline your rationale and key arguments. After that, write a separate memo anticipating the PEO's likely objections to your proposal and rebutting each one.

Few-shot example:

The following are examples of good problem statements for acquisition programs:

1) The Mark-18 torpedo is experiencing reliability issues in shallow water, with 25% of units failing diagnostics after water entry. Root cause is believed to relate to the auxiliary power unit.

2) The Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle program is 8% over its Acquisition Program Baseline cost estimate at the 60% completion point, with recent material cost increases threatening to erode all remaining management reserve.

3) The F-35 program is facing challenges integrating a new Electronic Warfare suite due to compatibility issues with onboard power and cooling systems.

Now try writing your own problem statement for an unmanned underwater vehicle program that is struggling to meet key performance requirements in the areas of endurance and communications range.

6. As a cost analyst, generate an initial 5-year budget estimate spreadsheet for a new satellite communications program, broken out by budget activity. Make realistic assumptions based on analogous past programs. After generating the 5-year budget, write a short memo highlighting key assumptions and cost risks.

Policy & Legal Prompts:

1. You are a policy analyst drafting recommended changes to the Defense Department's overhead policy. Write a one-page background section providing context on the current policy and the motivation for considering changes at this time.

2. As a legislative affairs specialist, draft a proposed amendment to the annual Defense Authorization Act that would incentivize government-industry partnerships for critical microelectronics research and development. Focus on the key elements you would include in the legislative text.

3. Prompt 1: Summarize the key provisions and impacts of Executive Order 14028, "Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity".

Prompt 2: Identify potential gaps or areas not sufficiently addressed in EO 14028 that should be considered for future cybersecurity policy.

4. You are an attorney reviewing a proposed weapons system export case. Draft a legal memo assessing the foreign military sale against the criteria in the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Highlight any potential legal or policy issues.

5. Few-shot prompt:

Passage 1: The Berry Amendment requires the Department of Defense to give preference in procurement to domestically produced, manufactured, or home-grown products, most notably food, clothing, fabrics, and specialty metals. Congress originally passed domestic source restrictions as part of the 1941 Fifth Supplemental Department of Defense Appropriations Act in order to protect the domestic industrial base in the time of war.

Passage 2: The Buy American Act requires the federal government to procure domestic materials and products. The Act contains restrictions on the purchase of supplies that are not "domestic end products" for use within the United States. Products are considered domestic if they are manufactured in the United States from more than 50 percent U.S. parts.

Now try writing your own 2-3 sentence summary of the key provisions and purpose of the Procurement Integrity Act.

6. As an international affairs specialist, your task is to write a memo comparing and contrasting the foreign military sales and direct commercial sales processes for selling major defense equipment to other nations. Highlight key differences, advantages and disadvantages of each approach from a U.S. government perspective. After writing the memo, suggest which approach you would recommend for the sale of F-16 fighter jets to a key Middle Eastern ally, and why.

Education & Training Prompts:

1. You are developing a new training course for acquisition professionals on agile software development methods. Draft a one-page course overview highlighting the key topics to be covered and the target learning objectives.

2. Prompt 1: List the 5 core acquisition career fields as defined by the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act.

Prompt 2: For each career field, identify the one or two most important skills or competencies a member of that career field should possess.

3. As a training analyst, describe how you would design a realistic end-of-course scenario exercise to assess student learning in a cybersecurity fundamentals course. What key skills and concepts would you focus on testing?

4. Few-shot prompt:

Lesson objective 1: Students can define and differentiate the terms strategy, operations, and tactics.

Question 1: Which of the following would be considered a strategy? A) Taking a key hill to control an enemy supply route B) Defeating enemy forces in the Pacific theater C) Resupplying front-line troops with ammunition

Lesson objective 2: Students can identify the four key elements of national power and describe how each contributes to national security.

Question 2: Which element of national power does the following represent: Cutting off trade with a hostile nation to pressure them to change their behavior? A) Military B) Economic C) Diplomatic D) Information

Now try writing a lesson objective and associated test question on the differences between threat-based and capabilities-based defense planning.

5. You are a doctrine writer updating a key military operations manual. Provide a suggested outline for a new chapter on Joint All-Domain Operations. Focus in particular on the elements needed to set the context and define this emerging operational concept.

6. Prompt 1: In simple terms, explain the key differences between qualitative and quantitative research methods, using examples relevant to the defense and security fields.

Prompt 2: Describe how you might structure a study combining both qualitative and quantitative techniques to assess the effectiveness of a new military training program.

Military Strategy & Operations Prompts:

1. As a strategic planner, write a concise problem statement describing the key challenges the U.S. military faces in deterring and countering China's increasing assertiveness and military capabilities in the Western Pacific. Maximum 5 sentences.

2. Prompt 1: Based on the information provided about friendly and enemy force dispositions, terrain, and civil considerations, generate 3 potential courses of action for a battalion-level attack to seize Objective EAGLE.

Prompt 2: Of the 3 courses of action you developed, which do you recommend and why? Identify strengths, weaknesses, trade-offs for each.

3. Few-shot prompt:

Intel Report 1: Satellite imagery shows an increase in rail traffic and activity at the enemy's suspected nuclear weapons storage site. Analysts assess the enemy may be preparing to disperse weapons to field units.

COA 1 (most likely): Continue monitoring site and increase surveillance on suspected dispersal routes. Direct missile forces to heighten readiness posture. Engage allies to increase pressure on enemy to stand down.

Intel Report 2: Border skirmishes between the two countries continue. Country X has moved additional armor units forward and its parliament approved a declaration authorizing the use of force in response to any cross-border incursion.

COA 2 (most dangerous): Country X launches a coordinated air and ground assault to secure key terrain on Country Y's side of the border and destroy frontline forces. Y's government falls in a coup. X achieves limited territorial gains and installs friendly regime.

Intel Report 3: An insurgent group has threatened to attack U.S. citizens and interests worldwide following the death of their leader in a drone strike. The group is assessed to have the capability to carry out small-scale attacks in at least 5 different countries.

Now generate the most likely and most dangerous courses of action this insurgent group could take based on the intel report.

4. You are the J-5 (Strategic Plans & Policy) on a Geographic Combatant Command staff. Given the 6 month outlook on security trends in your Area of Responsibility, draft a one page memo to the Commander identifying what you see as the top 3 strategic issues or decision points they will likely face in that timeframe. Provide your recommendation and rationale on how the Commander should prioritize time and resources to address each.

5. As a targeting officer, develop a prioritized list of the 25 highest value targets in an enemy integrated air defense system. Categorize each target by its function (EW radar, C2 node, missile site, etc.) and assess the impact on enemy capability if destroyed. After prioritizing the list, write a short justification (5 sentences max) for your rationale.

6. Prompt 1: Assess the key impacts of ubiquitous surveillance, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems on the future character of war over the next 20 years. Consider 1st, 2nd and 3rd order effects across DOTMLPF elements.

Prompt 2: Based on the assessment you just completed, what are the top 3 capability gaps you would identify for U.S. forces in that future warfare environment? What new concepts or investments would you recommend to address each gap?

Human Resources & Personnel Management Prompts:

1. You are a senior HR specialist serving on a task force to identify ways to improve diversity and inclusion in the Defense Department. Brainstorm a list of 10 potential initiatives, programs or policy changes to recommend the task force consider.

2. Draft a job announcement for a mid-level contracting professional position, including key duties, required skills/experience, and education requirements. Ensure the announcement will attract highly qualified candidates while still encouraging diverse applicants.

3. As an HR data analyst, your boss wants to better understand the key drivers of civilian employee turnover in your organization. Describe how you would design an analysis to quantify the impact of different potential factors like pay, promotion rates, job satisfaction, etc. What specific data would you need and what analytical techniques would you apply?

4. Prompt 1: Write a short report outlining the key provisions and requirements of the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act as they relate to promotion eligibility and timing.

Prompt 2: Based on the information from Prompt 1, develop a realistic career timeline for an Army officer from commissioning through promotion to Colonel, assuming they complete all key milestones on an accelerated track.

5. Few-shot prompt:

Issue 1: An employee has filed a complaint alleging discrimination in their non-selection for a promotion. An initial review shows the selectee was substantially less qualified.

Proposed solution: Conduct a full investigation into the hiring process. Interview all board members regarding the criteria used and adherence to merit principles. If substantiated, consider unwinding the action.

Issue 2: An employee received a Level 1 performance rating from their supervisor and is challenging the rating through the appeals process. The employee claims the rating was retaliatory after they raised concerns about wasteful spending in the program.

Proposed solution: Engage HR and Legal Counsel to review the ratings for consistency with documented counseling and feedback. Interview other members of team for input on employee's performance and any concerns raised. If rating found unsupported, direct a revised narrative assessment and re-rating. Consider follow-up with supervisor on performance management responsibilities.

Issue 3: An investigation has substantiated several instances of a senior executive using their official position for personal gain and to advantage relatives. The executive is retirement eligible but is contesting the allegations.

Now propose a solution for handling Issue 3 that balances accountability, employee rights, and potential risks to the organization.

6. You are a senior leader concerned about the impacts of frequent military moves on family stability and retention. Design a survey to assess the opinions of service members and spouses on the assignment process, including what factors they prioritize (e.g. co-location, stability, career-enhancing jobs) and what alternative assignment models (e.g. longer tours, geographic stability, virtual options) they would be most receptive to. Identify your key survey variables and a notional sampling approach.

Data Analysis & Decision Support Prompts:

1. Prompt 1: Analyze the spreadsheet data on maintenance work order backlogs over the past 12 months. Identify any notable trends or outliers.

Prompt 2: Based on your analysis, what are the top 3 data-driven recommendations you would make to department leadership for improving work order throughput and reducing aged backlogs?

2. As an operations research analyst, develop an optimization model to recommend the most efficient routing for a squadron of 12 surveillance drones to provide maximum area coverage. Key variables to consider include drone range, loiter time, area of regard of onboard sensors, and number/location of forward refueling points. Describe the basic formulation for your model and key constraint equations.

3. You are a data scientist building a natural language processing model to classify unstructured text in Defense Department policy documents. Describe your overall approach, including key preprocessing steps, your model architecture and training approach, and how you would evaluate model performance. What are the main challenges you anticipate with this task?

4. Few-shot prompt:

Problem Statement 1: A maintenance unit is responsible for repairs on several different aircraft types. Currently jobs are assigned to available technicians on a first-come, first-served basis, leading to mismatches in technician specialty and inefficient use of limited resources.

Proposed model: Develop a mixed integer program to optimize daily maintenance scheduling and technician assignment. Objective function: minimize time weighted value of aircraft availability. Constraints on technician hours, qualifications, job precedence.

Problem Statement 2: An installation commander needs to determine the optimal mix of renewable energy projects to meet an assigned goal of 25% of total installation electricity demand by 2025. Candidate projects include solar arrays, wind turbines, and battery storage, each with different capacities, cost, and availability characteristics. The installation has limited land available and a capital budget of $25M for renewable projects.

Now formulate this renewable energy portfolio problem as a linear program, defining your decision variables, objective function, and key constraints.

5. Prompt 1: Characterize the key differentiating attributes and decision factors for the 3 generations of main battle tanks shown in the images.

Prompt 2: Based on those attributes, develop a multi-attribute value model that could be used to assess the overall utility of a new tank design. Assign notional weights to each attribute based on your military judgment of their relative importance.

6. You are an analyst supporting the budget deliberations for an intelligence agency. Generate a Pareto chart decomposing the agency's total budget request into its major sub-components. Based on the Pareto analysis, identify those sub-components representing the top 80% of resource consumption. For each of the top 3 sub-components, draft 2-3 key questions or areas of inquiry you would pose to agency leadership to assess the justification for their resource levels.