Overall being a member of the policy profession has meant essentially nothing in my civil service policy career so far. I'm not sure it can easily be made to be meaningful though. Doing good policy I think is mostly a combination of (i) having a deep understanding of the issues you're working on (which will be solved by combatting job churn) and (ii) being thoughtful and intellectually curious (which I don't see a well-designed policy profession being able to alter). I guess overall I don't think there are enough 'hard' skills (e.g. 'ability to program') in policy to make focusing on improving the policy profession a priority.
Glad to see Cal Newport getting a good showing too, if there is ever going to be a policy professional curriculum then encouraging people to engage with the ideas of Deep Work would be top of my list!
Thanks for the comment, have been hoping to get some direct engagement on ideas. I think the policy profession got along for a long time on "smart folks" who were able to get a deep understanding and exercise curiosity without any formal professional standards. I suspect this is harder as the policy profession has grown in numbers and pay stagnation has brought the pay even lower than main competitors like management consulting. So I think the need for formal professionalisation is greater now.
I'm sceptical of the idea that it can't be professionalised. Doctors said similar things in the early 20th century and most professions have a history of saying their work is far too complex to be reduced to a few principles or processes. I think most policy officials do sort of the same activities but in no standardised way. Your example of software programming is interesting, because I don't think that professionalising software development was about the hard skills of programming. If anything it was more about the processes that go around this, such as Agile product development methods.
As someone new to CS in a policy role (in BEIS), having done some roles in trade bodies etc on the outside, I would say there are two potentially fruitful strands to professionalisation of the 'typical' CS policy person. 1) Improvement of the core skills of policymaking - how many of us are truly equipped to approach research in the right way (yes use of data and understanding stats, but also how to get the most out of qualitative methods - e.g. knowing how to run a focus group/structured interview), and 2) Improvement of wider skills - more akin to mgmt consultancy. The biggest skills gap I've encountered so far (and one I myself recognise I could develop) is ability to make and execute basic plans - tracking progress, connecting ideas to reality of delivery, etc.
Overall being a member of the policy profession has meant essentially nothing in my civil service policy career so far. I'm not sure it can easily be made to be meaningful though. Doing good policy I think is mostly a combination of (i) having a deep understanding of the issues you're working on (which will be solved by combatting job churn) and (ii) being thoughtful and intellectually curious (which I don't see a well-designed policy profession being able to alter). I guess overall I don't think there are enough 'hard' skills (e.g. 'ability to program') in policy to make focusing on improving the policy profession a priority.
Glad to see Cal Newport getting a good showing too, if there is ever going to be a policy professional curriculum then encouraging people to engage with the ideas of Deep Work would be top of my list!
Thanks for the comment, have been hoping to get some direct engagement on ideas. I think the policy profession got along for a long time on "smart folks" who were able to get a deep understanding and exercise curiosity without any formal professional standards. I suspect this is harder as the policy profession has grown in numbers and pay stagnation has brought the pay even lower than main competitors like management consulting. So I think the need for formal professionalisation is greater now.
I'm sceptical of the idea that it can't be professionalised. Doctors said similar things in the early 20th century and most professions have a history of saying their work is far too complex to be reduced to a few principles or processes. I think most policy officials do sort of the same activities but in no standardised way. Your example of software programming is interesting, because I don't think that professionalising software development was about the hard skills of programming. If anything it was more about the processes that go around this, such as Agile product development methods.
As someone new to CS in a policy role (in BEIS), having done some roles in trade bodies etc on the outside, I would say there are two potentially fruitful strands to professionalisation of the 'typical' CS policy person. 1) Improvement of the core skills of policymaking - how many of us are truly equipped to approach research in the right way (yes use of data and understanding stats, but also how to get the most out of qualitative methods - e.g. knowing how to run a focus group/structured interview), and 2) Improvement of wider skills - more akin to mgmt consultancy. The biggest skills gap I've encountered so far (and one I myself recognise I could develop) is ability to make and execute basic plans - tracking progress, connecting ideas to reality of delivery, etc.