Understanding the universal and emerging skills needed by policymakers

We spoke to Tatjana Verrier, Director at the Secretariat-General of the European Commission, about the Commission's approach to creating fewer reactive — and more proactive, as well as more future-proof policies. As one way to achieve this, they identified the universal and future relevant skills needed for policy creation and implementation and have launched the professionalisation programme for policymaking staff - the EU Policymaking Hub. The Hub has tripled the number of yearly participants in policymaking related training courses since its start.

**The problem: **Existing training focused on processes and procedures and less on holistic policymaking to proactively develop modern policies anticipating future needs.

**Why it matters: **Solving the challenges of the 21st century requires joined-up and more innovative and future-oriented policymaking.

**The solution: **Creating a learning programme based on an understanding of the universal and emerging skills needed by policymakers to proactively develop policies that anticipate future needs.

To start off, what is the European Commission?

The European Commission is the EU's politically independent executive arm. The Commission helps to shape the EU's overall strategy, proposes new EU laws and policies, monitors their implementation and manages the EU budget. There are over 32,000 people employed by the European Commission.

What does the European Commission do?

• Proposes new laws
• Manages EU policies & EU budget
• Enforces EU law
• Represents the EU internationally

How did you define the universal skills relevant to a policymaker?

Through extensive consultations, we learned that the policymaking cycle is the model that is most universal, most understood, and closest to the reality of policymaking. The idea of the cycle is that policy needs to be planned, developed, implemented, evaluated and iterated. In addition to this, we added the need to anticipate and to bring in strategic foresight into policymaking.

One of the innovations is that we have identified is the cross-cutting skills and behaviours that are increasingly relevant in modern policymaking and are required from policymakers at every stage of the policymaking cycle. These transversal and emerging “cross-cutting skills” are largely inspired by new ways of thinking — asking “how can we do policymaking in different ways? How can we engage with stakeholders better? How can we communicate better?”

See the full EU Policymaking HUB’s skills model here.

Why do we need a new approach to upskilling policymakers?

Having read the OECD report “Skills for a High Performing Civil Service" we started thinking about the skills-of-the-future in the policymaking profession.

We have seen the growing need to incorporate new courses into our programme, such as courses on strategic foresight. Faced with the Covid-19 pandemic, most governments and public sector institutions realize the need to shift the gear and to become more anticipative, proactive, rather than reactive, and prepared when dealing with crises.

We needed to give policymakers a vision and a broader, more holistic perspective on policymaking that builds on the Commission`s newly updated rule-set, the so-called better regulation agenda that gives extensive guidance to staff on how to do better policymaking. Only by doing this will we be able to integrate future literacy and new emerging skills into our holistic policy process. And so that's how we decided that we need a new approach to continuous upskilling policymakers.

**Can you share some of the cross-cutting skills that you identified? **

One example is learning to collaborate and do joined-up policymaking. Trying to resolve issues such as climate change with broad-ranging legislative packages such as Fit for 55, or through a commitment such as the Green Deal to make the continent Climate Neutral by 2050, means that you touch many different areas: For example: how do you renovate buildings? What is your energy mix? How do you tax energy? etc. To coordinate progress and synergies across many initiatives that contribute to this big goal, you need to be able to do that kind of joined-up policymaking, which is not often a natural behaviour, but something that needs to be developed and motivated.

Another example is communication, which is not a very surprising addition to the set. Policymakers often don't think that they're responsible for communication, they feel that’s something for the Communication Department. But it's not only through the press release that you need to communicate with your stakeholders. Instead, right from the start, you have to think about your target groups and about their interests.

We also promote innovative thinking and using innovative policymaking tools, such as design thinking for policies, behavioural insights, etc. We offer training on all this. We also came up with a comprehensive learning strategy to share existing expert knowledge in the Commission about emerging digital technologies to mainstream this knowledge in house. Similarly, we emphasise the benefits of stakeholder consultation and citizen engagement and offer training on how to best gain and benefit from these insights.

How do you make your training attractive to policymakers?

One of our challenges is ensuring that the training offered is taken up. Training in today’s world needs to compete for people’s attention and time. We try to offer short and engaging courses, heavily relying on peer learning.

Beyond that, we've designed learning pathways. After taking an initial course aiming to get a first idea - to mainstream relevant knowledge - we present learners with additional opportunities and resources should they want to deepen their understanding and become an expert.

Another way we’re driving engagement is by making sure that we design programmes for different levels of expertise. Whilst we want policymakers involved with one stage of the policy cycle to be aware of the other stages, this will be at a different level of detail to somebody actually involved with a particular stage. For this, we have designed a comprehensive competency progression model, so far available for the transversal competencies.

Early success indicators for the Policymaking hub:

• The Hub was launched in March 2020 under the sponsorship of Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President of the European Commission for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight. Here's an interview with more information.
• The hub offers over 100 courses 50 of which are designed or redesigned training courses for the new emerging skills identified in the framework
• Over 60 e-talks have been organised with high-level external thinkers, European Commission senior managers and Commission policymaker experts. These talks had an average attendance rate between 80 and 400 colleagues, reaching up to 1000.
• A new learning and knowledge platform was launched covering over 50 policymaking-relevant topics: These topics range from classical better regulation topics like planning, impact assessments and evaluations, to topics related to behavioural science, design-thinking or strategic foresight in policymaking, communication, citizen engagement, etc.

Testimonials

“The EU Policymaking Hub is a pioneering and innovative initiative by the European Commission to prepare its staff for policymaking in the 21st Century. Through an internal horizontal participatory process, to which I contributed, the European Commission did a rethink of its policymaking cycle and introduced new steps such as strategic anticipation and foresight to support better policies. The training programme associated with each step of the new cycle, makes it tangible and accessible.” — Ricardo Borges de Castro, Associate Director and Head of Europe in the World Programme at the European Policy Centre

“The extraordinary challenges the EU faces will require extraordinary policymaking skills. The commitment to leading the development of the policymaking profession represented by the Policymaking Hub shows the Commission is rising to the challenge.” —David Mair, Head of the “Knowledge for Policy: Concepts and Methods” Unit in the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

— Tatjana Verrier

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