Better Policy Making
"Better Policy-Making" (in the Civil Service) was part of a wider Modernising Government Initiative which was, from 1997, being taken forward by much of the public sector, including local authorities. The initiative had three workstreams:-
- better policy making
- more responsive and higher quality services, and
- modern public sector management.
The first central government contribution to the initiative was Professional policy making for the twenty-first century published in September 1999. This was followed in late 2001 by two further reports:-
- In November 2001, the National Audit Office (NAO) published an excellent report Modern Policy-Making: Ensuring Policies Deliver Value for Money. It summarises a range of good practice in policy-making which ought to be implemented by all departments and which could make a major contribution to the Government's drive to improve public services.
- Also in November 2001, the Policy Studies Directorate of the Centre for Management and Policy Studies published Better Policy-Making - the results of a survey of senior civil servants. The report contains a wide range of examples of better policy making around Whitehall as well as a summary of what policy makers felt to be the main issues in modernising the policy making process.