PAD 520 Week 10 Discussion 1

Week 10 Discussion 1

Assume the governor has asked you to present an oral briefing on a controversial environmental program to a board of commissioners of a major county in the state. Three of the nine commissioners oppose the program and have experts on their staff who generally accompany them to meetings. Recommend three actions to take before the briefing and two key actions as you present the recommendation. Provide reasons to support your response.

The controversial environmental program has been the cause of heated debates in the state and people vehemently protesting against it and many vociferously vouching for it before the briefing of the environmental issue I will ensure that.

I am stacked with facts and figures and also very importantly the stakeholders involved in the issue.

Know very clearly who the people are who are opposing the issue and what were their arguments against the issue. Knowing this will help me in pitching my points very clearly.

Have a clear picture of the action taken by policy issues, including key aspects of the issue including the regulations and be ready for quotes from presidential and constitutional and regulatory texts.

I need to have all these clear so that I can keep my briefing not only to the point but also be sure of the points which I am going to make and to further make sure that it is within authority and regulations though controversy has been created by vested stakeholders.

Discuss at least two possible advantages and two possible disadvantages to using graphics and charts in oral briefings. Discuss the implications of these advantages and disadvantages to the one responsible for communicating public policy. Provide an example to support your response.

Advantages:

Are that the visual contents are more understandable to a mind and capture the imagination faster.

Graphics always stay longer in the mind and people tend to relate to graphics faster. Comparison is possible and can be visually effective.

Disadvantages:

An overload of graphics becomes too garish.

Unless properly presented it becomes a series of images only.

For communicating public policy, it is important to show trends of welfare and budgetary implications. Further to that no other graphic is required.

 

A well prepared and structured document always brings a winning edge because the argument is already prepared to deliver the necessary effect. Structuring arguments show your clear position on the issue and tend to go closer to the issue rather than beating about the bush. The other very important benefit is that the arguments can be supported by truth and facts.

In order to make a career in public policy, one need to be a good historian and remember numbers and quotes very well and respond very quickly to repartees. Public policy success is based on numbers and statistics. The other skill for being a good public policy analytic is that communication skills have to be very good. One needs to be not only an excellent speaker but an extempore speaker with knowledge of anything and everything about public policy matters.

In today’s political environment public policy analysts are face with distortion in communication and facts. There is so much of verbal abuse by the media that the public policy analysts only add to the plethora of confusion. Hence they have to word their speeches very carefully so that it stands apart from the regular media lingo. Another challenge is that public policy has now become a home door order with everyone and anyone discussing it. To be a successful public policy analyst in the political environment of today, one has to make his presence felt by quality writing and debates.

In the future the role of public policy analysts will determine the way the policy is shaped. Since every aspect will be put on vote and people would debate about the public policy, the people should be made aware of the truth of the policy for which analysts need to learn to speak the truth and give facts. So communication again becomes the greatest challenge.

Visibility of analysts is another challenge. The analyst should be endorsed by a good portal unless this is done the voice of the analyst never reaches the people. So endorsement and ambassadorship are two other important challenges.

References:

Dunn, W. N. (2012). In Public Policy Analysis, (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

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