Translating Policy into Action: Tools for Policy Design & Implementation

1. Translating Policy into Action: Tools for Policy Design & Implementation

2. Today: 5 July Adapting Environmental Scanning Engaging Stakeholders Identifying relevant Trends & Emerging problems

3. Today’s Roadmap • Where we are: • Process of identifying objectives & targets suggests feasibility of proposed policy(ies) and guides implementation • Where we want to go next • Involve stakeholders to review and assess proposals by • Identifying threats and opportunities • Identifying barriers and facilitators • Strategy – Environmental Scanning • A structured review assessing if and how the policy will thrive in the environment

4. Involving Stakeholders • Each policy is placed in an environment with its own characteristics and dynamics • Stakeholders can • Identify key external characteristics and trends that will affect implementation and success • Suggest improvements to proposed policy, e.g. • Modifying the proposed policy • Proposing strategic alliances • Stakeholder buy-in may be crucial to adoption & implementation

5. Exercise: Involving Stakeholders • Consider proposed policy(ies) from 4 July • Describe – type organization and role –of stakeholders you would seek feedback from • Indicate reason for including each stakeholder • What reasons you would give them for seeking their involvement • Suggest • How you would involve them, e.g., individual meetings, forums, focus groups, etc. • What questions you would ask

6. Debriefing (1): Who to involve • Complete matrix identifying who to involve & why they should be involved

7. Debriefing (2): Who to involve • Groups refer to matrix to complete one of the following (assigned) tasks • Identify stakeholders who should be involved in all types of proposed policies • Identify stakeholders who should be involved in specific areas of policies • Identify reasons for selecting stakeholders

8. Debriefing (3): How to involve stakeholders • Identify reasons given to stakeholders to elicit their involvement • List suggested strategies for getting stakeholders’ feedback • Based on your experience what have you observed about • Implementing each strategy • When it works well • When it may not work well • Other lessons learned

9. Debriefing (4): Questions to Ask • Are there generic questions? • Are there wordings that you would recommend?

10. Value of Environmental Scanning • Vouker article was written 20 years ago • Based on your experience how relevant is the article today? • What steps have you/your agency taken to gather environmental information? How effective have they been?

11. What an environmental scan is • A systematic exploration of the external environment to • Identify opportunities, challenges, and future developments • Decide what features are relevant to proposed policy • What will change most in the future • What is most important to the policy objectives (outcomes) • Can potential problems/challenges be resolved • Helps avoid organizational myopia

12. Adapting Environment Scanning • Irregular scanning: conducted on an ad hoc basis to aid making planning decisions • Stakeholders serve as an information source. Their value depends on diverse perspectives • Scan should identify trends and emerging issues in politics, economy, social, technology, legal, environment (Conway, p. 13) • Note: Commonly scans include research as a methodology

13. Relevant Components • Components politics, economy, social, technology, legal, environment (Conway, p. 13) • What is impacted by identified trends in the specific components • The target population? • Input resources? • Planned activities or processes? • Direction of impact • Positive • Negative • Ability to influence impact (can/cannot)

14. Example: Organizing scan information • Youker Figure 6 & 7 • Shows applicable trends • Organizes them by category & ability to control • Rates key actors & important factors • Identifies trends • Most important to achieving the policy objective • How they will impact the proposed policy • The ability to influence them • Categorize trends as opportunities/threats

15. Exercise: Identifying relevant trends & emergent problems • Each group will review and assess a strategic plan. Summarize its methodology • What stakeholders were involved and how they were involved? • What trends/threats/opportunities were identified? • Do they seem adequate and appropriate? (May consult Crowley’s list p. 13) • Lessons learned • What features of the plan would you retain or adapt? • What features would you change? • Anything you would add? • Note: we are not critiquing the plans but using them to do a better job of deciding what trends to track, what stakeholders to involve, and how to involve them

16. Debriefing the scanning exercise • Each group summarizes its plan and its assessment • Based on the plans, the group assessment, and individual experiences • How would you prioritize or modify Crowley’s list page 13 • What lessons did you learn?

17. Stakeholders & Environmental Scans • Reassess our conclusions of who should be involved, how they should be involved, and what they should be asked • Observations about what information we want from stakeholders and how to get it • Develop “Guidelines for Involving Stakeholders to Assess the External Environment” • Create and put aside a list “Other Reasons for Engaging Stakeholders”

18. Next steps • Where we are • Initial (yesterday’s) objective and targets • Assessed receptivity of external environment • Need to • Consider how writing objectives with targets and assessing environment improve policy implementation • Identify organization’s capacity (strengths & weaknesses) • Partners: why to partner & with whom to partner • Assessing the capacity of implementers