by Zachary Spicer

City Hall, Toronto

It’s natural to conceptualize policymaking taking on roughly similar dimensions across governments. For instance, those considered policymakers in New Brunswick would take on the same principles, design techniques, pressures and recognize a roughly similar policy cycle as those in Alberta or British Columbia. For those policy professionals honing their craft in one of Canada’s 3,573 municipalities, policymaking looks somewhat different. By exploring an understudied and under considered policy space, we may stand to learn more about the practice of policy professionals in Canada and where gaps and pressures exist for the craft of policymaking in this country. 

While municipalities deliver critical services to Canadians in communities both big and small, they do so under tremendous resource, capacity and legislative constraint. This can make life as a policy professional in local government feel more like policy-taking than policymaking, meaning that this policy world may feel more reactive than proactive. Local policy work is often oriented towards reacting to decisions made elsewhere rather than crafting solutions that are designed to fit the local community. This can create the feeling that local policy professionals are not fully in control of the policy space they were hired to lead. 

To explore the unique policymaking environment in Canadian municipalities we convened a small group of policymakers from across the local government sector, including those working in municipalities, those recently retired from senior leadership roles in municipalities, those representing municipal associations and those working with the Province of Ontario. 

The conversation covered a lot of territory – some of which is well known to those working in the municipal sector, including a lack of capacity, sparse resources, recruitment and retention challenges and a disruptive legislative environment. What emerged, as well, was a unique profile of a municipal policy professional, one that may not be always recognizable to the broader policy community in Canada. Careful consideration of the role of local policy professionals may help us better define and support policy professionals at all orders of government. 

Who are the Local Policymakers?

City of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

A theme that emerged and re-emerged throughout the session is what a local “policymaker” looks like. A simple scan of a staff directory in any municipality reveals that few job titles contain the word “policy”. A similar review of federal, provincial or territorial directories would find hundreds of positions containing this word in some form – policy advisors, policy analysts, directors of policy, and so on. Who is responsible for policy in these governments? One would assume any of the people with “policy” in their job title. Many of these positions are entry points into these policy worlds. A policy advisor in the Province of Ontario may not be solely responsible for policy development for a particular ministry, but the title certainly gives us a sense of what they do. They do policy. However broadly defined, they do policy.

You would struggle to find similar job titles municipally – especially in small and mid-sized municipalities. In fact, even in Toronto - our largest municipality in Canada – you would not see the title “policy advisor” or “policy analyst” emerge with similar regularity as the provincial or federal government. “Management Consultant” (or some similar variety) would be the term you’d most likely encounter. Does this mean one would similarly struggle to find policy development? Not necessarily. In fact, most people working within a municipality are “doing policy”, even if they are a land use planner, a water engineer or a by-law officer. They may not even consider themselves a policy professional. Responsibility for policy development is spread widely in municipal organizations, even if fulfilled by those in more technical roles.

A Very Different Policy Environment

A theme we returned to throughout the session is the unique policy environment in which municipal policymakers find themselves. This is a level of government with close connection to people, meaning that many municipalities have community engagement baked into the policy cycle, often at a great resource and time expense. It is a policy environment with frequent legislative constraints from provincial governments who regularly set and then reset the range of policy action available to municipalities. This is also a policy environment with few revenue tools and a budget that is largely filled with services demanded by provincial legislation.  To a degree, its internalized that municipalities do not have autonomy or agency in certain policy spaces, meaning that policy creativity can be stifled. This scenario creates a limited range of policy thinking available in each department or position. It’s easy to not consider ourselves being in policy roles if our range of movement is so confined.

Even with constraints imposed, municipal decision-makers refine policy direction and shape the contours of how policy (even centrally conceived) is delivered locally, often through implementation and assigning local resource levels. By baby steps, opportunities for design are found and the policy agenda of municipalities advances, albeit in a much different pace and direction than those in federal, provincial or territorial governments.

If Everyone’s a Policymaker is Anyone a Policymaker?

With such unique policymaking positions and diverse policy pressures, it is natural to see local government as a very different policymaking environment. This environment calls for a much different policy professional – even one that may not have “policy” in the job title. So, how can we increase the policy capacity of local governments? Let’s begin by re-considering the municipal policy professional.

city limits sign Kelowna, British Columbia

• Allow for interface with technical positions: Given the services most municipalities provide to the public, local governments employ many with a technical background, such as land use or transportation planning or traffic and water engineering, and so on. These are technical domains, with regulation and accreditation through external professional bodies, which creates some siloing around these roles and a limited connection with other departments and policy spaces. Creating more opportunities for collaboration between core policy staff and those with technical responsibilities would bolster both skill sets and open up certain local policy spaces.

• Disburse these roles throughout the organization, rather than being centralized in the CAOs office: Where one does find the “policy people” in local government, they tend to be concentrated in the Chief Administrative Officer or City Manager’s (the head of local civil service) office. This may give the impression that policy is a centralized process, when, in fact, the opposite in local government is true. Embed those defined policy roles throughout the organization.

• Create more defined policy roles: For new policy professionals, the lack of defined policy roles in local government can make these organizations seem inhospitable (or even hostile) towards more policy inclined public servants. Additionally, without more defined policy roles, municipal and provincial governments seem to be largely without “policy peers” to create meaningful interface. Policy is a craft in local government like other organizations, so bringing that to the forefront and incorporating it into departments and job descriptions opens the door for more public facing policy work or at least provides license to “do policy” in local governments.

In reconsidering the role of policy professionals in local government, perhaps we can also accept an invitation to do the same more broadly. 

Does everyone with “policy” in their title at the provincial, territorial and federal level really do “policy”? 

Does everyone without the word not do policy? 

It may be time to reconsider the role of the policy professional in Canada, asking pertinent questions about who “does policy”, where one “ does policy” and whether having boundaries (like job titles) around policy work serves governments and Canadians? 

As we see in local government, those holding technical positions are also “doing policy”. As we also see, the stages where policy work is done is not always the front of the policy cycle. Implementation and resourcing also provide ample opportunity for input and design. 

While the local policy environment may seem constrained at first look, it provides us an opportunity to search more widely and thoughtfully about where “policy” is taking place.

Zack Spicer is Head of New College & Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University.

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Author: Noah Zon

Image of revolving door

It’s conventional wisdom in politics and policymaking that revolving doors are dangerous things to be feared. Not the actual doors, but the idea that movement between roles in industry and roles in government that regulate those industries leads to regulatory capture, with policy that favors the interests of industry rather than the public interest.

This is a risk that should be taken seriously. Bad actors exist, and even a perceived conflict of interest can be damaging to public trust. And it's true that policy can be skewed towards an industry without a whiff of corruption involved.

Canada has built a range of safeguards to block the revolving door and as a result we have very little of the personnel movement back and forth between government and industry seen in other countries. Instead of policy as a career path, people are typically streamed early on into working in, or out, of government. Government tends to be a career-long employer. Taking the federal public service as an example, the most recent statistics show that one-third of new indeterminate hires were under the age of 30, and public servants were three times more likely to leave for retirement than any other reason.

But are we better off as a result? We are robbing our regulators of the expertise to manage in the public interest and robbing industry of the expertise to understand how policymaking actually gets done in government. These rules are more likely to throw barriers around the well-intentioned people working in the field than they are to slow down people who are trying to work the system for their own self-interests.

While large institutions are hard to move - public services especially - this is something that can be improved through practical changes. We just need senior leaders and rising professionals on both sides of the government/”stakeholder” divide to see this movement as something to be encouraged rather than tightly controlled.

Maybe the real government is the friends we made along the way

When governments and the sectors they work with don’t understand each other’s practical realities, we get bad policy. There are things that are hard to understand without some experience working in a sector. Like how government incentive programs might factor into business decisions. Or what it’s like to navigate annual “accountability” reporting as a non-profit receiving transfer payments. 

This goes the other way as well. If we rely on “stakeholders” to make their communities’ and industries’ needs known to governments, we need them to be equipped to provide actionable advice in the right place and the right time. That is easier to do when you can rely on some expertise that you can’t easily get from books or classrooms about how to broker a successful memorandum to cabinet or implement a high-level policy commitment made in a budget or platform.

This isn’t just a question of “sub-optimal”. The safeguards against revolving doors may run counter to their own objectives. If you are concerned about well-resourced industry voices having outsized influence, you should want to ensure that the policymakers on the receiving end of that industry advocacy have the benefit of their own advice informed by the nuances of working directly in the field. The same goes if you’re concerned about a government harming innovation, or layering burdens on the non-profit organizations that deliver the bulk of modern public services because of the same lack of insight.

The upside of this challenge is that to get better outcomes, we don’t need all or most policy professionals to follow sector-jumping paths. We just need it to be more likely that more teams can call on that experience; that someone in the room can add that viewpoint to the conversation.

How did we end up here?

The targeted rules around things like post-employment restrictions for people leaving government only explain a small slice of the lack of movement in and out of government. There are a collection of factors that make it harder for people in government to leave (especially temporarily) and a collection that make it harder for people outside to do a tour of service.

Golden handcuffs and invisible fences

A side effect of good compensation in public service is the “golden handcuff” effect; for earlier career public servants in policy, pay is typically quite a bit higher than the alternatives, while for mid-to-late career folks the defined benefit pensions become nearly-impossible to match.

Beyond the potential near-term pay gap, there are further risks for those who see themselves pursuing public service careers in the long-term. The way to advance in the public service is by moving around in the public service, not by getting outside experience. Leaves of absences are approved reluctantly, if at all, rather than encouraged as part of talent management.

Image of golden handcuffs

These barriers can get reinforced by culture. People tend to emulate the career paths they see. And the leaders that are (hopefully) supporting their careers are more likely to have built their career in a mix of public service roles. The equivalent is also often true within sectors (or there is a clear political staff to government relations pipeline model).

Even if these hurdles are cleared, there are not enough places to go. While there has been an increase in policy-focused roles in both business and non-profit organizations in recent years, there are few mid-level roles appropriate for someone to spend some time mid-career. Compared to peer countries, Canada also has very few think tanks and similar places where someone can go do public-minded work on policy.

Breaking into the club

Looking in the other direction, public service can be an unnecessarily hostile place for someone looking to do a tour of duty. The majority of policy roles are not posted publicly but exist only in a “hidden” job market for people who are already in the public service. Postings are written in insider bureaucratic language, and feature unnecessary credential and experience requirements. Interview practices resemble the most uncomfortable verbal exam you ever went through in school.

And just like for current public servants, culture reinforces these barriers, in terms of the choices people pursue and the perspectives of hiring managers.  For those who do enter the public service mid-career or in leadership roles, the cultural barriers can make it very difficult to thrive. In practice, being an effective public servant in a policy role depends on trusted relationships, an ability to speak the jargon-heavy ‘language’ of government, and skill at navigating unspoken cultural norms. While these can be learned, talented professionals who join at more senior levels rarely get support to do so – and many face outright hostility from peers suspicious of those outside roles.

It doesn’t have to be this way

Even if there are many factors working against people moving in and out of government, there are good reasons to be optimistic. There are practical options that can bridge the divide even in the absence of bigger changes. Here are three responses that could pave the way for more people to bring their insights into and out of governments:

Scale up interchanges

The Government of Canada has a formal program in place to support temporary placements in and out of the core public service called Interchange. It allows federal public servants to take outside roles (typically with provincial governments or broader public sector organizations) and vice versa. However it is currently a very small program that requires a slew of signoffs and conditions. At the time of writing, there were a total of three (3) opportunities posted on its job board, though participating organizations and people can create unposted opportunities.

This could be a much more active route. One place to start is to prioritize interchange opportunities in public service talent management. Instead of a reluctant exception, these placements should be encouraged for public servants and used as a way to bring talent and expertise into public service. The federal government does have the Recruitment of Policy Leaders model to bring in talented professionals from different sectors. This could be scaled to other governments and expanded to different points in career. But it is also a practice that should take place in reverse, identifying rising policy talent in government and ensuring they have opportunities to serve in policy roles outside of government.

Another way to support scale would be to reduce red tape and other barriers to placements. Making the interchanges more centrally supported rather than individual quests could open more opportunities. In the US federal government they have also introduced changes to pension design aimed at reducing the golden handcuffs effect (though these have had limited effect to date).

Because it takes two sides to an interchange, scale also means building partnerships with organizations outside of government. Most of these organizations will have zero current awareness of the opportunity to bring in expertise this way, even if potential interest is high.

Image of an office worker looking through a window at other office workers

Create more “tour of duty” type roles in government and outside

To get more circulation in and out of government - and for a scale-up of interchange programs to be successful - we need more roles designed for people to do tours of duty in government or in community. This has been a successful approach to bring in talent for public digital initiatives through programs like Code for Canada. But it has not been attempted at scale for policy roles.

We do have some limited examples, mostly targeted at exchanges between government and policy academics. The Clifford Clark Visiting Economist program at the Department of Finance has brought in a leading economist for each of the last 40 years to provide advice to the Deputy and Minister. Similarly we have seen “in-residence” at Employment and Social Development Canada and at Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada, based in the Deputy Ministers’ offices. Several of Canada’s public policy graduate programs also bring in senior public servants for one-year postings.

These placements have had outsized impacts on the shaping of public policy and on the shaping of future public policy professionals. The only downside is that there are so few of these positions, and that they are targeted to people who are very accomplished and further in their careers. Creating more opportunities for 1-3 year tours of duty would allow more professionals to bring their expertise and insights to new places.

Build more professional communities for policy rather than public administration

Beyond these direct measures, a supportive response would be to build a professional community for policy people that includes people in and out of government. The Institute for Public Administration of Canada and its chapters do important work for bringing different parts of public service together. Community-led initiatives like Maytree Policy School and the Max Bell Public Policy Training Institute build capacity and communities of practice for policy leaders in the non-profit sector. But these are all focused on working within one (broad) sector rather than across the profession.

This is something worth pursuing for reasons beyond the career path effects. We need more spaces to look at what good policy looks like with perspectives from people making decisions, people implementing decisions, and people affected by them. (Thanks, Policy Ready).

Here a little bit can go a long way. A mix of informal and formal initiatives, building on what already exists can help build understanding and expertise for better public policy outcomes. For example, the Canada School of Public Service could open all or most of its programming to policy professionals outside government. Likewise, the public servants learning at the CSPS would benefit from programming to shed light on how their “stakeholder” counterparts see the policymaking process.

A revolving door that works

We need to equip governments with more understanding of the industries and sectors they regulate, rather than treating outside experience like a scarlet letter.  Guardrails are necessary, but the ones we have are not offering the right kind of protection. While the public may not be filled with concern about the career prospects of well-educated and well-paid policy wonks, this is a problem that leaves us all worse off.

Noah Zon is a co-founder and Principal of Springboard Policy, where he works with organizations to develop and advance good policy ideas. Before starting Springboard, Noah worked in policy roles in the non-profit sector, think tanks, and the Government of Ontario

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Authors: Laura Nelson-Hamilton, Daphnée Nostrome, Jonathan Craft

When thinking about creativity, the complex, rules based, process heavy and incremental world of policymaking may not spring to mind. Picassos, sculptures, architecture or fashion design are more likely to top the list.

To explore the theme of creativity in policymaking, we hosted a session at OCAD U’s Centre for Emerging Artists and Designers, on June 7, 2024.  We welcomed a small and diverse set of policy professionals to discuss where and how they experience creativity in their work. 

This post summarizes our approach and the themes and insights that arose through discussions.

Opening Provocations

To ground our discussion, Daphnée Nostrome provided opening provocations, building off her post on harnessing creative approaches to policy making.

Image description: Daphnée Nostrome speaking, in front of a screen that says “Opening Provocations” 

Daphnée started by telling a story about a frustrated guy who spent hours trying to solve a tech problem before finally calling tech support. The tech comes over, fixes the issue in under a minute, then charges $1,500. Shocked, the guy complains about the high cost, and the tech explains that the quick fix comes from years of experience and practice. The story shows how creativity, like the tech's skill, is a practiced craft that lets us find the right solutions. 

Daphnée also asked the participants to consider:

• What is creativity?

• Who gets to be creative, and at whose expense?

• Who can question creativity?

• What creative experiments can help us find small changes that lead to big results?

These questions opened up our thinking prior to engaging with policymaking.

Exploring Experiences with Policymaking to Understand Creativity

To move beyond hypothetical or general thoughts on creativity and policymaking, we asked participants to reflect on an experience of policymaking.

Participants filled out the following template as a way to prepare for conversation:

Image description: a page with space to write a goal, identify a timeline, with four boxes for added key activities, and four boxes for identifying who was involved in each activity

They shared a wide range of experiences, including those related to:

• informing trade policy

• prioritizing a political platform

• designing a service

• COVID-19 response

• talent and capacity building

• analyzing housing options for women leaving situations of domestic violence

• securing space for artists

• envisioning the future of a theater company to support its pandemic response

Many examples included some form of:

• convening affected persons, stakeholders, and interest groups

• establishing internal to government collaboration across teams that hold particular forms of expertise

• soliciting or providing expertise

What we learned in the session is that the approaches people took, and the policy environments they worked within, were what defined creativity, in practice.

We adapted the following dialogue framework, from 10X100 and Politics for Tomorrow, to facilitate discussions:

Image description: A diamond with Presenter at the top, with 10 minutes for speaking. 2 dialogue partners in the middle, with 15 minutes for speaking, and a reflector role at the bottom, with 5 minutes for speaking. The presenter concludes the conversation by sharing back their insights, for 5 minutes.

Participants were provided the following written instructions and prompted to use the template prepared in part one of the session as the basis of their conversation:

Presenter - 10 mins: Shares about an experience with policymaking. How did it start, what were some of the main activities, where did creativity show up?

Dialogue Partners - 7 mins each: Consider what the presenter shared in relation to your experiences. What stood out to you? What’s similar to your experience? What’s different?

Reflector - 5 mins:  Share themes, connection points, and areas of divergence.

Presenter - 5 mins: Summarize any insights that have arisen, what the conversation is helping them consider.

Themes and Insights

In our discussions, the following themes and insights emerged:

• creativity can be a practice, a process, a set of techniques, a mindset, an input and an output

• the policymaking environment may not be open to creative inputs and outputs, particularly, those related to creative forms of knowledge generation and sharing. This may result in a separation between what is deemed to be creative and what is understood as policymaking

• data is often sought out by reflex, to understand a current state. That can help foster creativity, but others flagged it could also limit creativity by limiting exploration or leading to a sense of certainty over desired outcomes

• future-oriented analyses can enable affected persons to articulate preferred scenarios in novel ways. However, these preferred scenarios can be challenging to map to discrete policy changes, absent a political mandate or willingness to apply policy levers to the creation of preferred futures

• lived experience can help establish foundational understanding of the current state, but requires deeper connection to policy to support data interpretation and identify appropriate levers for change

• early stage work was often required to understand the current state, who needs to be involved in solutioning, and build relationships that could contribute to a shared vision for change

• time, resources, and alignment with funders are required to build the foundations for creativity and policymaking

• creativity in policymaking requires acknowledgement of one's own bias and recognition of the power dynamics that shape who is involved in policymaking, when, and how

When Does Creativity Happen and What Prevents It?

Many participants reflected on how creativity in policymaking often started as a response to crisis. Others expressed it as a response to not knowing exactly what to do, or how to do it.

For some, creativity was a path one needed to take in tandem with traditional policy development processes and in alignment with funding requirements. Creativity could launch those engaged in policymaking in new directions, but this inevitably required reorientation and shape shifting to be accepted. 

In some instances, conscious departure from a standard policy process was an objective of creativity. One participant shared the example of domestic violence reporting where creative approaches were needed to ensure that statements could be taken from survivors in ways that minimized invasive and painful experiences for them. This was echoed by others, who noted a distinction in creativity in what to do (policy objectives or problem structuring) versus the how, or implementation. 

One participant raised that creativity may not always be positive.  Noting that in some instances it might be used in relation to facts and framings in less helpful ways.

Participants consistently noted that creativity was relational and spatial. It was produced in spaces where people felt understood, safe, and able to express their knowledge and experiences in a manner that is consistent with who they are.  It often came to life within relationships of trust. Creativity also evolved in how policymaking participants interacted with others within and around governments on policy issues.  

Financial inputs, resources, authorities, and legitimacy are often gained and exercised in creative ways to allow responses to the policy challenge at hand, diversification of who is in the room or conversation, and where and how policymaking unfolded.

As one participant noted, creativity and policymaking may be about letting go of the ways, structures, assumptions, and functionality of traditional policymaking, and being drawn, instead, to the goal. Creativity in policymaking is about being responsible, working within guardrails, and behaving as stewards of the future, through deep understanding of the present. 

As it turns out, there is far more creativity within policymaking than initially imagined. There is also far more to consider than we had time to cover in a 2 hour session. 

If you’re interested in contributing to the conversation, reach out. If you have something top of mind, tell us:

• What does creativity and policymaking mean to you?

• What possibilities and limitations do you see? 

Links to Facilitation Materials are here

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Author: Daphnée Nostrome

TL;DR:

What is Creativity?
 We can interact in countless ways with people, systems, actors, and problems. And in those interactions, our willingness to deeply engage with each other, change our perspective and let go of almost canonical beliefs can lead to more dynamic approaches to policymaking. No one owns creativity, but it’s a living process that thrives when we let go, and allow ourselves to expand our vantage point so we can be more inventive.

Merging Fragmented Approaches

How do we move away from siloed thinking to embrace holistic approaches in service delivery and policymaking? How can we reimagine our relationships with each other and the planet? What are creative ways of involving society in shaping policies that shift power equitably?

In settler society, things are sliced in units and isolated and managed and dealt with from a singular point. Life is transactional. This approach can lead to siloed service delivery: one team handles licensing, another processes grants, and yet another deals with tax filings. All this fragmentation saddles people with bureaucratic overwhelm.

The price we pay for taking this piecemeal approach is a kind of myopia that makes us blind to the interconnectedness of life. To truly serve people, we need to develop policies, services and systems that address people’s needs holistically. That’s not easy to do, of course. That’s why we must be creative in reorienting the machinery of policymaking to serve people holistically, not in fragments.

Image Description: A row of pink and white flowers, surrounding a streetlight, against a blue sky.

What Holds Us Back?


Privilege. When we talk about policymaking we have to talk about power. Because with power comes privilege. Who gets to shape policies? When we frame issues from the perspective of whoever holds more power, we risk getting stuck. You have to challenge power and privilege to broaden your perspective and consider multiple viewpoints. Otherwise, you give up mental mobility; which also means, you shrink your creative capacity.

Decolonial thinking asks us to move beyond binaries and recognize the relational nature of all things, where one entity can embody multiple roles and connections. If we became more relational in our approaches, we’d find a constellation of belonging; meaning, we would discover the many ways we relate to things and people. Take a plant, for example. It’s many things – shelter, poison, food and shade – a universe in its own right.

Image Description: A succulent blooms in the sun

The Essence of Creativity

Creativity involves considering multiple perspectives, exploring unconventional paths, embracing curiosity, and connecting diverse ideas, approaches and people. It requires us to step back from our predefined roles and positions to imagine all the ways we relate to others differently. It demands relinquishing control, embracing uncertainty, and committing to a process. There is vulnerability and maybe even fear because there are no guarantees. Yet, this tension is where true creativity lies.

It’s important to remember that creativity is not appropriation. It’s not the same as assuming we can take on any perspective or speak for someone else. 

Some may think it’s the stuff of fluff, but creativity is an important discipline. And like any discipline, you have to constantly practice your craft, regularly challenge yourself and push your limits to explore new ideas; even when – and especially when things don’t pan out. Like honing any skill, you need persistent engagement and a willingness to learn from both successes and failures. Whether you use Virgil Abloh’s 3% creativity rule or the 80-20 rule, the key thing to remember is that creativity is a technical exercise.

In policymaking, we want to find creative ways to reach outcomes, and that requires us to apply the right techniques. The right techniques/expertise can help us identify the 3%, the small shifts that will yield big results, or even just help us find the right problems to solve. To get at those techniques, though, we need to experiment a bit. But experimentation only works well if we open up our minds.

Imbalances can happen when some people have expertise and others don't. In policymaking, whose expertise drives the process? And at whose expense? To be effective, we need to find ways to:

• tap into creative capacity (individual + organizational) by switching from a transactional/siloed approach to a relational one

• figure out what creative technique or what creative theory of change we want to apply

• learn from our experiments

Letting Go of Orthodoxies

Letting go of orthodoxies allows us to lead with curiosity, so we can embrace diverse approaches and techniques. As we stretch our policymaking muscle, however, there’s bound to be some disillusionment and resistance.

It’s tempting to think that, because we’ve always done something a certain way, it’s the best way to go about it. But if we admit that policymaking, like any other process, is inventive, then we can accept that errors, inconsistencies and unpredictability are inherent parts of that work. We can accept that bias shapes how things happen. This isn’t a condemnation but an opportunity to unpack what works and what doesn’t so we can evolve approaches to meet outcomes.

Effective policymaking requires acknowledging power dynamics and taking steps to address imbalances. 

To achieve that, we’ll need to find more reciprocal ways to, for example, connect with people who have been over-engaged yet chronically under-served. Learning how to let go of power and be transparent, how to foster shared decision-making, can help policymakers tap into a broader range of expertise. This can enable more generative processes that ultimately result in relevant policies that effectively address the complex challenges of society.

Image Description: A building with “needs” painted on the windows. The window containing the letter S is partly open.

Creativity is not a luxury, but a necessity 

We face unprecedented problems that require us to stretch our imagination so we can relate to issues and each other differently. To me, it means we need to engage our ingenuity to identify solutions. 

Art exemplifies this creative process. Starting with a blank canvas, a painter engages in a methodical exploration, a focused inquiry that turns into a final product. But of course, policymakers don’t always have a proverbial blank canvas to work on. In fact, they need to work within constraints and compliance-driven settings. And it’s easy to think that there isn’t room for creativity. Exploring alternative interpretations of regulations, finding new ways to meet requirements, and getting permission to experiment within defined boundaries are all creative pursuits. Whether it’s thinking laterally, tweaking processes and fostering a culture that values collaboration; there are ways to be creative. The key is to keep an open mind.

So if we are going to develop policies that will help us meet the challenges we face, we have to be creative. We have to be willing to break down the rules.  We have to be willing to shatter the mirror and look at the pieces and completely change our vantage point. We have to relate to things and each other and problems very differently. It is urgent that we do that. We cannot afford not to be creative.I would even say that our way forward is through creativity.

Daphnée Nostrome is a change leader who is passionate about building equitable services. She has worked to advance digital practices and improve service design and delivery in government for over 20 years. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphneenostrome/

There has been much discussion of late about whether traditional approaches to policy making are fit for purpose. In Canada and elsewhere even traditional policymaking is seen as needing reform and modernization. A growing number of new and alternative practices have gained attention and are often part of today’s complex policy space. Take this one, from Millie Begovic and UNDP Strategic Innovation, which looks at institutional responses to the illusion of control, versus acceptance of constant change. Or this one, by Sarah Gold, Trust is the New Experience. Stretching even farther afield, Facts Don’t Change Minds Like Friendships Can looks at information sharing and decision-making in a post-truth digital world.  

Making sense of all of this can be daunting. Traditional approaches and practices of policymaking dance with a dizzying array of pressure points, as well as behavioral, design, innovation, and participatory approaches. Can policy keep up?

Often, conversations can easily dwell on what is wrong with policymaking and can present a false consensus of what real world policy making involves - or how various people approach it.

We think all of this points to a need. A need for some fresh dialogues and varied perspectives on policy making. 

In particular, we think there is value in increasing the number and type of exchanges amongst a diverse set of policy thinkers and doers out there.

What does policymaking look like today? How are people ‘practicing it’ and what is working and why?

There is no grand plan nor are there significant resources behind this initiative. Rather, we are convening, provoking, and creating space for policy professionals to share struggles and wise practices. Our hope is to better connect policy thinkers and doers.

So, this is an invitation for you and others you know that are in the policy space. We use the term policy space to signal that we are not just talking about government and public service. We know that many in the private, non-profit, and public sectors are involved in policymaking today in various ways. We think those insights and perspectives warrant engagement.

We decided to test the waters with an invitation to a small group of policy practitioners from across levels of government, private sector, academia, and civil society ecosystems. We were delighted that just about everyone we invited agreed. 

It validated what we suspected - there is an appetite for meaningful discussion about policymaking. Below we share our experience with our first dialogue and the next steps it raised. If you or your team want to try the exercises below our free templates and guiding questions are here

A first of many conversations

Our first session was held in Toronto on March 28, 2024. As people arrived we welcomed them to introduce themselves and mingle. Some knew each other well, others had met in passing, and some were meeting for the first time.

This informal start helped us avoid the protracted and formal introductions that are common to group discussions. We jumped into why we convened this group of people, and our plan for the first discussion and activity.

Our dialogue was guided by three high level questions:

• What is policymaking today? 

• How are the various practices of policy making being used and connected? 

• What is working in the policy space given the well known constraints and challenges facing policymakers? 

Mapping policy & its practices

We started with this image from Brookfield and invited people to react to it individually and take notes and then paired up attendees and asked them to share their perspectives and to redraw the graphic as they saw fit.  

The four groups produced four different ways of mapping the policy ecosystem and approaches. This, alone, tells us something about the extent to which there is consensus on what policy making is, and how it is done, today.

There was broad recognition that policymaking occurs within a closed system, relying on experts, stakeholder groups, and internal government expertise. 

One group went so far as to remove ‘open policy’ from available approaches when they redrew their map, due to the recognition of the challenges related to defining and practicing this approach in Canada. Maybe you agree that ‘open’ government approaches have fallen off the radar and would remove this from the policymaking map too? Maybe they are still present but only in pockets and could be scaled?

Others situated emerging approaches, like participatory foresights, and design, as opportunities to situate ‘openness’ within policymaking, through a reframe. 

What is Changing?

Major changes to the maps included moving some of the approaches closer together, with design centralizing a number of approaches, complemented by strategic foresights and systems-oriented work. 

Behavioural insights is also seen to be an accepted form of expertise available to policymaking, which contributes to design. 

In one map, design was cast farther away from policy, as something that comes after the application of foresights and systems perspectives.

This pair replaced ‘open’ with ‘participatory’ approaches, and contrasted this with expert inputs.In this model, Service and Policy continue to remain separate from one another. 

Another pair redrew the map in its entirety.

Missions or Challenges are placed at the center. Open is contrasted with Data and Specialized forms of expertise, including digital and stakeholder engagement. 

Experimental policy overlaps with missions and challenges, and implementation science is added as a new approach required in policymaking. 

The group noted that the discussion of practices in the initial model was missing a foundation of enablers. Things like data, governance, stakeholder engagement, digital and other key ingredients were necessary precursors for any policy practice. We wondered if these could be deemed to be essential ingredients, and if they were generalizable or more bespoke.

Another used a scale of impact perspective, inspired by Anyi’s framework for social movements. Their map looked across teams, organizations, and movements. It held identified practices as potential contributors at different points in time and across scales. All practices were deemed to be relevant and applicable in this approach, with no valuation placed on any single practice over any other, at any particular scale or point in time.  

Finally, a fourth approach re-mapped policymaking in reference to innovation. It visualized how this worked for policy by creating four new quadrants 

• Ideas in response to problems

• Practice

• Delivery 

• Analysis and decision-making 

‘Real consultation’ was positioned under innovation in practice, with a role for academia and advocacy organizations incorporated. 

‘Innovation in delivery’ did not have any particular approaches indicated. This may represent a gap in current approaches and ways of thinking about innovation. It may also identify an openness to learning about what this might look like, in practice.

Behavioural insights were placed across delivery and analysis and decision-making. Innovation in this area also included participatory budgeting and developmental evaluation.  

A quick ‘policy therapy’ session 

To steer the conversation towards what works and avoid the pitfall of commiserating on what is wrong in policy we invited everyone to participate in a “policy therapy session”. We asked the group to quickly list out anything and everything wrong with policymaking today. They obliged and pointed to:

• Consistent lack of resources

• Closed and elite-driven approaches

• Inability to keep pace with change

• Ivory tower disconnect from delivery

• Identity crisis related to policy’s role as a definer of problems versus taker of problems

• Lack of quality data, reliance on legacy data, and odd ways of making use of it

• Short-sightedness and overarching sense of lack across the ecosystem

• Lack of courage to try new things, particularly at senior levels and among politicians

• Lack of quick access to knowledge due to differing practices across the ecosystem

• Overall emphasis on silver bullets 

• Conflation of bold with big as a raison d’être for policy making

• Comms driven exercises that manage overall messaging to, and engagement with, the public

• Exclusivity within the ranks of who makes and advises on policy

• Policy work seen as being something only certain types of public servants do

• Lack of openness, overall

What is working: Practices and Strategies 

The items on the list above are no surprise. We wanted to get them out there but our focus was on what participants thought was working and where policymaking was proving itself to be resilient.

Recognition of Opportunities to Address ‘Closed’ Nature of Policymaking Through An Emphasis On Relationships

• Policy is recognized as having a role in identifying solutions to problems, but the group noted that some teams and stakeholder groups are less practiced in this space

• There’s a need for deepened engagement with persons with lived experience to solution well

• Care is required to ensure expectations are not raised in early stage policymaking. Trust was understood to be won and lost over follow through

• Sustained relationships with people and partners external to government were seen to be contributors to an overall goal of working in new ways. A lot of policy needs to be closed and private. There’s an art and balance to identifying opportunities for greater openness, access to policymaking processes, and new forms of consultation

• Participants noted that when relationships are transactional, they can increase the risk of failure. When relationships are centered and maintained, they can work with failure, toward improvements

• The group recognized the need to understand and address when and how policy has let people down, caused harm, raised expectations, and not delivered on them

• Understanding experiences of policymaking can refine the approach as a whole and provide input into the practice

• Relationship building with affected policy communities was also seen to be part of the creation of safe spaces to try again or do something differently, but participants felt that there are limited spaces available for this in policymaking today
  

Foresight as Effective Practice 

• Strategic foresight was seen as an effective practice and recognized as a contributor to early stage ideation, long term planning, and identification of overlapping problem spaces

• It was also seen to increase responsiveness to emerging challenges in the economy, environment, and communities

• It is a policy practice already available in some government quarters but there was discussion of whether it needs greater visibility and more familiarity to political and public service leadership
  

Unlocking New Professionals Competencies and Space to Practice

• Young professionals and recent graduates are joining public service because they are excited to bring new approaches and work toward solutions

• They are bringing to public service new competencies and techniques in digital, human-centered design, and iterative delivery but find using them in the public service a challenge.  The system is not set up to leverage their new policy practices

• Engaging design researchers in early stage policy work, and testing products and services with members of the public, could be seen as opportunities to try out new approaches, outside the confines of formal consultation

• We heard that an emphasis on delivery is becoming more pronounced in policy environments

• This may be driving quiet forms of smaller scale, situational innovation. There was uncertainty about the degree to which this can address challenges already observed in implementation and if small scale innovation might be a way to engage new professionals in applying the skills gained through studies, to address public problems

So What and What’s Next?

A concluding hypothesis is that we might need to shift from a triangular approach to policymaking where types of participants are siloed into respective domains (political, public service, public), towards an understanding of some of society’s core needs across ecosystems and ways we can improve policymaking together.

How to do so while recognizing the separation of powers among political representatives and public servants proved more than we could address in one conversation.

Through this session, we learned that if you ask ten people to define or draw policymaking, you are likely to get several different takes. When you unpack the drawings and logic it becomes clear that there are many perspectives and questions about how policy works - and what policy thinkers and doers are up to in today’s policy space.

How would you place these practices and what would be your guiding categories? If you or your team wants to try the exercise you can use our templates and guiding questions here

We’ll be meeting again in early June to talk about creativity & policymaking. If you’d like to join us please reach out to us at policymakingtoday@gmail.com

Who we are

Jonathan Craft is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto where he teaches, researches, and writes on public policy & governance. In 2019 he founded Policy Ready, a platform for practitioners and scholars interested in better understanding policy-making & governance in the age of disruption.

Laura Nelson-Hamilton is a hyphenate in name and practice. She has an interest in collaborative approaches to public problem solving and has worked in community-based research, advocacy, operations, policy, service design, and digital service delivery.