The role of peer challenge in building better policy making environments

Tim Baxter and Neil Townley from the Department of Health and Social Care , talk about the benefits of peer challenge in policy making and how an innovative new model has helped that process. ?

The Transformation Team in the Policy Profession Unit is developing an innovative model to assess policy making environments across government.

The aim is to ensure that departments provide the right environments for good policy making.

Peer challenge is a key part of this process. HM Revenue and Customs was the first government department to go through the self-assessment process , in which a group of policy makers and peer challengers conducted interviews, attended workshops and discussed their reflections in order to identify areas for improvement. ?

As soon as we heard about the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) getting involved as the second department, we wanted to pitch in. Partly because we still think of DWP as our sister department (yes, we are that old! Also, we do still have a joint unit on health and work), and because we saw this as an opportunity to learn more about the process ourselves. We are both experienced policy civil servants with several decades of working on social welfare policy between us, as well as an interest in programmes to support and improve policy making in our own department. We thought this would be a great opportunity to learn how another organisation ticks and really useful for our own reflective development – and so it proved. ?

Getting external perspective in a way that feels safe?

At the start we had only a hazy idea of what our role would entail based on a short initial discussion, but things soon became clearer. ?Four of us acted as peer challengers, all experienced policy professionals from other departments. Each of us was grouped with 4-5 policy professionals from DWP to look at a particular theme identified as part of the assessment, such as long-term planning or involvement of citizens and end-users.?

Every group engaged with their colleagues to collect views on the department’s policy making capability. Our role was not to lead these groups – they were very much self-led – instead, we were there to ensure that peer perspective and challenge was baked into the whole assessment process. ?

We did four main things:?

• acted as an informal adviser to our group, feeding in views and challenge as needed?
• led interviews with senior policy officials and external stakeholders to explore their views on the department’s policy making capability (those then became part of the evidence base for the assessment)?
• joined a number of workshop sessions with the whole working group to feed in reflections and views when helpful?
• shared and discussed our reflections with the department’s Head of Policy Profession?

We cannot emphasise enough that peer challenge is not a form of inspection, or a scored assessment and it is not driven by external requirements.

It’s a process that focuses on peer support, reflective learning and forward-looking improvements. It’s meant to be a safe space for a department to assess their policy making capability without the worries of judgement and reporting. That level of candour is what drives honest reflection and therefore drives the journey towards genuine improvement.?

Developing a reflective practice??

The first thing to say is that it has been a privilege to be involved in this review, and to work with a group of highly able, enthusiastic and motivated colleagues. ?

Whilst we hope we have been able to contribute useful ideas and challenge to the process, we have also learned a lot. For example, the department has a well-established methodology for testing a policy before being fully implemented, which ensures that there is a strong evidence base when new policies are rolled out. Whilst every department’s delivery context is different, this approach to piloting has lessons for Whitehall in general.??

Participating in the process therefore allowed us to learn how another department works, to compare notes on good practice and to develop our own personal reflective practice.??

We all share similar challenges?

The review also reminded us that, despite our different policy areas, many of our challenges are very similar. ?

For example, how can we ensure we are delivering on ministers’ priorities to a high quality whilst managing demands on the system? Prioritisation is key, but we heard concerns that it is far easier to start projects than to stop them. Many readers will no doubt recognise the syndrome. ??

Another challenge, perhaps the core challenge of the policy professional, is how can we balance short-term demands driven by working within a Parliamentary democracy whilst ensuring sufficient focus on delivery of long-term reforms? We are privileged to work in a political environment, seeking to deliver ministers’ priorities. We must do this whilst ensuring we continue to pay regard to longer-term pressures and demands. This is part of the challenge and also an attraction of being a policy professional. ?

We need more peer challenge???

Having completed the assessment, we can warmly recommend being a peer challenger.??

Not only will you be able to contribute your own experience and insights, but you will also gain hugely from reflecting on another department’s perspective and be able to take those reflections back to your home department.??

This kind of reflective practice is surely a core part of what being a policy professional is all about. ?

Get involved?

If you'd like to hear more about the project or get involved as a department or individual we'd love to hear from you, please contact Kimberly Jarrad ([email protected] ).

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