final exam Flashcards
What is public policy analysis?
- Crafting options
- Making recommendations to solve problems
- Evidence-based advice giving
What are the core elements of public policy analysis?
- Part of policymaking
- high quality info to support high quality decisions
- systematic comparison of alternative options
- Policy should be logical and evidence-based
- fosters rational discourse
- Multidisciplinary, may be co produced
What is the rational model of policy analysis?
- Define problem
- Identify options
- Specify objectives
- Evaluation criteria
- Outcomes and trade-offs
- Recommendation
What is Bardach’s eightfold path?
- Define the problem
- Assemble some evidence
- Construct the alternatives
- Select the criteria
- Project the outcomes
- Confront the trade-offs
- Stop, focus, narrow, deepen, decide
- Tell your story
What do policy analysts do?
- Research and analysis
- Design and recommend alternatives
- Advise strategically
- Democratize - pursue ethical objective: it should further equal access to, and influence on the policy process for all stakeholders
- Mediate - foster many forms of cooperation
What is policy analytical capacity?
A Departments’ capacity to articulate its medium and long term priorities by:
- utilize environmental scanning, trends analysis and forecasting methods
- undertake theoretical research
utilize statistics, applied research and modeling
- undertake evaluation of the means of meeting targets/goals
- Undertake consultation and managing relations
- Undertake Program design, implementation monitoring and evaluation
What are policy analytical resources?
- Quantity and quality of employees
- Budgets
- access to external sources of expertise
What is the Policy Analytical Gap?
Capacity of the government to identify, define and solve problems is lagging behind the complexity of policy issues (ie. common use of consultants)
What is Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+)?
An assessment of how diverse groups may experience policies, programs, and initiatives
How can data and design be used to create better policy options?
- Understanding Problems
- Targeting Needs
- Checking Success
- Involving People
- Explaining Clearly
- Keep Improving
How can government’s use design thinking?
- Understanding People’s Needs
- Trying Ideas and Improving Them
- Making Services Better
- Coming Up with New Ideas
- Working Together
What are the objectives in public policy analysis?
- Understanding the Problem
- Evaluating Policy Options
- Predicting Outcomes
- Cost-Benefit Analysis
- Identifying Trade-offs
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Policy Implementation
- Monitoring and Evaluation
What should analysts strive for in specifying their objectives?
- Clarity
- Measurability
- Feasibility
- Ethical Considerations
- Flexibility
What are criteria in public policy analysis?
- Evaluative core of policy analysis
- Elements used to weigh options - they provide the justification and rationale for specific recommendation
- Generally use 3 - 5
What are criteria used for?
Ranking alternative options (how well they achieve objectives)
To what are criteria applied?
Applied to outcomes of alternatives
Where do criteria come from?
They are derivatives of objectives
What are the most common criteria?
- Effectiveness - does the policy address the problem? How much?
- Efficiency - are the benefits worth the costs?
- Equity: who gets what, when, and how
- Feasibility - can the thing be done?
What is effectiveness?
Likelihood that a policy or program will achieve stated objectives
What is Efficiency?
Are the benefits worth the costs?
What is Equity?
- fairness/justice
- Who gets what, when, and how
What is Feasibility?
Can the goal be met with the resources available?
What are the different kinds of feasibility criteria?
- Political acceptability
- Social acceptability
- Legality
- Administrative feasibility
- Technical feasibility
- Sustainability
- Financial feasibility (cost)
What is a cost-benefit analysis?
- Measurement of efficiency
- Measures the costs of the program compared to its benefits
- Both costs and benefits use the same units: dollars
- If you can assign a dollar value to an outcome, you can include it in cost-benefit analysis
How is cost-benefit analysis conducted?
Uses the equation: Net Benefits = Benefits - Costs (NB = B - C)
What are common types of costs?
- Direct costs
- Indirect costs
- Borrowing costs
- One-time fixed costs
- Operations and maintenance costs
- Opportunity costs
What are direct costs?
Immediate, tangible expenses as a result of implementing the policy
What are indirect costs?
Costs that are not directly tied to the implementation of the policy but are incurred as a result of it
What are borrowing costs?
The costs of borrowing funds
What are one-time fixed costs?
New capital expenditures, equipment, training, etc
What are operations and maintenance costs?
Ongoing costs of the policy
What are opportunity costs?
Other things that could have been done with the same resources instead
What are common types of benefits?
- Direct benefits
- Indirect benefits
- Intangible benefits
What are direct benefits?
Directly attributable to the policy
What are indirect benefits?
Additional benefits that resulted, but were not included in the goals
What are intangible benefits?
Benefits that cannot be counted or quantified
What is cost-effectiveness analysis?
- Comparative measure of efficiency
- Tool for finding the alternative that meets goal at lowest cost
- Need clear metrics of success/effectiveness
- Not concerned with putting monetary values on benefits
How is cost-effectiveness analysis conducted?
- Fixed Budget approach
- Fixed effectiveness approach
What is the fixed budget approach?
Level of spending is set and the analyst must identify option that produces greatest benefit within the set budget
What is the fixed effectiveness approach?
A specific level of benefit is set and analyst must identify the option that achieves that benefit at the lowest cost
How are measures used in crafting criteria?
They allow for criteria to be operationalized using
1. quantitative measures
2. categorical measures
What do measures do?
Capture the degree to which alternatives meet a standard or goal
What are quantitative measures?
Use numerical values to count/summarize a projected outcome related to criteria
What are categorical measures?
Establish classes of performance (eg. low, high, medium)
What is involved in the “projecting outcomes” stage of public policy analysis?
- Systematic comparison of the potential outcomes of your options
- Evaluating the probability of achieving these outcomes
- Weigh the strengths and weaknesses related to specified criteria
How can a policy analyst project outcomes? What methods do they use?
- Use evidence and examples
- Use of prediction, modeling, experimentation
- Use of behavioral, cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, sensitivity analyses
What is the base case?
The common reference mark used to measure effectiveness/projected progress
What are break-even estimates?
- The course of action is sufficiently likely to produce results good enough to justify costs
- What is the minimum level of effectiveness this policy would have to meet in order to justify the costs?
What is an analytical matrix?
- An analytical matrix is a tool used to compare options
- helps make decisions by highlighting which option is best overall according to the criteria chosen.
How is an analytical matrix used?
by breaking down the decision into key factors, like cost or effectiveness, and then scoring each option based on those factors.
What does “dominance” mean in policy analysis?
that one policy option is clearly better than another in every aspect considered, making it the obvious choice (very rare)
What is involved in confronting trade-offs?
- Clarify trade-offs between outcomes associated with different alternatives
- Need to weigh these trade-offs
- All equal - choose the alternatives that are most effective at addressing the problem
What is the final step in public policy analysis?
telling your story / making a recommendation based on the evidence and findings of the analysis.
What are best practices in ‘telling your story’?
- Clarity
- Structure - Organize your analysis logically
- Engagement - capture your audience’s attention
- Visuals like charts or graphs
- Relevance
- Persuasiveness
