Being a policy advisor

 

I really have to tell you something about being a policy advisor. Like about what it actually is. In the past I always either assumed that people knew what a policy advisor was, or if they didn’t that it wasn’t important. But it is.

A policy advisor is who I am. It’s my profession. It’s what I am driven to do. In a sense it is what I was born to do.

Have you ever seen a copy of a policy statement? Perhaps you have had a look at the product disclosure statement of an insurance policy. Maybe you have seen a Workplace Health and Safety policy statement, or similar policy documents. Well, being a policy advisor has absolutely nothing to do those things.

A policy advisor’s job, in theory, is to fix problems. What happens is that a politician or a senior public servant – like the kind that you will meet throughout this book – will become aware of a problem. But they won’t know what to do about it. So they request ‘advice’ from a policy advisor, someone like me or my old manager, Peter. This is often thought of as the start of the ‘policy cycle’.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that a research organisation has released a new report that shows there has been an increase in the sales of synthetic drugs, which are currently legal but could be dangerous. Newspapers are reporting that there could soon be an epidemic of synthetic drug use. Journalists ask politicians what they are going to do about it. The politicians, like Sam, whom you will meet later in the book, are intelligent people – well semi-intelligent, anyway – but they’ve never even heard about synthetic drugs, and they don’t know anything about them. So they make a call to their departments and ask for a policy advisor to look into the matter for them.

The Department of Health will have policy advisors, probably several, who know lots about recreational drugs. They may know enough about synthetic drugs to immediately provide advice to the Health Minister about the matter; perhaps the Department of Health already has a recommended plan of action. If not, the policy advisors may need to do some research to establish how significant the problem is, and whether anything needs to be done. Perhaps the problem is only a minor one, or is merely a police matter. Either way, the policy advisors will prepare a written brief advising the Minister of the situation.

The policy advisor, someone sitting at a desk somewhere just like little old me, might also do some research and make a recommendation about what to do (if anything). They might inform the minister of the options, which might include changing legislation to make the synthetic drugs illegal, or producing information bulletins to inform doctors about the new drugs and their effects, or placing advertisements in newspapers to warn people of the dangers of these drugs. There might be lots of different options, but the advisor will usually make a recommendation, and then let the Minister decide. Each option will have costs and benefits. The Minister usually agrees with what is recommended, within reason.

But is the policy advisor’s job finished? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depending on what action is recommended, someone else might be allocated the task of following through with the recommendation. For example, a marketing department might be given the task of developing and placing the advertisements in newspapers. However, to take another example, if the recommendation is to change legislation, the policy advisor – who, after all, is the policy expert in the matter – might be asked to lead a project to advise parliament by drafting legislative changes. It depends on the situation, and how big or complex the task is.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that policy advice is as simple as this. There’s a real science and art to it. There are lessons from the past to be learned about common mistakes that have been made, and money and time wasted, and solutions recommended by policy advisors that simply didn’t work. If you take a look around you, you will see that examples of government policies failing are abundant. That’s evidence that being a policy advisor, providing recommendations for solving many of society’s complex problems, is an important profession.

That’s why it’s important to have skilled policy advisors who have been trained in the art and science of policymaking, rather than just having anybodys brought in off the street, thrown into decision-making or policy advisory roles, with no experience or qualifications. Policy development is a skill all of its own.

The central argument of this book is that the common mistakes of public policymaking keep getting made over and over again. It’s partly because the people serving in policy advice roles, like my manager, Peter, have little training or education in the field. But, it’s also partly because of politics, and it’s partly because of how big bureaucracies work.

Actually, it’s because of a lot of things. Well, ten things, at least.