Modernizing and Renewing Policy Capability (FON1-V44)

Transcript: Modernizing and Renewing Policy Capability

[00:00:00 The CSPS logo appears onscreen.]

[00:00:06 The screen fades to Catherine Charbonneau.]

Catherine Charbonneau (Policy Community Partnership Office, Transport Canada): Welcome, everyone, to today's session on modernizing and renewing policy capability as part of the Jocelyne Bourgon Visiting Scholar Initiative, with our 2024 Visiting Scholar Dr. Jonathan Craft. Thank you for joining us.

Jonathan Craft (CSPS and University of Toronto): My pleasure.

Catherine Charbonneau: My name is Catherine Charbonneau. I'm the Director of the Policy Community Partnerships Office, the team that supports the Clerks Policy Community Initiative in the Government of Canada, and I'll be your session moderator today. I'll try to keep us on time. But before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that I'm joining you from the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on your traditional Indigenous territory. So, we are at a critical juncture in policy administration and public policymaking. Demand for adaptive, responsive and iterative policymaking is greater than ever, and governments need to move beyond traditional methods to embrace new approaches and forward-looking methodologies to leverage technology and respect the ever-changing needs of our communities. So, how do we modernize and renew policy capacity?

[00:01:31 Jonathan Craft, Sally Washington, and Michael Mintrom appear in separate video chat panels.]

So, for this discussion today, I'm pleased to introduce our 2024 Visiting Scholar, Jonathan Craft, Associate Professor at Comparative Policy, Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Professor Craft specializes in policy process, political administrative relations, policy advice and the intersection of technology and policymaking. And with him for this discussion, I'm pleased to also introduce Sally Washington. And Sally is a seasoned policy professional from New Zealand with extensive experience in public sector reform, including roles in central agencies, and as an advisor to ministers and prime ministers, and working several years at the OECD. And we also have…

Sally Washington (ANZSOG, Wellington, New Zealand): (Speaks in Māori)

Catherine Charbonneau: Sorry, go ahead, Sally.

Sally Washington: In New Zealand we usually introduce ourselves, or at least say hello, te reo Māori, which was the Indigenous language of Aotearoa, New Zealand. (Speaks in Māori).

Catherine Charbonneau: Thank you. And we also have Michael Mintrom with us, Professor of Public Policy at Monash University and Director of Better Governance and Policy. Michael is globally recognized for his work on public policy, policy analysis and promoting policy entrepreneurs. And I'll just say with these small introductions to our speakers, it does not give justice to your wealth of experience and your knowledge. So, I do encourage our audience to go and further look at your biographies and the background readings that have been also part of this, for participants. But to kick us off for this discussion, I'd like to start at the high level, exploring the similarities and differences of Westminster systems across Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. And for this first question, I will ask each of you to make opening remarks, introductory remarks, and then afterwards, when we all have shared our first thoughts, I'll just turn back so we can build on each other, time permitting. And so, I'll start with you, Sally. What for you is similar or different across Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Canada in attempts at reform and capacity building?

Sally Washington: So, that's interesting because I think, apart from Canada, I've worked with all of those other jurisdictions. So, in New Zealand I set up the Policy Project in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, which has a whole-of-government program to improve policy advice and the capability to produce it. I still work with the UK Head of the Policy Profession. I'm on an advisory group for the current Head of Policy Profession and I'm working across Australia and New Zealand as, in my role with ANZSOG. But what I find is everybody thinks that they're different, but actually they're more similar than they think. And it's not just Westminster systems, but some of the other systems I've worked with as well. And I guess we all have the same kind of problems, we talk about the policy problem, so it's a lack of consistency across government, so… Or even within departments, actually, we find that there are pockets of good practice, but no consistent practice. Everybody complains about having a shortage of highly skilled advisors. So, some senior people, for example, say, "So, that means I have to do all the advisory work or the analytical work," which they shouldn't actually be having to do at that senior level. And then we revert to consultants and contractors. And I think so many governments are looking at how do we get rid of consultants and build out internal capability? That everybody complains about having weak processes around policy to implementation, the lack of use of evidence or thinking about different forms of evidence, a lack of evaluation to go into policy, so what happened in the past in this whole concept of bringing user needs into policy.

The other really big issue is the urgent stuff crowds out the longer-term stuff. So, lots of administrations are talking about this notion of stewardship, now too. So, how do we think about the longer-term and build that into policy? And then, of course, all of these, all things related to silos, so weak collaboration, and alignment and prioritization, even within organizations, but certainly across government. So, but people have taken a different approach to that problem or that set of problems. And I find that most organizations and jurisdictions will start with, "We just need to train our people better." And my response to that is, "What are you going to train them in?" So, others will develop a policy toolkit or something like that, but it's not anchored to any policy process model and it's not related to competencies or training or anything like that. And so, I think that the key for me is that we need to do a whole lot of things, and I call this the policy of infrastructure, but it's how you put those things together that count so that there are whole lots of different parts of that puzzle that they're all mutually reinforcing. So, I'll talk about that a little bit later. So, that's enough for a start.

Catherine Charbonneau: Wow, I can't wait. I'm looking forward to this discussion. Now, curious to hear your take, Michael, on some of the similarities and differences across the different Westminster systems.

Michael Mintrom (Monash University, Australia): Thanks. Well, I think that people working in policy are subject to fashion, like fashion and clothing, and they don't necessarily want to admit that they're followers of fashion. But that line from John Maynard Keynes about people who believe themselves exempt from the, any intellectual influence, are usually distilling ideas from some academic scholar from a few years back, does strike me as relevant in this case. It's striking to me how much these Westminster style systems learn from each other, and often that occurs through specific people who take actions in their own backyards and then they go telling everyone else about it. And so, here in Australia, we sort of see a stream of people coming through and telling us about what they've done most recently in the UK and how we're ten years behind, but if we listen to them we will get with the game. And I think that that's, I could give examples of that, but when I look back over, say, the last 15 years or so, I think that that's an explanation for why we see particular approaches being taken to, say, regulatory policy here in Australia, and also to an extent in New Zealand, some of the reforms that happened. So, there's this kind of sense that you've got to be up there with the game and that the game is set in certain places, sometimes capital cities in countries far flung from where we are.

Catherine Charbonneau: Yes, very much so. I totally relate, and I think we're going to dive into some practical examples and some case studies further along in this conversation, so I'm looking forward to pull some of that from you, Michael. And then now, Jonathan, do you have on your side, based on what Sally and Michael have said, do you have any nuances that you'd like to share as well from your perspective?

Jonathan Craft: Yeah. Well, first, thanks very much for moderating today's event, and to Sally and Michael for joining. And I think the comparative angle is particularly important because there's a shared set of traditions and we kind of recognize each other's parliamentary governments, and cabinet, and public service, independence and all those features, but we also recognize that there are different pathways of public management reform that have been experienced. Canada is a federal jurisdiction, which complicates types of policymaking we engage in as compared to, say, a unitary system like that in the UK or in New Zealand. But I will say when it comes specifically to questions of kind of reform and modernization, I think that the shared, many of the features Sally pointed to, are ones I would echo and point to as well, particularly around kind of the question of how do we design effective public policy and then ensure that we can actually deliver it? I think that citizens and governments, and public servants themselves, rightly recognize that there are some real challenges across these jurisdictions and actually responding to real public problems through policy measures that work on the ground. The other thing I would say is I think there's a shared emphasis in all the jurisdictions with fits and starts of interest in reform and public policy. For some, following on Michael's point of fashion, I think that the notion of reforming and modernizing public policy comes into play more often sometimes than others, where it falls by the wayside. But when it does arise, I think there's a shared interest and a recognition in kind of addressing the fundamentals, the nuts and bolts of skills and competencies involved in policymaking. And everyone, I think, in these jurisdictions is recognizing that the principles, and tried and true practices are holding up in some ways, and then others are just not working anymore. And so, they're striving for ways to kind of address that in meaningful, practical terms through the institutions and processes, and the people, who at the end of the day are the ones who are making public policy.

So, I think the last thing I would add to this would just be that I think there's a challenge that's linked to that last point, which is just around the elasticity of the notion of policy itself, right? If you were to look at a textbook about what is public policy years ago, there'd be kind of a consensus and a fairly narrow view of what it might involve, and I think that's become much broader and that people recognize that policy encompasses a range of different activities and players happening in a host of, a variety of different places, inside and outside of government. And so, what that means is that who's in the policy community or the policy profession, what types of priorities we should have become more complicated? Because trying to put your finger on what is policy, and who's doing it and the consequential things that should be reformed has become more complicated. So, I would just add that to the discussion as things that are really similar challenges, but also that unique country view, and in particular differences in the responses to, what do we do?

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah, it actually builds on the point that Sally was making around like developing toolkits and developing supports. Then, to whom, right? As you say, because the tent of who is under the policy function, like, it's evolving, it's changing, and so, that user or that who are you really targeting to build that capacity to upskill, to really learn the awareness of that context, is changing. And I'm curious, with regards to what you both shared, because that elasticity or that, I guess that not so precise definition of who's in and who's out of the, I guess, of the, who is involved in a policymaking, really challenges how we address, how we modernize our policy practices. So, I just wanted to check if there's any other nuances, anything we want to add, and I see you nodding Sally. So, I'll turn to you.

Sally Washington: So, I'm dying to get into this one because I think the word policy gets in the way. And I think it's, people can say, "Well, I'm not a policy person, so it's got nothing to do with me." And I think if we reframe that as, policy, as support for good decision making, then it's a much more concrete and expensive concept, so, and so, not just the policy community but the whole ecosystem for policy. And if we talk about it as support for good decision making, we talk about the rest of, like, the value chain as well. So, we talk about our procurement people, our legal people, our delivery people, all of those people that need to be part of designing a solution or taking an opportunity and making something happen. But I think what Michael said, too, is really important, is that if I look at toolkits across policy, toolkits across those jurisdictions, there's so much cross referencing in them. So, we do learn a lot from each other. But I think the point that Michael was making is that we sort of pick up the next shiny thing and then we fetishize it, that this is going to be, behavioural insights is going to be everything that's going to fix everything, or design thinking is going to fix everything, or now foresight is going to fix everything. And for me, those things are all really important, but it's knowing what to use, when, at what stage of the policy process, and maybe in what combinations. And so, maybe it's don't fetishize them but know, have them all in your basket, but just pull them out, and know when to pull them out when you need them. So, I think that that's a really important one.

Catherine Charbonneau: Well, what it resonate with me in terms of what you're sharing and what all of you are sharing, too, is even then the nature of the policy stages, or the policy cycle itself and how we understand it, is also changing and evolving. So, I don't know. I'm seeing you nod, Jonathan. I don't know if you had other things you wanted to add before I move on?

Jonathan Craft: I think we could just talk about question one for the entire 90 minutes here, but the only thing I would probably add is I think there's another shared tendency, which is towards the challenges of kind of sustaining reform and modernization, to the point of the shiny things, there's this sense where you kind of build up enough capacity or modernize a particular competency, and then you've got to move on to the next thing. And I think in these jurisdictions, we've seen a shared challenge around how do you develop a strategy to reform and modernize, and then sustain it and drive it through the system, but also through the pockets? That's the other piece of kind of systems level, Sally referenced notions of the system level change in infrastructure. Those are crucial. But I think also, I think of the Canadian case in particular, where what's happening in one department or ministry may be vastly different in terms of their practices, or approaches or their capacity to do public policy, than their neighbour in the building next door. So, I think that balancing off the systemic modernization, lifting the whole system, and also recognizing kind of the need to deal with the bespoke realities of what's happening in a department or a particular policy initiative, some who need extra help or more capacity at a particular time or are facing a tougher road to kind of rethink and refresh the way they do policy. So, all of this really, just again, speaks to kind of why this is so challenging.

Catherine Charbonneau: And I won't, I will give you space, Michael, with regards to the policy entrepreneur's mindset, because I did, I was really fascinated with your approach and what you had written about it. And I just want to say, first of all, this is an excellent warm up. I think our audience is well served here. I want us to move right now into the practical realm. We were high level with like comparing Westminster systems. Right now, building on what we just shared at the high level, let's dive a little bit in terms of the challenges of government, and the challenges of government in terms of trying to modernize, to renew their policy frameworks. So, Michael, I'll turn to you, actually, because I'm curious about the policy entrepreneurs, but also because you've been working with many of them and you've interacted with many of them. How do we overcome, in a way, the known obstacles to reform and move towards genuine policy modernization and renewal?

Michael Mintrom: Well, a few years back I worked with colleagues to bring together some studies of policy successes in Australia and New Zealand, and every serious and successful reform that we looked at, indicated that it had a sort of strong backing from members of the government of the day. So, there's a lot that people who are policy developers and designers, and people in government agencies, can do to sort of set things up, but they've got to get that buy in, the political will, for change to happen. And so, without that, I think that the public sector can be sort of seen by the politicians, viewed with suspicion, lack of trust. So, there's a sort of a thing thereabout, the trusting relationships. But once ministerial buy in is there, then change can actually come reasonably quickly, is the key, I think, is to put the energy into moving ahead and working with a coalition of the willing, basically. And you can do quite a lot to build that up, not only across departments, but actually with stakeholders in the community and so on, and that can be very important for developing narratives, and highlighting particular stories of success and so on. So, not spending time trying to persuade people who aren't going to ever change, but work with those who can. And I think the energy and the interest that you generate through that kind of process actually becomes a magnet, and others get on board, as sort of starts to explain why that sort of following of fashion happens, so that you can actually see that there's ways that people can do this. But at the heart of it, I think, there is strategy and there absolutely needs to be work done within the departments and lead up to this. But it's that trust relationship between ministers and senior public servants is really critical, I think, to making good things happen.

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah. And I'd like to do a quick follow up on this one to you, Michael, before I go to Sally and Jonathan, around is coalition of the willing and some of the challenges sometimes that when you work horizontally or you work with, really, in relationships with public administration, sometimes there is these informal vetoes, perhaps, that influence some of that effort and then that strategy behind the scenes. Do you have any advice, or in a way mitigating or addressing some of that?

Michael Mintrom: Well, there's a really nice concept called venue shopping, which says that if you, let's say if you knock on one door and it's locked, you just keep going around until you find one that's unlocked. And so, if you're trying to make change at a particular level of government or with a particular agency and you're not getting any success there, there are things that you can do. And I think in that regard, we can learn from what policy entrepreneurs have done. I think one of the most exciting things in that regard is the way that they sometimes develop local level experiments to sort of show that something's happening, and also recognizing the risk mindset or the risk management mindset of politicians. If you actually do something and put it on the ground and say, "See it works." Right? Then that actually changes the game a lot. So, you can think about, say, rehabilitation of prisoners, for example, or youth detention programs that don't stick everyone in prison and throw away the key, right? That if you actually say, "No, we've got a different way of working here. We're going to educate these people. We're going to help them," that actually if you can show a pilot program that works in that regard, then suddenly that changes the game. And I think that that's where you can put your energies if you're actually hitting up against a locked door and the traditional kind of corridors of power.

Catherine Charbonneau: Build, like show and build in a way that really can really be transformative. I'm going to segue to you, Sally, because one of the things that you shared in your introductory remarks is this concept of policy infrastructure. It's something that I too resonate quite to, as well. So, I'd like you to expand a little bit in what you were thinking and what your thoughts were with regards to linking policy infrastructure to why do some of our policy strategies fail? Like, where do we fall short?

Sally Washington: So, I'll just respond a little bit to Michael as well. I think we need to make a distinction between how we do policy, and how do we build a change program and make it stick? And they're kind of two different things, so we can talk about how do we modernize the way we do policy, but I think the whole kind of change program is the most difficult one, and I think that's, no government is really good at that. And I'll just respond to Michael's notion of getting support from ministers. And I think we often think that we need to wait and seek, either seek permission or wait to be asked for things from ministers. But I'm really interested in how we shape the demand side, and the addition to my, what my framing of the policy infrastructure, as most of it is on the supply side, but I've started to do quite a lot of work on that demand side as well. So, how do we build good relationships with ministers? How do we build that trust? And I think that's another thing that we often think happens by osmosis or experience, but again, I think it's something that we can codify and build. On the question of change program, I think what you really want is to go viral. And how do you make something go viral? And I think that it is having a deliberate approach to the change program, and some of the things that Michael talked about, I think are really important. So, having a really good narrative, like, why are we doing this? We're not doing this to help you public servants around the head because you're not doing a good job, we're doing it to make your job easier and to make better decisions for the publics that we serve. So, for me, the biggest critical success factor in New Zealand, and the Policy Project has been going for ten years now, it's the 10^th anniversary, is that it was very much a collaborative co-design process with the policy community.

So, I worked really closely with the deputy secretaries group, with policy responsibilities, and I made them work, I just, they weren't just sitting in a room saying nothing, we did real co-design sessions. So, for something like this Policy Skills Framework, we started with sessions that included HR people, policy people change, change people, all sorts of people, and actually used the design process where we built models, even. Then we went to a card sorting exercise where we put all of the potential skills for policy and then whittled them down to 15, and that became the Policy Skills Framework, which you then can articulate those skills and think about mapping tools so people can see where they sit in terms of experience. But also, the coalition of the willing, of which was a lot of organizations, and there was, one is the South Australian Department for Education, and one of the senior people there said, "I just go where the lights are on." And it's, really, is picking those, picking where the energy is, picking where you've got some champions and thought leaders. Like, we all know who the thought leaders are in our departments because they're the people that influence others. So, it's sort of like how do you influence the influencers in order to make that change happen and to make it stick? But I do think, so, I think it's sort of a bottom-up thing in trying to go viral, but I think that centralized support is really important too. So, who are your senior champions? So, for me in the Policy Project, I still to this day don't know how we got the Prime Minister to launch the policy improvement frameworks, but it was such a huge boost because it meant that everyone saw that we were serious. But probably, the Deputy Prime Minister, who was Minister of Finance as well, he was the biggest support for that, and he was somebody. I think confident ministers invite and expect free and frank advice. They want new ideas. So, you go to those people as well. But it's also, it is how do you make change happen across the system too, like, how do you build up those pockets of good practice? And so, the change program process I think is important as changing how we do policy.

Catherine Charbonneau: There's so much to unpack in just the two comments that are there, and I see, Jonathan, you're probably on the edge of your seat, wanting to react (laughs). It's almost like pick your menu, like there's, there's a lot. I'll leave it open to you to react to both Michael and Sally, or even provide your own perspective.

Jonathan Craft: Yeah, thanks. I mean, I think their perspectives and their insights are invaluable. I think some pieces I might want to add, just to broaden the discussion and point to a few other perhaps ingredients for a recipe for modernization in a policy sense, I would actually point to the importance of the public service. I think ministers are, of course, central, and you look at the UK or New Zealand, as we just heard about, and Australia, if there's a minister responsible for public sector reform or modernization, then that can serve as a focal point, but in some cases, often the Canadian case, for instance, there is no minister. And to suggest that a Prime Minister who's putting out a million other fires and trying to advance a governing agenda is necessarily going to realize, hey, I should invest in my public service and make sure that they're modern and capable. I think sometimes it's evident why that missing direction is missing. And so, for me, I think the public service has to step up because they're the ones who are there, they're the stewards, they're the, the institutions are theirs to take care of in service of the public and the public interest. And so, I think having a strong leadership and stewardship function, as I've spoken to in other places, is important, but the other piece I would add, if you look at the actual reform initiatives, is having a home for them that's stable, like a place, an institutional home, a coherence to it, right? If you're going to try and reform policy, then having a unit, having some institutional support resources, like, those fundamental pieces are essential. Because if you're trying to reform how policy gets made or improve policymaking on the back of a napkin, you're not going to get to where you want to go. And so, I think there's certainly a need to kind of institutionalize and support through resources, and the right people, I think, certainly, as others have mentioned, having the right entrepreneurs and influencers activated to try and do the work is crucial.

On the demand side, I would also add, in Canada we call them deputy ministers, but chief executives, that they are also a key place for demand, that if they're demanding capacity from their staff, that it's then available and ready when ministers need it too. So, I think we need to be a little bit more thoughtful, in the scholarly world at least, about thinking about how we can kind of understand the way that demand is changing for senior officials, what types of policy advice, and policy work and policy infrastructure they need for them to do their jobs properly. And also, I mean, echoing the co-design point from Sally, I think thinking about what policy practitioners actually do. Sometimes that these shiny new reforms are, as a when I was in the UK, they refer to them as the gloss, they'd hand you the flier, the glossy flier explaining what was being done in the policy profession, but behind that gloss was actual engagement with the people who are going to be engaging in the policy work, who are going to be doing the heavy lifting of the analysis, of the stakeholder management, all of that. So, I think understanding the demand isn't just ministers, it's the other players in the system, and designing your reform so that you're addressing that, because then people are interested. They want to, you're going to help me do my policy work, you're going to help me improve, then you've got some buy in. I think the other piece that's linked to that would certainly be that notion of a narrative. But I would also add a strategic plan. I think a lot of times there is a, okay, we're going to launch a reform, we're going to modernize something, but exactly what they're going to modernize, how they're going to do it, and recognizing that you need a systemic plan that's multi-year, that spells out what the investments are, what the requirements are, that's really thought through and the level of detail in the weeds, is important. Because I think that that begets a more successful outcome when you try to think about and anticipate it to a certain degree. So, I would think that those are important.

The other one that I would just add, which is related to that, is communicate. I think sometimes the amazing work that's done by existing reform initiatives, a small shop in a department or a broader government-wide initiative, don't promote themselves, don't share out, don't communicate what they're doing sufficiently, which creates the value proposition. You're telling people there's a resource for you here, or if you're curious about improving how you do regulation or long-term foresight activities, here are things that have worked in other places. So, I think the communications piece of telling people what you're doing, not just that original narrative to create the buy in, but the kind of sustained communications around what you're doing and why you're doing it helps bring along people who maybe aren't aware of the initiative or are then able to put their hand up and say, "Well, we are actually doing something different that's also working on this." And that creates, just, additional capacity in the system. So, I think those are a few things, just broadening how we think of demand, the emphasis on public service leadership, and then maybe also just having a few different things at play at the same time. I think if you invest everything into one reform initiative, a specific thing like improving how briefing notes are generated or something to that effect, and you have limited success or you run into one of those veto points you mentioned, then your reform initiative is sunk, whereas I think if you've got a bit of diversity or a bit of a menu of reform options kicking around the system, then it allows you to kind of adapt a little bit and nurture various pieces, so, if you run into a minister who doesn't like that reform initiative or you run into challenges of one kind or another, you can pivot to other things that you have on the go. So, it's that real delicate ballet of trying to nurture just enough things that you're not a one trick pony, but you're not spread too thin trying to do everything at once. So, I would add those pieces.

Sally Washington: Can I just add to that?

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah, go ahead, Sally.

Sally Washington: We don't want to be a show pony, we don't want to be a one trick pony either, but I completely agree that we shouldn't be waiting for permission. Like, it's, this is us doing, the public service doing their job better, and we should always be looking for those opportunities to improve. And in terms of, I can also agree that you need some kind of central support, so the kind of work that you're doing, Catherine, the sort of work that I did in New Zealand, but it doesn't have to be huge, because what you can, what we are, is we're curating the conversations, we're curating the community, so and New Zealand, it was just me for the first six months and then I had one other person. So, I didn't have a big team and I certainly didn't have any budget, so, and to some extent that made me a little bit more agile, I guess. But I did have, when you talk about a strategic plan, Jonathan, there was a plan, and, but like, when I first went into the, to set up the Policy Project, I had come from the public sector reform program that was looking at functional leadership, so system leadership. So, we had functional leaders and property procurement, digital across government. So, I kind of used that model a little bit, and but I was really gung ho about I wanted to innovate everything, but I quickly got the message from the senior leaders, these deputy secretaries, that they said, "We want to get the basics right." So, the program really was get the basics right and then innovate, so bring in the innovative things, so you can do both of those things sort of at the same time. But there really was a deliberate change process built into it. And I guess I always say not, "Build it and they will come," but, "Build it together and they're already here." So, it's, you are making progress all the time but, and you need to communicate that as well, communicate the progress so people feel like there's a change and they can get on board.

Catherine Charbonneau: So, I feel like I want to stay to this question because there is, there's more to unpack at the same time, at the same we will build on like barriers and challenges, and some of the things and I guess the pathways that you have all started sharing with regards to how do we pivot to really support capacity, policy capability. I'm curious now from like moving into a little bit more, even further down in terms of concrete and practical, I'm now focusing on tools, and methods, and approaches, or any specific interventions, policy instruments, partnerships, like, unconventional partnerships. You mentioned Michael, like, you keep knocking, you keep searching, you keep going to find that coalition. And so, I'm curious to hear from you, I'll start with you, Michael, if there is any effective tools or approaches that you've seen for building policy capacity?

Michael Mintrom: Thanks, Catherine. Yeah, look, I want to begin by swinging back to something that Jonathan said about, I think it was around the sort of complexity of policymaking, that over time things have become more complicated and complex. And I think that's something that I've definitely observed. I want to mention a development here in Victoria, in Australia, that I think emerges from that. So, a few years back there were a lot of mumblings in the state around mental health and the responses of the state to mental health issues for people in the system. So, the state set up a Royal Commission on Mental Health. And in response to some of the recommendations of that, the state subsequently set up the Victoria Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing. It's a long title, but I think it really gets, Catherine, at the kind of question you're asking here, because the centre brings together lived experience leadership, insights from innovative service delivery and cutting-edge mental health research to drive a system transformation. So, it's saying, "Everyone here has got a part to play." The traditional stakeholders who have often said we've been locked out of the system, they can, concerned about human rights issues and so on, you've got the policy people who sometimes (inaudible) around that and sort of say, "Well, we've been trying to do our best here." You're all in the room together, and talking and collaborating, and that's the spirit of that centre. And so, it guides policy development and it doesn't diminish the contributions that come from the work of professionals who are already in the system or others who can feed in. So, I think that brings the voices into dialogue, and it's a great model that actually could be emulated, I think, in a lot of different ways. But it's bringing together, particularly these voices from outside that have been saying, "Hey, look, you should have been listening to us." And it's actually saying, "Well, now, let's talk." And so, I think that's a wonderful initiative.

Catherine Charbonneau: It's a great example, and it connects back to what you were saying, Sally, with regards to that co-design or bring everybody in the room. And I'll say, like, where I sit with looking at policy practitioners, we hear a lot about co-designing, triangulating different perspectives, bring a diversity and a range of stakeholders to the table. But it's always in the practicality that becomes a little bit clumsy or it becomes challenging to actually do, so I wonder if you've got some word of advice here. I know you did mention your example with some crowdsourcing or other practices, but policy practitioners, some of them and some leaders inherently really want to have change, and are really trying to put together and bring all these stakeholders together. At the same time, there's a lot of ambition and delivery pressure. And so, how do you balance this?

Sally Washington: Maybe I'll do it in two pieces, so on how to do policy and then the question of the change process. So, I think one of the, what we teach when we teach in public policy is that tidal policy cycle, which really doesn't have much resonance for, in relationship to practice. So, I've been working on this new kind of policy model, a process model called the five-day model, and I can send the resource on that. But it's to think about how do we put, give people the tools to think about the process differently, so it's not a linear process, it's an iterative process? And it's iterative because you're bringing different people in all of the time, trying to bring as many people into that conversation. So, then that changes your perspective. So, it's like putting the public into public policy. And one of the areas that we should all be thinking about in all of the jurisdictions that we work on us is, like, how do we bring First Nation's voices into the conversation, which will be different than how we bring other groups into the conversation. But sometimes it might be, when it's too difficult or you don't have enough time, there are other tools that you can use for that. So, tools like, for example, personas, thinking about putting yourself in the shoes of that other person and thinking about what might be the differential impacts on them. So, it's, even if it's too difficult, or sometimes it's too sensitive, there are tools that we can use. So, there are lots of tools in the design toolkit that can be used. But I think it's really, is reframing how we do policy. And I mean, we have been working on it at ANZSOG because we want to, we have been trying to find a model that's good for teaching and good for doing, and it's quite hard to get something that's good for both of those things, but really focusing on the work that policy advisors do, which is providing advice to decision makers. It's not that, so try not to think about it as that whole cycle, but what we actually do.

But I guess for me the, on the change process itself, well how do we improve capability for policy? It's getting back to those basics. In New Zealand, we started with those really basic questions. What does good policy advice look like? And building some tools around it, so quality assurance tools or defining the characteristics of good advice. There has to be evidence and form that helps a decision maker take a decision, all those sorts of things, free and frank. What does a good policy advisor look like? So, really setting out the skills for people working in policy. And what does a great policy team or organization look like, too? So, really developing a diagnostic tool for that. And my concept of that policy infrastructure, I've been trying to build diagnostic tools around that so you can actually hold a mirror up to yourself and say, "How good are we in these different components of capability?" And thinking of capability as not just people capability, but the tools, processes, systems we use to create good advice. And I think sometimes, when we think about what good looks like, and it's interesting, Michael talked earlier about policy successes, but I think public management in policy in particular is a bit like housework, we notice it more when it's not done, we notice it when it's not done well. So, it is really important to be positive and to think about those, what are those success factors, what works and what doesn't? And for me, developing some of these processes and tools, is making them easy to use so they're really attractive and easy for public servants to pick up and use, and hard to avoid. So, we build them into our accountability arrangements, like the Cabinet manuals, and budget processes and things like that, so that, so they just become something that's easy to use, and we have to use them and they become business as usual. Simple.

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah. I do relate, I guess, to these, public management and just not treating this as a, house chores, because when it's tidy up, like it's, maintenance is much, it's much simpler and it's much nicer. But at the same time, oftentimes this is afterthought, like this is not the, going back to the shiny things that were mentioned earlier about, like that readiness, homework, might be skipped or like thought afterwards instead of being, actual the foundational pieces that support what you're trying to put forward.

Sally Washington: I think that's exactly right. You get a bunch of policy people in a room and they want to talk about policy, substantive policy issues, not about the capability and the processes that underpin them.

Catherine Charbonneau: Exactly. Jonathan?

Jonathan Craft: What a great conversation. I'm just, I'm loving all of this. There's so much richness in here. And I want to go back to a point Michael raised when giving us that wonderful example. I think there's, I'll be a little provocative here, that there's almost a bit of a paradox in that on the one hand, we've got this greater complexity in policymaking that I think everybody kind of recognizes and acknowledges, and Sally opened up our session listing off kind of a bunch of perennial problems in policymaking. But I also get the tendency when I look around at systems that there, to some degree, there's a lot of homogenizing of how policy gets made through the processes and instruments, right? Like, there's all this complexity and noise in the system, and then everything has to kind of get sorted out through a briefing note, through a Memorandum to Cabinet. The places where policy work gets done in government kind of all look the same, now, to a large degree. I could argue the strategic policy shops that once existed in government have become overtaken by the kind of short-termism and issues management, communications needs of government. And so, there's this strange kind of sense where things are more complicated and policy is more elastic, but then we've gotten rid of royal commissions or we've gotten rid of kind of a lot of other spaces, green papers and white papers in the Canadian case in particular, where I think different types of policy thinking were done to generate capacity into the system, and what we're left with is really kind of a bunch of policy institutions or sites of policymaking that largely work based on the same types of instruments. So, I would just add that to maybe be a little provocative, that maybe we need to think about what kind of spaces we're creating for policy. And there are, of course, labs, and different innovation hubs and things like that. I think those have been ways where we've seen kind of attempts to do the life events type policymaking or some of the other examples that we've heard from today.

The other piece I would add to this is that if you Google, kind of, policy playbook or policy practices, you're going to get a whole whack of different things of various quality, right? But I think that when you look around, the UK example is quite strong, Sally's work in New Zealand, are excellent, right? And I think that one of the challenges is that those need to be connected to something. So, on the one hand you need to show people what does best practice or wise practice look like? How do you do policy well in terms of consultations, or stakeholder management, or ministerial buy in, or intergovernmental processes, etc.? But then those need to be linked to those instruments that we have, right? And so, I've been increasingly thinking about, kind of on the infrastructure side of things, what I call, kind of, loops and gates. What are the feedback loops that have been created and what are the gates? Like, do we have gates to kind of prevent bad policy, or to scale up or accelerate good policy sooner and quicker? Do we have enough of those kind of levers in the system to kind of allow for a more strategic use and development of policy?

And the other piece of it, I think is, we haven't really talked about that much, but relates to kind of the generalist versus substantive piece. I think the public services have struggled with kind of how to nurture and ensure they've got the tax expertise they need, or the transportation expertise that they need or environmental regulatory expertise that they need in these very kind of tactical policy areas, while also dealing with kind of the generalists that you need, who you can move around when you need a surge capacity in a particular area, or you're trying to move a government policy priority forward. So, I think the struggle around kind of generalism and substantive is linked to those questions of kind of the standards and the practices to try and provide people who maybe are more generalist with a better running start at what good policy might look like if they find themselves in a regulatory shop, and then thinking about are those gates and loops, are they connected to things like how briefing notes are approved, or work their way through the system, or the sequencing of very fundamental pieces of departmental policy suites, or Memorandums to Cabinet, or budgets. Like, there are instruments that exist which are really fundamental to how we make public policy. And sometimes, I ask myself how have we looked at these and how they're working individually in discrete ways, and in concert with each other, to ensure that we're producing effective modern public policy.

Catherine Charbonneau: Oh, gosh. So, I would like to talk a little bit, very quickly, like, to be where I, part of some of the things that we're trying to advance with policy community is this idea of this adaptive policymaking approach, as you were talking about, this iterative, like feedback loop thinking, studying the evidence to be able to inform your emergent work as well as your work that's been more sustained over time, also, I guess talking about the changing nature of policy practitioners. And so, it's a bit of a, I'm going to take what you just said, Jonathan, and Sally, actually, with regards to how the nature of policymaking, and the policy practitioners' work is evolving. You did talk a little bit about generalist and subject matter expertise here, we talked about processes, about design tools, and other elements in co-design or coalitions. But the reality is right now that the policy practitioners are in a perfect storm, they have to deliver very quickly, they have to also provide complete evidence, as you said, Sally, like is it evidence based? And at the same time, a complete evidence on complexity with multiple layers, range of stakeholders, as we said, triangulating all of this, bringing in technologies, because this is disrupting the workflow of policy practices from a vertical, horizontal approach, as well as just having not necessarily the risks fully defined, and just moving forward and keep moving forward. So, that's the perfect storm our policy practitioners are evolving in. And so, we're thinking about what are the skills, the mindsets, and some of the competencies that we should be investing now because it's going to be in high demand in the medium and long-term. So I'm mindful of time, like, I'm already thinking about time, but I'd like to kind of approach this one with a, maybe a bit of a rapid fire so we can build on each other quickly on this. But if you were to share with me maybe two, three key skills, or competencies or mindsets with regards to investing into this, into the medium and long-term, what would that look like? And I'll turn to you, Michael.

Michael Mintrom: Thanks. Yeah, these are great, great questions. I mean, I think there's a couple of ways that I want to answer that. One is I think that there is a need for quite a lot of stability within the system of government and maintaining that stability, even though there's a lot of complexity and challenges going on around us, or volatility, if you like. How I've been thinking about that recently is the people talking about the VUCA world, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and saying policy development needs to change as a consequence of that. And it seems to me that, actually, if you look at the history of government, government's all about maintaining stability in systems, you go back to Hobbes, and Locke and so on, you can see that, and that helps to explain incrementalism in policymaking, the risk aversion and so on. But we are actually facing some really, really big challenges around technological innovation and climate change, for example, those two massive things, and policy work in government has to be ready to address that. So, it seems to me that there's probably three things that could be done there. One is to really think hard about building capability, to triage problems quickly and figure out what should we be doing here?

And secondly, I think that we could use A.I. a lot more than is perhaps understood at the moment to pull together insights from the sort of what works databases and things that are out there, so that we can very quickly say, "Okay, what should we do here?" So, you think about, say, a crisis emerging in a country. What should we do here, what's happened, what's been done elsewhere, how can we learn from that, is, I think, really important stuff to be doing. And I think the, another part that that needs to happen in this kind of more volatile context is really thinking hard about long-term planning. I know this is something, Sally, you have been thinking about more in around foresight, but it's sort of going back to saying wargaming has been going on for thousands of years and we probably need to do more of that kind of scenario planning, playing things out. This is where co-design can actually come in as well, but taking those kind of skills around sort of long-term planning and actually saying how can we build that into the everyday operations of what we're doing? So, it's kind of an interesting thing that we end up with, that to address the complexity, we actually have systems that are both working on a very fast pace, and others that are moving at a slower pace, and recognizing and respecting both of them for what they do, that we need both working well together.

Catherine Charbonneau: And it goes back to what we were hearing earlier on with those different thinking speeds (laughs), that in a way we just, we we're just talking in the earlier question. I would like to turn to you, Jonathan, on this one, to change the order a bit.

Jonathan Craft: Okay, sure. And you wanted rapid fire, so the three I would give are…

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah, I'm trying to get you to rapid fire (laughs).

Jonathan Craft: I'm trying, I'm trying. I'll try here. Would be skills and competencies to manage interconnected policy issues. I think everything is kind of blending and bleeding into itself and people need to be able to have competencies and skillsets that allow them to kind of identify and find those who are affected by and have a stake in the policies that they're dealing with. The second one would be policy management skills, and by this, I mean the ability of mid and senior level managers to be able to recognize the different sets of skills and competencies they already have, and to move those around within the system. Like, we're just not great at being able to move around the capacity we already have, and in units, in departments across public services, and there's legitimate serious reasons why HR, etc., I won't get into that because we're doing rapid fire here, Catherine. But the third one I would say is prototyping and experimenting. So, I think that the notion of evidence is still central to public policy; however, the traditional ways of generating evidence need to be increasingly complemented with evidence that emerges from operational and real-world test and learn types of policymaking. So, we need to, it's not that you're going to make a decision based on one small user-centred test and learn initiative that's prototyping, but that needs to happen and feed into the system much quicker to be combined with the other traditional evidence bases to inform policymaking. So, I'll go with those three.

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah, I think that's a great segue for Sally. I'm sure you're dying to jump in on this (laughs).

Sally Washington: It is, and I'll agree with him. So, Michael's line on triage, I think that's really important, which, and it relates back to what Jonathan was talking about, royal commissions, and white papers and green papers, I think that the question there is what type of process, what kind of challenge? So, we need to understand the challenge to know, like, a royal commission's good if you want people to have a voice and to be able to have a direct voice, whereas another sort of challenge, you will use a different task force or an interdepartmental group, or, so we just need to understand what kind of challenge for what kind of, what kind of process for what kind of challenge. I think in terms of skills, I think policy is a team sport, not an individual pursuit. And often, we expect everyone to be good at everything, and I like to think of sort of archetypes of policy people. So, that's why, so the New Zealand Policy Skills Framework, which has just been changed, but the way I remember it from the original and the way I talk about it is that we have, you have a basket or a (inaudible), and te reo Māori is a basket that you carry around with you with all of these skills in it, and you need to understand what to bring out when. And for me, it's about what do you need to know, what do you need to be able to do, and how should you behave? So head, hand, and heart. And if I'm going to do rapid fire, the four E's, I think.

So, the first one is evidence. How do we use evidence? How do we reframe evidence? And I wrote a paper called, "Hindsight, insight, foresight," and for me, those are different forms of evidence. So, hindsight, how do we learn from the past? How do we get good at evaluation and learn from the past, or have an evaluation mindset? Insight is how do we use big data and all of the information that's out there, but then deep insights about people and the way they live their lives so that we can build that sort of big data, and that deep understanding into advice. And then the foresight piece, how can we think about what would be the potential impacts, but also thinking about what's going to bite us if we don't start working on it now? So, that's, evidence would be one. Engagement is kind of related to that, and you said that one too, so putting the public into public policy and how do we get better at that? And there will be experts and a team too, like, it's a, you might have the engagement expert in a team, you might have the evidence, deep data evidence person in the team. The third one is the equity lens, and I think that's about thinking about one size doesn't fit all, and we're not very good at that. And even something like crash test dummies are based on men, not women. But we have in our populations, we have different groups that are going to be impacted differently. So, how do we think about those different impacts and bringing them in? And the fourth is experimentation and innovation. So, having that curiosity, I think is probably the biggest mindset that we need, is public servants continually challenging their own assumptions. My design thinking guru, Jeanne Liedtka from the Darden Business School, says you've got to be able to call your own baby ugly. And I think that's it. You've got to keep challenging, so keep bringing people, and challenging yourself and listening to others.

Catherine Charbonneau: Oh my gosh, I resonate so much with this attachment, like that there is sometimes there's such a strong connections with people putting forward advice, putting forward their, they're pouring their subject matter expertise. And so, having that critical, hard look as to what you're putting forward sometimes, it's hard to receive that feedback, it's hard to receive that perspective, taking that others might see this very differently from you. I would say, I would probably add also, for me, these ethical considerations that are now creeping in, I would probably add this E to your E's.

Sally Washington: Another E!

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah. Just because oftentimes it takes someone to realize the, from an ethical standpoint, yes, you want to outreach, you want to reach to other people, but you might not be the right person to be connecting. And so, there's these trauma informed approaches when you're trying to connect with different populations or with different users, but then there's also ethical considerations with regard to how you're using new technologies, weaving in some of the work that you're doing, Jonathan, on your side, with the approaches that people are taking with using artificial intelligence or other tech enabled policymaking approaches that are just emerging right now. So, I did say rapid fire. This is a pace I'm excited to be in because it's the place we are, we the policy community. I'm going to give one more crack if someone wants to add a little bit more. I don't know if I'll, I don't know if someone, Michael or Jonathan, do you have final thoughts on capacity competences, something for us to be thinking about?

Jonathan Craft: I have many thoughts. None of them are final. They're all ugly babies, to steal Sally's wonderful metaphor, which will certainly stick with me. No, I don't, I don't. I think I'll have more to say, but, Michael, anything you want to add?

Michael Mintrom: I think when we're talking about policy capacity, that it's really important to note how much governments are now relying on consulting firms to do a lot of work for them. And I think that some of the explanation for that actually has come through in this conversation, that you do need to have a degree of nimbleness around putting together teams to address particular problems, and you also need to be able to draw on certain kinds of expertise, might be very specific expertise at times, you need it for a certain period and then you can move on to something else. And so, government agencies are not necessarily good at kind of creating that capability that can be sort of tuned around, and we used that, that was fantastic, now goodbye, we want to move to something else. And so, I think that having that extra kind of capability that comes with the consulting firms is important. But that's also lead to a lot of critique around the hollowing out of the state, and lack of capability within government and so on. And so, I think that needs to be really well managed. A development here in Australia is the Australia Consulting Group that's been set up recently in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and that is designed to actually build capability within the public service by having a sort of an internal consulting group going around, doing stuff, learning, keeping the lessons in house rather than having the sort of lessons moved from the, as would happen with using external consultants. So, I think that that's exciting, but it's a recognition that we are in the space where we absolutely do need to have very specialist technical knowledge at times, but maybe not to the point that we have to have a kind of whole permanent unit in government doing that.

Jonathan Craft: Yeah.

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah. I'm going to… go ahead, Jonathan.

Jonathan Craft: I just want to add that I actually couldn't agree more and I wanted to add that in, but didn't have time because of the rapid fire, but to the management of policy skills, right? Like, I think we're much more on an on-demand type of a policy process where, when things are needed, governments go and find them within the system or without. Look at the Brexit example, or others, where highly tactical policy advice or implementation capacity is sought out. And I think that that's right, to think more strategically and carefully about what capacity we want to build in the public service, and when we're happy with the appropriate guardrails to find capacity in other places to supplement that. I think that's a more sophisticated way to approach it. But as Michael rightly pointed out, the devil is always in the details.

Sally Washington: Can I just jump in on that? Sorry.

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah, go ahead, totally good.

Sally Washington: Because I think we, I think there's all of us, most of our administrations are saying we need to get rid of reliance on the big four consulting firms and build out internal capability. And it's Michael Ries, the Australian government consultant, and I've just been doing some work with him on policy toolkits, so that they can build out across the system as well. But I think we really need to understand when we need to bring in external expertise, and it's for that kind of surge capacity where you, where you don't have the expertise in house and you might not need it over time. So, we just need to have the right criteria there, and for contractors when you need a boost, but you just don't have the time or bandwidth to do it. But we just need to be intelligent about it. And if we're using those external people, how do we build some capability from them working with us too? And I think that's the interesting part about having an internal consulting model in a jurisdiction, is that they're not going to be just helicopter in and helicopter out, and then rinse and repeat with somebody else. It's actually a way of building capability across the system as well. Although, I have to say that the UK had something similar and then they killed it off. So, we'll see how the Australians go. But I think they're starting out really, really well. But it's just, often, governments, politicians will say we just got to get rid of consultants, but it's just a blunt tool and we need to just be more intelligent about how we use external expertise.

Catherine Charbonneau: Well, for someone who has, for me, I've been an internal consultant in the public service, as well as worked with external consultants, I can tell you that oftentimes what people are faced with is this handoff, like, and we alluded to this, and I'm going to segue us to a classic conundrum or a challenge with regards to the disconnect between either working in a sandbox type of environment or a policy, a smaller task force, or task team or tiger team, something where, you're able to really push, pull and be agile, at the same time connecting the dots to what you said, Michael, around prioritizing. Because out of these really, environments where there's a lot of ideas, there's a lot of co-creation, there's a lot of big thinking that happens, at the same time, it needs to live somewhere. As you all said earlier on in this dialog about it has to stick, we have to find a home for this, it has to stay and it has to continue to be groomed. And so, like, my question with all of that set up is around closing the gap between trying to having big policy objectives, or having policy objectives and being efficient on the ground, in really thinking policy execution. And so, like my question, I'll turn to you, Jonathan, I'll start with you first with regards to this. You talked about iterative, test and learn forms of policymaking, so for you, what are concrete changes that are needed for this type of environment to be able to exist in our public administration, in our public service?

Jonathan Craft: Yeah, I think that's the million-dollar question, right? How do you do it? How do you move a policy process that is traditionally kind of protracted and long toward something that is more lowercase a, agile, that is using test and learn? I think a lot of jurisdictions are experimenting with different concrete ways of trying to do this. I mean, I think I would, one, just kind of like to draw out the linkage between, I think a lot of this comes from the service design world and a lot of it comes from digital, digital government worlds. And I've been really struck, in looking at the different jurisdictions, how little digital government approaches have actually coupled themselves to policymaking processes. And the argument that I kind of have been crystallizing around is that a lot of the types of test and learn, or more iterative approaches, are actually already in government, but they're in the implementation and in the service design space in particular. And the problem is, is that those are coming too far downstream in the policy process, that the space or flexibility that they have to iterate and try things, and do the testing and learning, is very constrained. And so, it has to happen earlier in the policy process. I think the quintessential answer would get from most academics, and even most practitioners that I talk to is, it's about the types of teams you have, right? Sally alluded to this earlier, that there's been a lot of rhetoric around interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary teams, but I don't find a lot of concrete examples where this is actually happening, right? I think there are some marquee policy examples where you can go out and flagship policy initiatives in different jurisdictions.

I can think of a few in the Westminster cases where this happens, but building those teams is the first thing. I think you need to have people who have service design, prototyping, like those concrete, actual skills, user centred, stakeholder engagement. Those need to be kind of not cloistered off or separate from the policy people. They need to be in an integrated physical space or a hybrid space in today's policymaking world, for sure. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. But I also think that there are institutional rulesets that really get in the way of things, that the one that I would point to the most is everybody loves the idea of kind of user centred policymaking, but I was pretty surprised in going around Ottawa, talking to people about the challenges of actually doing user research, that there wasn't any user research happening, or when it was happening, it was being farmed out to consulting firms because internal departmental policies or corporate policies either precluded it or were unclear about what was required. So, you can't do test and learn if you can't actually go out and test and learn on actual people. And it's linked to the ethics piece, it's linked to kind of the role of government. There's a variety of complexities that make it the reason why it is, but governments need to solve for that problem, I think, first and foremost to be able to generate usable operational data from the policies that they want to implement. I think the other thing is we've seen pockets of this, but going back to my first comment around sustainability of reform, we haven't seen Experiment Works, which was a program started at the Treasury Board Secretariat. It came and randomized controlled trials, other innovative experimental approaches were kind of started, but then it teetered off and it died. It didn't have the kind of capacity or institutional support to see it continue and expand. So, that's the other piece, is how do you support in an ongoing way the people who are already doing the innovations in government?

And the third thing is that I think that when we're talking about policy issues, the notion of kind of upstreaming test and learn is really, is the problem that you think you have the problem you actually have, right? The instruments going back to the comment around briefing notes and Memorandums to Cabinet is they're very long and they take a long time to kind of, and the evidence base is maybe two years old for a policy recommendation, and by the time you go to implement that, the terrain has already shifted, the fluidity of the reality of your implementation context is different. So, I think that, one of the big challenges for policymaking is not just to focus on the advice, or the formulation, or the kind of recommendations, but it's to ensure that those are really informed by what's going to happen when somebody at the frontline goes and tries to implement a policy about passports or tries to implement a policy regarding specific supports for small businesses, or things like that. So, I think the concrete, I think you're looking for concrete answers, and the concrete examples or answers I would provide are requiring through formal policymaking processes, that those test and learn, user research, piloting, trials, small scale initiatives, have been undertaken to some degree. Or if they haven't, why haven't they? Before you kind of go forward with big policy pieces that don't work. Because I think that people's trust in government has been eroded by the fact that there's a lot of problems, and policies don't seem to be speaking to those challenges. So, I think the test and learn, and iteration, is the multidisciplinary teams, it's the competencies, and bringing those into government, training those in government for those new competencies, and then institutionalizing them in a policy process that tries to put that pressure on policymakers to say, "Is this going to, do we have indications or insights about how this is going to work in the field?"

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah. I'm trying to be respectful because I want to ask more, and I just want to say, Sally, you talked about your five D's, your three lenses, and so I'm curious with regards to this gap in the application of that five D model or that, those three lenses model, to help with addressing some common mistakes, I guess, or common pitfalls with regard to this iterative approach to policymaking.

Sally Washington: So, the five D, the first D is demand, and I think understanding the demand, why are we doing this now? Why does, why is it important? And it's not just responding to something, but how can we be proactive? So, and I guess one of the things we have been talking about is project management and project management came from IT projects. It's very, very linear and there's nothing like this for policy. So, the five D is an attempt to create guardrails for a process where you really start thinking. Deep thinking upfront is so important. Who are you going to bring into the conversation? You think about all those things. How might it work? How can you bring implementation concerns up front to the diagnosis? How can you think about the decision maker, what the decision maker is looking for? How do you bring that right up front in the process? So, I don't think we spend enough time at the frontend. And people say, "Well, it's going to take too long." Well, actually you, by taking time at the front, you save time at the backend. And so, I think that understanding that and not just the problem, but the opportunity, I really like to reframe that. So, some of my colleagues now in their teaching, they say problem, the policy problem or opportunity, because I think we often, the typical policy process is that you break everything. What's the problem definition? And then you break the definition down to such a point that you are just dealing with symptoms. So, how do we get that more divergent thinking that you get through a design process? So, the five D model really is influenced by design, but it includes who's the decision maker, because as public servants, we don't make the decisions often. And I think when you're doing a typical design process, you are creating the solution and then you're thinking about implementing it. So, how do we bring all of these things into policy? And thinking about things like we do these, embedded in a team? Do we need this sort of capability embedded into a team? Do we need, it's the same debate we've had with the innovation literature and experience too, do you have an innovation team embedded, which then they get sort of side, like they get stuck in business as usual so they don't have enough time for focus, or thinking or building something new, or do you head them off to the side where they can do something interesting but then they're not connected enough?

So, I think it is trying to find that right balance between having all those people and in a team, and then being able to work across teams as well, because those kind of teams can build capability across as well by going between teams, building capability as they go. And to me, that just gets back to the skills piece, like how do we know what skills we have in a team if we haven't actually articulated what are key policy skills and who has them. So, the New Zealand Policy Skills Framework has a tool where people can articulate their own skills. So, but thinking about them, their breadth and their depth, so you might be just start practicing on one level or an expert on something else, so we can see and then a manager can do a map of their whole team. So, then you might recruit to specification, you might say, "Actually, I don't have enough engagement people in my team. I need to bring someone in with those skills." But I think we often have these competency frameworks where we think everybody has to be good at everything, and for me, it's the makeup of the team that counts. Again, it's a team sport, it's not an individual pursuit. So, I think we none of us are good at everything, and it's true that we've always had this sort of top-down process for policy, top-down and linear, where we just need to be much more iterative in bringing those new skills. So, I guess that's what we've been trying to do with this five D model, is to create some guardrails to change the process a little bit. And around those four D's are two E's, engagement and evaluation. So, they swirl around. And there's an animation, which, and I know you have one, you have an animation for your policy process too, Catherine, which I think is really interesting because to make these things accessible and easy to use is so important.

Catherine Charbonneau: Exactly. And I think that comment on being mindful of the unit of analysis when we think about the makeup of policy capabilities from growth, from an individual standpoint, what are the things from an upskilling, individual, what you need to do, and then from a team perspective, going back to that management of policy, and situational awareness of that policy file and the issues that you're working around. So, these organizational levels are oftentimes things that we don't necessarily pay enough attention to. So, I really appreciate having this reminder for, it's something that I also am quite passionate about. I'm going to turn to you, Michael. It's been, I'm sorry, there's so much going on, and I feel we're almost at the tail end. It's been fantastic. So, I'm going to ask you, all three, and I don't know if you'll be able to succeed in this, but to think about some closing remarks. But the way I'd like to have them set up with your closing remarks is to close on a high note, to close about some of the things that you're seeing that are promising, that really, we want to push forward. So, I would like it if we could keep it to about a minute, a minute and a half, tops. So, I'll turn to you, Mike, Michael.

Michael Mintrom: Thanks. Well, look, I do think that some things that have been said today are really very exciting, and particularly around the sort of the co-design element, really listening to the clients, people with lived experience, and then figuring out how to bring that into routine policymaking. But I think that one thing that we haven't really spoken about here, but is in back of a lot of the comments, is that there's these really massive power dynamics and there are people in traditional policymaking processes in government who really don't want to give up power too much, and they want to sort of have everything brought on to their team, their terms. And so, you have these innovation units, they come up with stuff and then they sort of, the innovation kind of crumbles when it hits the system, right? And so, I think that we need to learn about how people who are advocates of co-design, for example, can start have a place at the table routinely in the same way that people who work on the finances of policy and cost-benefit analysis always have a seat at the table. Now, that wasn't always the case, right? So, we can go back and look at history on this. How was it that cost-benefit analysis got into the system and had such a central place? And how could people who are interested in putting the client perspective, lived experience, co-design in there, how can they learn from that experience and try and make sure that they get a seat at the table more often? I think there are possibilities there. I'm actually quite excited about that.

Catherine Charbonneau: Jonathan, high notes?

Jonathan Craft: Yeah, I'm picking up on Michael. I would say same thing for gender-based analysis, right, that we see that now implemented with budget processes in Canada. A variety of different innovations have actually landed and are now part of the process. And if we take a bit of a longer-term view, we do see the maturity curve for public policy, and in all the cases the countries we've been talking about, in the Westminster systems at least, we do have initiatives that are focused on reforming public policy. They're there, they're now, they're doing the work, and I think that's a really strong requirement to actually advance change through the system, is to have something there that is the North Star, the beacon head for this. I think that the biggest thing we have going is an appetite amongst, I think, public servants, to do things differently, but also to recognize the strengths and utilities of the policymaking process as it stands. I think Michael made a really excellent point about the importance of government in policy processes, in slowing things down, sometimes, particularly given the turbulence that we were experiencing in our governing environment. So, I'm positive that there is initiatives afoot. I'm positive that we've seen examples where change can happen. And I'm also very bullish on the fact that I think there's more interconnections amongst public servants and scholars in different countries. People are talking about sharing best practices more now, they're easier to find on the Internet. So, if your government doesn't have a playbook or a set of standards, you can look at what they've got the UK or in Australia, and that gives you something to start with.

Catherine Charbonneau: Sally, your turn.

Sally Washington: I'll just follow up on what Jonathan said. I think there's so much value in academics and practitioners working together. And on that note, that's why I think the exciting thing is thinking about policy toolkit. So, bringing new methods into policy, and also, but also connect it to new models. So, getting rid of the old policy cycle is something that we, because it doesn't really help us do policy, so I'm excited about people looking at experiments on that and I'm trying to do it myself. And, but I think in general, it's about, I think, the notion of public management is changing too, and the role of government, and this will create new demands on us. But this notion of much more relational government, so it's not government just is the doer but government is the broker, facilitator, catalyst and in partnership with others. And I think that's what we're seeing so much now with working with our First Nations populations as well, how can we how can we work with these different groups? And Jonathan mentioned gender analysis. I've been searching for a good tool that would help as sort of First Nations analysis that's akin to something like a gender analysis framework, all of these things that we can have in our toolkit that help us give better advice to the decision makers to make better decisions for the people that we're serving, who aren't all the same and have different needs. But that's why we're here, that's why we work in government.

Catherine Charbonneau: Yeah, I echo the sentiment on the actually articulating this role of policymaking around facilitating, enabling, convening, putting together really challenging, contradictory perspectives together in that narrative. Pulling it together oftentimes requires socializing, how you're doing that. So, there's a lot of social aspect to policymaking that sometimes we don't necessarily put our fingers on. We tend to think more on the analytical and, but I really appreciate having that thought. So, listen, this concludes our event today. I would like to thank you, all three, for this really exciting, exceptional, it was really fun to hear your thoughts on policymaking, modernizing our capabilities and what we can do today. I hope that you enjoyed, all of you across the country, this event as much as I did. Frankly, there's so many highlights and I'm looking forward to continue the dialogue with you. And so, the School, speaking of continuing the dialogue, the School also has more events to offer. I encourage you to visit their website to keep up to date and register to all future learning opportunities. And the other piece that we talked about a lot today is this iterative feedback and the importance of hearing your thoughts, so it's very important for you to complete the electronic evaluation that's going to come, that you will receive after the event, that is very helpful for the School to improve and perfect the delivery of some of the learnings that they put forward. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. Jonathan, Sally, Michael. Jonathan, I'll leave you the last, final thought.

Jonathan Craft: Wow, that's a lot of pressure after all of the wonderful gems we've had in this session. I think I would just end by saying thanks to the School for the opportunity as the Bourgon Fellow to come in. As an academic, I'm often in conversation with practitioners, but I've attempted to bring in folks like Sally from the Australia New Zealand School of Government and colleagues like Michael from the international community, because I think it's really important for us as Canadian public policy scholars and practitioners to be thinking about our own experiences from a comparative perspective, and to be able to look at how other people are navigating similar challenges, and there is a lot of learning opportunities through the Canada School, through ANZSOG and through those other places. So, bon courage to all the policy professionals watching this, we're all rooting for you.

Catherine Charbonneau: Thanks so much.

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