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The University of Southampton
Public Policy|Southampton

Public Policy Secondment at Defra

Defra Building
Defra Placement

I am a behaviourist researcher in Environmental Politics, and I spent three months working with the Resources and Waste Strategy Evaluation team, in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It was an enriching experience, during which I contributed to the evidence annex of the 25-year plan presented by DEFRA.

I focused on the consumption section of the plan, as it positioned the current consumer and household behaviour and presented the evidence for the new policies to improve the former. This real-life experience allowed me to develop two key skills: the importance of mapping out policies and the relevance of the latter in designing impact assessments prior to implementation.

Policy mapping refers to creating logic maps, also known as mental maps, of the components and different stages that a policy goes through. It is meant to provide, literally, the bigger picture on how the policy looks like. It informs policymakers and stakeholders of who is involved in the designing process, who is the audience, the specific issues targeted, the expected outcomes and the goals to be achieved. It also provides a clear image of the limitations to implementing that policy and other components that need to be considered, such as resources or information gaps. 

I saw first-hand the importance of mapping out policies when I worked on a project to assess the impact of the policies regulating plastic pollution. It is not only strategic planning. I understood how this mapping of policies connects all project-members together, and it lets each one see their individual contribution and –literally- the bigger picture of the project. That is to say, I learned that the act of mapping out policies also synchronizes teams, which is essential for productive collaboration.

Coming from a Latin American country where impact assessment is not considered often in policymaking, this was of particular interest to me. I saw how mapping out policies also provided solid guidance for future impact assessments. In turn, I realised how impact assessments can serve as transparency and accountability measures. I witnessed how including impact assessment, in policy design, helps delimit the scope of the policy, choose the indicators to measure goal-achievement, and narrow down methods and targets of the policy. It also shows civil servants what information of the current state they need, in order to assess the degree of success achieved. This drew me back to seeing the bigger picture of policymaking.

It was this constant zoom-in and out perspective that made my secondment at DEFRA a gratifying but a challenging experience. I was also able to see in action the commonly known limitations of policy design, human resources and time. The projects civil servants must address require much of the former two, but the plurality of issues and constant adaption somehow always leaves them short-handed. This secondment provided me with a new, reality-based, perspective on policymaking. I would recommend a secondment experience to any PhD student.

 

Rubi Alvarez Rodriguez

Politics and International Relations PhD

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