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This article is written by Sally Washington, Executive Director, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia New Zealand School of Government.

The problem: Government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted cracks in government decision-making around the world. Many are not new: poor use of evidence, lack of coordination between organisations (the ‘silo’ problem) and shortages of skilled policy advisors.

Why it matters: Good government decision making depends on good advice underpinned by high-performing policy systems and strong public service policy capability.

The solution: Governments need to take a deliberate and systematic approach to building policy capability. There is international experience to draw on or “steal with pride”.

A range of jurisdictions are already engaged in significant change programmes to improve policy capability–the quality of policy advice, the skills of policy advisors and the organisational enablers that support them. There’s a wealth of good practice and experimentation to draw on. What can organisations or jurisdictions embarking on a similar journey learn from their efforts?

Aotearoa New Zealand and the United Kingdom now have many years of practice to share. The UK Head of the Policy Profession team shared their review of progress on ‘professionalising policy making’. As part of that review, they invited international counterparts to cast a ‘critical friend’ eye over their work and progress. As one of those reviewers I found significant parallels with my work establishing and leading the NZ Policy Project. Indeed, our two teams collaborated and shared lessons over many years. Those lessons have since informed work with the Australian public service and several departments in various Australian jurisdictions.

The Australia New Zealand School of Government recently convened a ‘curated conversation’ between several jurisdictions to share strategies for building policy capability. In all of these discussions, some common critical success factors for improving policy quality and capability across government stand out. Here are a few: 

Collaboration and co-design are crucial for change: collaboration is key to ensuring buy-in and a shared direction of travel. And that means co-designing standards, frameworks, tools and methods with the people who need to use them. That was critical to the development and adoption of the Policy Project policy improvement frameworks, and highlighted by reviewers and policy leaders alike in the UK (many policy professionals and other experts helped co-design their ‘policy profession standards’). It contrasts with the bulk of public sector reform around the world which usually adopts a ‘top-down’, ‘command and control’ approach (and often results in a report that sits on a shelf at best, or outright or passive resistance at worst).

Good policy depends on an effective infrastructure: ensuring good policy advice depends on more than just smart or well-trained people. It requires a system that includes enabling organisations, good leadership, quality assurance processes, tools and methods (including bringing those who will be affected into the design process), and other resources (data & analytics, relationships with community groups) that are mutually reinforcing and accessible to the policy professionals producing policy advice. All are important but it's how they are joined-up that counts.

It takes a community–with an effective hub: improving policy across the system means breaking down silos and sharing good practice–what colleagues in the UK referred to (and I stole) as “steal with pride”. Don’t reinvent the wheel, build a shared understanding of what good policy advice, good policy skills and good policy organisations look like (there are core characteristics–organisations can add bespoke elements), and share good practice across departments and even jurisdictions. The organisations charged with catalysing the change (the Policy Project in NZ, the Policy Profession Unit in the UK, and the Australian Public Service Commission in Australia) need to be actively nurturing that community, acting as brokers and facilitators to share and scale good practice, and constantly coming up with fresh material on policy methods and their application to inspire and maintain the momentum.

It’s rewarding to “pay it forward”. In return you get the opportunity to hold a mirror up to your own practice.

And let’s not forget the common policy capability challenges that no-one seems to have cracked yet (highlighted in an OECD report), including:

  • People-centred policy – how do we genuinely engage to better understand user needs, and to include those who will be affected by government policy into policy design and delivery? What methods (user-centred design, behavioural insights, foresight etc) and mindsets (curiosity, continuous evaluation and challenge, focusing on opportunities and strengths not just problems and hurdles) are important parts of the equation? These issues–and what each method offers to a policy challenge–were discussed at a conference a few years ago in Aotearoa New Zealand.
  • Future focused policy advice – how do we improve policy stewardship to build knowledge and the capacity to give advice that spans election cycles and the priorities of governments of the day? This is essential for tackling areas like climate change or intergenerational disadvantage. It means investing in the knowledge base, expertise and tools for anticipating and managing emerging issues, and the courage to shape the desired future, by giving proactive advice to decision makers. The New Zealand Treasury's living standards framework culminating in the first wellbeing budget is a good example of policy stewardship. A few years back, senior officials in Aotearoa New Zealand discussed their future capacity in workshops–to create a policy heat map, and to review their stewardship capabilities and performance. These were precursors to New Zealand’s Long-term Insights Briefings process embedded in the Public Service Act 2020.
  • Intelligent policy customers–nudge the ‘demand side’ – how can we help ministers and other decision makers be more ‘intelligent customers’ and commissioners of free and frank policy advice? How do we set up the policy advisory relationship so that decision makers get the best evidence-informed advice, and policy demands aren't lost in translation? This requires public service advisors to be politically neutral and politically savvy. Decision-makers need to ask the right questions and be able to articulate their policy intent - they don't have to have all the answers, but they do need to know what they want to achieve. These relationships at the political administrative interface require deliberate effort to make the marriage work.

More collaboration within and across jurisdictions could help to share and scale good practice and address some common policy capability challenges. We are getting better at sharing the “what” of policy (looking elsewhere for exemplars of substantive policies) but sharing insights and experience about the “how” of policy (systems, tools and processes for policy design and delivery) might be even more enlightening. It’s rewarding to “pay it forward”. In return you get the opportunity to hold a mirror up to your own practice. Akin to living in a foreign country, it teaches you more about your own idiosyncrasies.

I'm hoping others will also share their 'building policy capability' journeys, and let others take a look under the hood, so that more organisations and jurisdictions can “steal with pride”.

Note: this is the first in a series on building policy capability. Future articles will dig into strategies for improving policy capability, as well as providing a policy capability assessment framework.

Read Parts 2 & 3 of this series here.

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