Empowering Administrative and Technical Staff at the University of Cape Coast: Leveraging Prompt Engineering for Generative AI to Uphold Administrative Integrity in a Dynamic IT Era

The rapid integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence into public sector administration presents a dualistic reality of enhanced efficiency and significant threats to administrative integrity, a tension acutely felt in emerging digital economies. This study addresses the critical absence of an evidence-based framework for leveraging prompt engineering to ensure Generative AI use by administrative and technical staff at the University of Cape Coast reinforces, rather than undermines, administrative integrity. Employing an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, the research combined qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey to first explore staff practices and then measure prevalent risks. The study achieved its purpose by diagnosing a bifurcated risk structure—comprising substantive Administrative Integrity and procedural Transparency & Accountability concerns—and subsequently developing a novel, theoretically-informed framework for prompt engineering. This framework fills a crucial gap in the literature, which has largely overlooked micro-practices of AI use in African administrative contexts, by providing a multi-layered governance model anchored in Public Value, Institutional, and Technology Acceptance theories. The new knowledge created demonstrates that integrity-preserving AI use requires an integrated system of institutional governance, iterative practice, and robust oversight, moving beyond technical skill-building. The study positions prompt engineering as a vital mechanism for upholding due process and due diligence. Key policy implications include the need to mandate structured prompt engineering literacy, institutionalise curated prompt libraries, and formally integrate AI accountability matrices into administrative procedures to guide effective resource allocation and decision-making for sustainable digital transformation.