PAD 30177 Southern New Hampshire Public Policy Development Process Worksheet

Competency

In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:

• Examine the public policy development process

Scenario

You work as the deputy director for your local city planning department, but you have been serving as the interim department head while the city manager searches for a new director. After several months of searching, an exciting candidate named Susan Greenfield accepted the city’s offer and just started in her new role. Susan brings a lot of experience, having worked for three other planning departments in much larger communities, and you and your colleagues are excited about the new energy and perspective she will bring. In her previous experiences, she has successfully leveraged planning assets to support other public efforts. As part of that work, she has used a specific policy development framework with great success.

One of your first assigned tasks is to complete a policy comparative analysis in which you must analyze the planning department’s most recent policy development project and compare what happened in that case to the framework Susan is bringing to the table. In this way, she hopes to better understand the department’s history and existing way of doing things, as well as prepare you, as her deputy, to apply her framework moving forward.

Directions

To that end, Susan has provided you with a matrix organizer to structure your comparative analysis. However, she also promotes innovation and creative thinking, so you are encouraged to modify this format to improve communication of the key ideas, as needed. If you do modify the format of your deliverable, be sure that the final product still contains the following elements:

1. Establish a context for your review. Include a brief description of the rationale for the policy, the outcomes of the process, and any other background information on the case that will be helpful for your boss to interpret your analysis.
2. Begin your comparative analysis by organizing the relevant details of the case into the various stages of your boss’s policy development framework. Be sure to respond to the following questions for each of the stages:
   • Who were the specific stakeholders (i.e., names of people or organizations) and how were they involved during that stage?
   • To what extent was evidence presented or applied by policy advocates and/or other stakeholders during that stage?
   • What were the ethical considerations present during that stage?
3. Then, evaluate the extent to which the case reflects and aligns with the ideal policy development framework. In other words, rate each stage on a scale from 0–4 (with 0 being “not present in the case” and 4 being “perfectly illustrates the ideal”), and defend your assessment by providing specific examples that reference and draw comparisons to the ideal process.
4. Based on your evaluation, make specific recommendations that are informed by the ideal policy development framework. In other words, if the ideal stage is represented in the case, provide recommendations on how to avoid common problems within that stage. If the stage is missing, provide recommendations on how it could have been incorporated.
5. Finally, cite the resources that support your assessment of the given stage. You should have a minimum of one citation per stage.

What to Submit

Every project has a deliverable or deliverables, which are the files that must be submitted before your project can be assessed. For this project, you must submit the following:

1. Policy Comparative Analysis
   Your policy comparative analysis may be submitted using the matrix organizer or in an alternatively formatted document. It should be approximately 800–1200 words in length and appropriately cite all references.
2. Matrix Organizer– see attached down below!
   You may choose to format your submission using this matrix organizer. However, you are encouraged to modify this format to improve communication of the key ideas, as needed and appropriately cite all references.
3. Reference List For each source that you cite, you need to include the author’s name, the publication year, the title of the source, and the location of the source in a References section at the end of your work. in-text citation(s) and sources appropriately.

Supporting Materials

The following resource(s) may help support your work on the project:

Case Material: Ideal Policy Development Framework– see attached
Use this as a reference describing the various stages of the ideal policy development framework for your comparative analysis.

Case Material: Planning Department Case: The 2040 Plan for Northwest Indiana: How Public Engagement Guided the Formation of the Plan– see attached