3. The drive to professionalise policy making 22
3. The drive to professionalise policy
making
Government has taken a more professional approach to policy making over the last thirty years. There has been a movement away from policy advice by generalists to one informed by concepts
of risk, management, and delivery of services.
30
1998: The Performance and Innovation Unit PIU
In particular, the period from 1997 has seen repeated efforts to define and rationalise policy making. In order to understand policy making
today, it is essential to grasp the basics of this story. We offer a summary of the main developments below.
Created in 1998 and based in the Cabinet Office, the PIU was intended to provide “a resource for policy development for the whole of Government”.
31
• Focusing on issues that cross departmental boundaries and proposing policy innovations to improve delivery of the government objectives; and
It had two main functions:
• selecting aspects of government policy that require review, in order to improve co- ordination and delivery when more than one public body is involved.
32
The main purpose of the PIU was, therefore, to be cross-cutting and tackle the issues that were “simply falling between the cracks” of departments, rather than replicate their policy functions.
33
1999: The vision of ‘modernised’ policy making
The Modernising Government White Paper was published in March 1999.
34
It presented a set of reforms to “create better government to make life better for people”, with policy making at the
top of the list. The rationale was that the management reforms of the 1980s and 1990s had meant “little attention was paid to the policy process”. As a result, policy making was fragmented,
risk averse and focused on the short term.
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the process by which governments translate their political vision into programmes and actions to deliver ‘outcomes’ – desired changes in the real world.
The White Paper outlined new principles for policy making, and set out the existing government definition of policy making:
30
See June Burnham and Robert Pyper, Britain’s Modernised Civil Service, Palgrave, 2008.
31
HC Deb, 28 July 1998, cc132-4W.
32
Ibid.
33
David Halpern, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Polity, 2010, p.267.
34
Cabinet Office, Modernising Government, 1999, p.15. All subsequent quotes in this paragraph are from this source, available at: http:www.nationalschool.gov.ukpolicyhubdocsmodgov.pdf
35
Despite this narrative, “much of the White Paper can be seen as a continuation and development of programmes of reform and change that had been implemented in the UK through the 1980s and 1990s”.
Andrew Wyatt 2002 ‘Evidence Based Policy Making: The View from a Centre’, Public Policy and Administration, vol. 17:3, 2002, pp. 12-28.
3. The drive to professionalise policy making 23 The Cabinet Office then fleshed out the White Paper’s principles into a model of ‘professional
policy making’.
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• Forward looking: takes a long term view, based on statistical trends and informed predictions, of the likely impact of policy;
The model is based on a set of nine characteristics that policy making should possess:
• Outward looking: takes account of factors in the national, European and international situation and communicates policy effectively;
• Innovative and creative: questions established ways of dealing with things and encourages new ideas; open to comments and the suggestions of others;
• Using evidence: uses best available evidence from a wide range of sources and involves key stakeholders at an early stage;
• Inclusive: takes account of the impact on the needs of all those directly or indirectly affected by the policy;
• Evaluates: builds systemic evaluation of early outcomes into the policy process; • Reviews: keeps established policy under review to ensure it continues to deal with the
problems it was designed to tackle, taking account of associated effects elsewhere; and
• Learns lessons: learns from experience of what works and what does not. The following year, the PIU published two reports on joined up policy making Wiring It Up and
the use of statistical modelling for evidence based policy Adding It Up. Together with a National Audit Office report on Modern Policy Making, they effectively represent the completion
of the first phase of work to define a desired model for policy making.
37
36
Cabinet Office, Professional Policy Making for the Twenty First Century, 1999; available at: http:www.nationalschool.gov.ukpolicyhubdocsprofpolicymaking.pdf
37
National Audit Office, Modern Policy-Making: Ensuring Policies Deliver Value for Money, 2001; available at: http:www.nao.org.ukpublications0102modern_policy-making.aspx. For an account of the initial progress
of implementing Modernising Government, see the monthly ‘Milestones’ progress updates produced between September 1999 and August 2000; available at:
http:webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk20100512143614http:archive.cabinetoffice.gov.ukmoderngovac tionmiles2.htm. It is worth noting that many of the structural recommendations were met. However, several
of the actions to achieve the desired characteristics, such as systematic policy evaluation and learning the lessons from failure, remained aspirations at the time the monitoring ceased.
3. The drive to professionalise policy making 24
1999: The Centre for Management and Policy Studies CMPS
