Policy Design – Four-Day Training Course
This is an in-house and an open programme seminar. For details or to discuss any aspect of the seminar, please email David Leakey on [email protected] or phone on +44 20 7661 7817.
Policy Design – Four-Day Training Course
Day One Futures, Foresight and Horizon Scanning
Day Two Analysis and Use of Evidence
Day Three An A-Z of Policy
Day Four Monitoring and Evaluation Essentials
Overview
There are a number of highly effective tools that can be used to improve the robustness of your policy planning and development. This event covers the essentials that every policy maker needs. It addresses the development of the whole policy cycle: rationale, objectives, appraisal of options, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and taking forward lessons learned into the design of future policies.
Who is the seminar designed for?
This course is designed for policy-makers at all levels, both those new to policy and those looking to develop their skills further. The intention of the course is to equip you with a set of tools for designing policies that achieve their intended outcomes and help you understand how to apply the tools to your policy work. As such it is designed for people working at all stages of the policy cycle who wish to ensure that their policies are strategic, robust and future-proof, mitigating risk and enabling the development of more impactful policy interventions.
How will you benefit from attending?
You will learn a range of tools and approaches to enable you to develop more effective and resilient policies that can be successfully implemented. The training will empower you to improve your policy’s strategic quality, as well as its likelihood of meeting your goals to deliver successful outcomes. It will also help you to present a policy proposal more effectively to different audiences.
Learning objectives
As a result of participating in this highly interactive four-day training, you will:
- Be able to gain insights into the potential future threats and opportunities that could arise in any policy area
- Understand the different types of evidence that may inform your policy design
- Explore how to present the results of analysis of evidence
- Understand the key stages in the policy cycle – from design to implementation to evaluation and beyond
- Understand the factors that make the difference between policy that works and policy that fails
- Be able to choose between the wide range of possible options for achieving government policy objectives
- Have a framework for monitoring and evaluating policy impacts and be able to adapt accordingly.
Day One Futures, Foresight and Horizon Scanning
Introductions and Aim of Day
Session One Understanding Horizon Scanning
- Why looking ahead matters and how it supports strategic thinking
- How horizon scanning fits into the policy cycle
- Who to involve?
- Different business needs and the different approaches that can be used
Break
Session Two Using PESTLE / STEEPLE
- Understanding Driver Mapping
- Exercise -using PESTLE/ STEEPLE to identify drivers that are opportunities and/ or threats
- How to prioritise future opportunities and threats for action (taking into account organisational strengths and weaknesses)
- The range of possible strategic policy options for responding to opportunities and threats
Long Break
Session Three Scenario Planning
- The impact of uncertainty on achieving objectives, scenarios and how this relates to risk management
- Trends analysis and scenario planning compared
- Scenario creation exercise
- Considering combinations of scenarios
- Analysing the opportunities and threats in different scenarios
- Using scenarios for stress testing
End of Day Wrap-Up
- Further questions
Close of Day
Day Two Analysis and Use of Evidence
Introductions, Approach and Structure of the Day
Session One – Evidence and How Best to Analyse It
- Identifying and defining different types of evidence
- What constitutes useful evidence?
- Getting to the root of the problem
- Knowing what matters to decision makers
- Analysing costs, benefits and risks of different options
- Analysis and evaluation
Short Break
Session Two – Pitfalls in Analysis
- Working with uncertainty
- The danger of not establishing clear decision criteria
- The danger of not thinking systemically
- Cognitive biases (e.g. confirmation bias) and analysis
- Using alternative scenarios properly
- Tools and techniques for overcoming the impact of biases
Long Break
Session Three – Presenting Evidence
- Different ways of presenting evidence and analysis
- The power of context
- Summarising the thought process clearly
- Preparing material and data to present to different audiences
- Embracing challenge from stakeholders
End of Day Wrap-Up
- Further questions
Close of Day
Day Three An A-Z of Policy
Introductions and Overview of Sessions
Session One Problem Definition and Goal-Setting
- Strategy and policy – what is the difference?
- Understanding the problem or opportunity that the policy will address
- Making the business case for government intervention (e.g. market failure, issues of equity and fairness, addressing risks to public etc.)
- Creating outcome-focused policy goals
- Ensuring strategic alignment between policies
Break
Session Two Option Creation and Option Appraisal
- The range of possible policy options
- Creativity and innovation
- The Better Regulation agenda
- Impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis
- The Five Case Model and the criteria for choosing the best option
- Gathering evidence from stakeholders (including service users and all affected by proposed policy)
- Involving the front-line in policy design
Long Break
Session Three Policy Implementation
- Focusing effort and making strategic choices that support implementation
- Project management and benefits realisation
- Managing the “Delivery Chains”
- Managing delivery risk
- Change management
- Involving the front-line and service users in policy implementation planning
End of Day Wrap-Up
- Further questions
Close of Day
Day Four Monitoring and Evaluation Essentials
Session One Context and Unintended Consequences
- Establishing what would happen without our policy/ project intervention
- Involving the right people in the right ways – including partner organisations, intended beneficiaries, and those in the front-line of delivery – to anticipate possible unintended consequences
- Might we create unintended incentives through our approach to monitoring and evaluation?
Break
Session Two Monitoring
- Establishing accountabilities
- Monitoring what matters to the community, not just the easily measurable
- Synergy in monitoring
- Streamlining monitoring
Long Break
Session Three Evaluation and Improvement
- Involving the right people and institutions in evaluation
- Evaluating lessons learned
- Sharing the lesson learned
- Adapting as needed
- Learning and improving as the context changes
Final Questions and Discussion
Close of the Course
Our L&D ethos
- We’re here to enable you to perform better!
Our L&D team
- All former practitioners, now professional trainers, our L&D team have provided open and bespoke solutions for more than 100,000 public servants from 120 countries
Our L&D seminars
- A vast reservoir of international, transferable knowledge and perspectives about effective, delivery-focused approaches to working smarter in the public sector
This is an in-house and an open programme seminar. For details or to discuss any aspect of the seminar, please email David Leakey on [email protected] or phone on +44 20 7661 7817
