Applicants for public policy roles can find help with identifying skills and experience, and deepening understanding of policy processes, in a range of reports, guides, and frameworks.

This article examines some policy-related resources and identifies how job applicants can use them.

Policy skills

Applicants for policy roles may wish to examine policy skills frameworks to gauge their suitability and find the appropriate language to describe what they do.

New Zealand

The New Zealand government has developed some tools to help people identify and develop policy skills. Their Policy Skills Framework “sets out the full extent of the knowledge, applied skills and behaviours great policy practitioners need – from new professionals developing their policy craft to seasoned experts at the top of their game. It is designed to help policy practitioners assess and strengthen their own skills profile, and to help policy managers assess and build high performing teams.”

Articles about this skills framework are:

• Mapping your policy skills using the NZ Policy Skills Framework
• NZ’s policy project of value to applicants.

United Kingdom

The UK Civil Service has also identified key skills for policy roles. Their Policy Profession Standards is a competency framework that describes the skills and knowledge required by policy professionals at all stages of their career. Originally published in 2018, it was updated in 2021.

The Policy Profession Standards framework is arranged around three pillars that comprise the key skills of all policy practice:

•  Strategy – using evidence and analysis to understand the context and develop new strategies.
• Democracy – understanding and supporting good governance and accountability through the production of robust and challenging advice to inform decisions.
• Delivery – designing policy implementation and delivery systems in collaboration with delivery partners and users, including how policies will be evaluated and improved.

Each pillar contains four Standards with 12 Standards in total. These three pillars represent fundamental practices relevant to every policy area. The relevance of individual Standards will vary for each policy.

The standards identify three levels of learning: developing, practitioner, and expert. The document points out that the levels are not linked to grades in the hierarchy, most roles will span multiple levels of skills and knowledge, and the levels of learning are cumulative. Applicants for policy roles can therefore use this document to identify strengths, stage of learning, and areas for further development.

Policy processes

The Policy Hub

The Australian government has a website dedicated to policy, known as The Policy Hub, initiated in 2018. The Policy Hub is described as “the place to come for all things policy, sourced from practitioners and leaders from across the APS and beyond.”

The site describes the Delivering Great Policy Model, defining policy and the policy cycle, the underpinning mindset and the foundations for readiness to respond to policy challenges.

The Resources section provides tools, methodologies, case studies, networks, training and development information. Applicants for policy roles may find it useful to refer to these pages, particularly the tools and methodologies sections, and consider the training on offer.

A resource to consider is that of ANZSOG (the Australia and New Zealand School of Government), which has a specific focus on government-focused research relevant to the public sector.

J Daley, Gridlock: Removing barriers to policy reform, Grattan Institute, 2021

The starting point of this report is that policy reform in Australia is “gridlocked”. To find out what is blocking reform, this report analyses the outcomes of 73 concrete policy reforms proposed by Grattan Institute in the decade from 2009 to 2019, across a wide range of policy areas including budgets, tax and welfare, retirement incomes, housing, transport and cities, health, energy, and education.

The report examines which reforms did happen, and which did not. It identifies the blockers that consistently result in gridlock, and it identifies changes to the mechanisms and institutions of government to clear these blockages so that next time might be different.

Key blockers were: unpopularity with the electorate, vested interests, popular opinion influencers, the power of ministerial advisers, a weakened public service, political patronage.

When giving examples to demonstrate your policy analysis skills, applying these factors may help explain your advice or why your advice was not adopted.

Public Policy Engagement Guide: A toolbox for UWA researchers, UWA Public Policy Institute, 2021

This Public Policy Engagement Guide is useful for both public servants and researchers. It can help public servants understand more about the value of research for existing and new policies, and it can help researchers be more effective in influencing policy, as well as providing ideas for researchers seeking a job in a public service.

The guide explains that governments are also interested in research for three main reasons:

• “To use research findings to design new policies to improve lives.
• To use research to evaluate the effectiveness of existing policies.
• To become better informed about emerging problems.”

This Public Policy Engagement Guide examines what research engagement and impact are in practice, offers practical advice on how to sharpen research appeal, and describes what the constituent parts of government are and do, all with a view to influencing decision makers. Examples are based on Australian and Western Australian contexts, but is general enough to be transferable to different jurisdictions.

What is public policy? As the nature of public policy can be a bit mysterious, it’s useful to consider a range of definitions. The Guide says:

“Public policy describes what government does in broad terms to address the problems that exist in society and that it considers important, for example health outcomes, social services and education. It can also describe what government should be doing, as well as what others who wish to form governments think should be done.” (p. 5)

“From the perspective of academic experts, the unifying thing that matters is that policymakers seek to answer the ‘What should be done?’ question. Therefore, a useful self-discipline skill is to respond to this question not on a scientific basis of ‘all things being equal’ (they rarely are), but rather of ‘as many things considered as possible’ (which better describes the context).”

Another aspect of policy that can be opaque is the policy making process. The guide addresses that nature of the process and the role of academic expertise, based on a policy cycle concept.

“The process that underlies modern policy making is cyclical and multi-faceted. A core assumption is that decision-makers are properly informed as they set priorities and allocate resources. But without easy access to the evidence (research) and expertise, this can be misplaced. Some information can be provided from within government, but a lot comes from external sources such as academic networks or think-tanks.” (p. 5)

The guide also asks: what is public policy engagement?

“Policy engagement describes the many ways in which researchers and policymakers can connect around and explore common interests at various stages in their respective research and policy making processes. From informal to formal enquiries, in consultation or sustained collaboration, policy engagement enables researchers and policymakers to improve public policy through making the most of their evidence, expertise and experience.” (p. 6)

A section of the guide that is particularly useful for both academics and public servants is the section on different types of impact. The table of impacts defines and illustrates 10 types of impact which can be used to identify and explain research’s impact and relevance to policy issues. The types of impact are:

• “Policy
• Attitudinal
• Environmental
• Economic
• Health and wellbeing
• Understanding and awareness
• Other forms of decision-making and behaviour change impacts
• Cultural
• Other social e.g. improvements in human rights
• Capacity or preparedness.”  (p. 9)

The guide then provides help with:

• measuring the policy impact of research
• engagement
• communicating research
• pitching to the media.

The section on measuring the policy impact of research concerns engagement activity and is useful for identifying both the impact of engagement and the overall impact. Examples are provided of the following measures (p. 11):

Engagement:

• inputs: time and resource materials
• activities: engagement activities you undertake
• outputs products your engagement produce

Impact:

• outcomes: changes that happen as a result of your research
• benefits: the overall measurable benefit your research achieved.

The remainder of the guide looks at how to be successful in policy engagement and impact creation, and how to navigate the Australian policy landscape.

Further information is available in the UWA Public Policy Institute’s research impact tool.

Eyes On Evidence II: An assessment of the transparency of evidence usage in the Government of Canada by Farah Qaiser, Tej Heer, Ivana Azdajic and Rachael Maxwell (2022).

This Canadian study is useful for ideas on assessing the transparency of evidence underlying policy decisions. In this study the authors applied a transparency framework, adapted from a UK framework, to assess the transparency of evidence use in a total of 100 policies from 10 Canadian government departments and agencies. In short, the authors sought to establish whether the evidence behind policy decisions can be found by the lay public. By being transparent about the evidence, the public has the opportunity to understand what considerations led to a decision, and why.

What is a policy? A policy is defined as a “specific intervention to change the status quo at a level that is intuitively characterised as ‘a policy’ by the public, politicians and the media.” This includes both primary and secondary legislation, including bills, regulations, and funding announcements. (p. 10)

The framework consists of four categories:

• Diagnosis: What do policy-makers know about the issue?
• Proposal: What is the government’s chosen intervention, and why was it chosen?
• Implementation: How will the chosen intervention be rolled out, and why was this method chosen?
• Testing and evaluation: How and when will we know if the policy has worked?

Overall, the assessment found that “policies scored low on the transparency of evidence usage, meaning that it’s very difficult for members of the public to find the evidence behind government policy. Too often, policies failed to provide a reference or citation for any evidence mentioned, and rarely acknowledged alternative policy options, or any absent, weak or contradictory evidence.” They also found that: “Across all departments, almost all policies scored poorly (i.e., received a 0) in the testing and evaluation section (i.e., to know how and when a policy has worked).

Applicants applying for policy roles may find it useful to consider this guide in relation to their policy analysis, advice, or implementation.

Related to this guide is the issue of evidence-based policy-making, a contentious issue about which much has been written. For example, Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission in 2008, explored this issue, as has Professor Brian Head, University of Queensland.