What Is Public Policy?
Public policies are governmental decisions and proposed courses of action dedicated to a specific objective in a specific sector. The concept of public policy infers the existence of an area that is completely individual but said in public.
What Is The Nature Of Public Policy?
The communicative nature of Public Policy is helpful for analytical purposes, since it connects individuals and collective policy actors, to accountability “forums” in deliberative processes, that are generally under the threat of sanctions by the forums, in case of unsatisfactory performance, or misconduct of the policy actors.
What Are The Shortcomings Of Public Policy?
Excessive Fragmentation In Thinking And Action – Fails to acknowledge that actions taken in one sector have dire consequences on the others and may even work at cross purposes with the policies of the other sectors.
Overlapping Between Policy Making And Implementation – The result of which is sub-optimal policies, and inadequate attention to the citizens’ needs, while designing the public policies.
Lack Of Non-Governmental Inputs And Informed Debate – There are no systematic means for obtaining external inputs, involving the ones affected by policies, their impacts on different groups, and for debating alternatives.
Public Policy Being Made “Public Centric”
This section talks about the processes required to design a holistic and hence, a “public-centric” policy.
Reduction In Fragmentation – A gradual decrease in fragmentation as one climbs the hierarchy. This would mean fewer secretaries who would handle multiple sectors.
Decentralizing Implementation Authority – The Director-General’s annual performance appraisal will be carried out by the Secretary, ensuring that the policy-making role is not considered secondary or unimportant.
Improving The Flow Of Knowledge From Outside Government – Ensures the availability of subject matter expertise, and non-governmental inputs to the policy-makers.
How To Sharpening The Skills Of Policy-Making Manpower
Unarguably, a well-designed career path can provide strong incentives for the progressive acquisition of expertise and professional skills. The key requirement is of a career path that –
creates incentives to learn, acquire, and apply the right skills.
Establishing links between academia and the administration
identifies and weeds out the underperformers
Ensures that only the ones with the requisite knowledge and intelligence make it to the top policy levels.
The Indian School of Public Policy begins with a year-long, Postgraduate Programme in Public Policy, Design & Management, to prepare the students for challenging careers in public policy activities across government, industry, and civil society.
