Shaping the Future
When a department needs to solve a problem, Policy Analysts, Planners and Researchers look for best practices.
They are always mindful there are a number of challenges to be negotiated including competing interests, of links with other departments, agencies, stakeholders and levels of government, and of coming to a real-world solution. At the end of the day, their public service has an impact on communities and people.
Public Policy Makers do front end research, identify gaps, think ahead, co-ordinate, evaluate, and plan on an incredibly broad and complex range of topics. They possess research and communication skills and use them to develop not only policy papers, but reports and work plans that flesh out broad policy strokes with the finer details. No short term fixes here. And there’s tremendous satisfaction to be derived from seeing policy work play out over the longer term.
So, when you hear the term policy, think of policy analysts, planners and researchers as agents of change, not rule-makers but path-breakers.