Executive Education AOD Policy essentials: accelerating your policy development

This course draws on research insights and examples from major social policy reforms to demonstrate the features of policy success and failure, and to show how sometimes both are evident in the one policy. Participants will be introduced to case studies and academic concepts which can assist them to understand how success at times can be a protracted and fraught process and how policy failures can offer valuable insights, particularly for implementation. Participants will identify where in the policy design process these types of insights can be utilised, including through risk analysis and in ministerial briefings.

Course overview

Topics include:

insights from academic research into policy success and failure;
unpicking success employing social policy case studies;
how initial failure can be followed by later policy success;
the influence of pre-existing mental models and cognitive bias;
putting it together in terms of practical application.

Learning outcomes:

Apply increased policy development skills through learning how to use academic concepts to critically examine current and past policies
Explain the key elements leading to policy success or failure, and identify where these learnings can be used both in policy making and implementation

Who should attend?

This workshop is designed for public servants who have some policy experience. It is designed to deliver deeper learning and more complex content to the courses that precede it. It is also appropriate for those in private and non-government sectors who work closely with government on policy and delivery issues.

Presenter

Dr Trish Mercer

Trish Mercer is a Visiting Fellow with the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). Her diverse career in the Australian Public Service, with over 20 years at the senior executive level, spanned policy development and research, financial management, program implementation, community education and direct service delivery experience (as a Centrelink area manager for Central and North Queensland).

Trish is now involved in public policy research and executive education training. Trish co-edited Learning Policy, Doing Policy (ANU Press, 2021), exploring how theories of the policy process can be transferred and taken into practice. To promote such theory to a wider audience, Trish has worked with the Australian Public Service Commission to publish Policy Theory Bites. She also co-authored a chapter on ‘Making Public Policy’ in the Australian Politics and Public Policy Open Textbook published on-line by Sydney University Press.

Dr Wendy Jarvie

Wendy Jarvie has enjoyed a diverse career, alternating as a government policy practitioner and a researcher. She spent 22 years working in the Australian Public Service, including seven years as a Deputy Secretary in the Departments of Education, Science and Training and Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. She also managed evaluations and strategy development at the World Bank in Washington between 1998 and 2001.

Wendy has been providing Executive Education classes at ANU since 2012. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Public Service Research Group at the UNSW in Canberra, where she is undertaking research on the importance of public servant agency in developing good policy. She also works for the World Bank in the Pacific on secondary education and vocational education and training projects.