CHAPTER 8

Executing Public Policy with

Strategic Management and
Benchmarking
NATURE AND THRUST OF PUBLIC POLICY

• Public Policy-is a course of action which a

government adopts to tackle specific public
concern or issue in the form of regulations,
laws, programs or decisions.
 THREE COMPONENTS OF PUBLIC POLICY MAKING

PROBLEM
PLAYER
POLICY
 BUILDING PUBLIC POLICY
• Public policy commences with the discovery of a problem and usually the
government is confronted with varying ways to deal with it. Citizens, interest
Groups or the private Sector may bring the concern to the attention of the
Government, or its concerned departments or agencies for necessary action
(or inaction).
• The policy making process revolves within several factors, which trigger
agenda initiation, government formulation and implementation, and policy
evaluation.
• Every policy designed for public purpose aims to bring about solvency and
normalcy to the situation once jeopardized.
 DOES GOVERNMENT EXIST? DOES
IT REALLY MATTER?
• Government policies generally are aimed at achieving the
betterment of the lives of the people in a state, or in crude
terms, they refer to the ability of the government to make
things either better or worst for the people. As Dye (1997)
puts it, the task of the policy analyst is to understand what
governments do, how they do it, and what difference they
make.
 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND
PUBLIC POLICY
• The study of public policy rather came late in the 1960s when for relevance
and meaning of government programs became a growing call for
bureaucrats and administrator. It was during this period when a distinctive
area of political science emerged and developed into what we know today
as policy analysis. This aims to examine how a policy was initiated,
prepared, executed and reviewed and how the policy outcomes could
improved for the better.
• Public administration cannot exist in a policy vacuum. It must have
administrative structures that directed by leaders who wish to do something-
if only to maintain the status qou. All of public administration is inherently an
instrument of policy, whether that instrument plays well, poorly, or not at all.
 DEFINING PUBLIC POLICY
• Thomas Dye define public policy as “whatever government choose to do or
not to do”. And modified by Roskins as public policy is “whatever the
government does to do or not to do”.
• Policy-is a course of action or a series of program adopted by a group or a
person or a government in view as address or respond to existing issues or
concerns. Hence, to designate something as a policy suggests that a formal
decision has been reached for execution and then giving official sanction to
a particular course of action.
• Public policy-is an action taken by the government to meet particular
demand growing out of the society. This consist of the formal and selected
decisions of government agency that has been reached for execution.
 PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS
• Is the study how governmental policies are made and
implemented, and the application of available
knowledge to governmental policies for the purpose of
improving their formulation and implementation. It has
been referred to “the monitoring of different government
agencies that directly affect a specific community”.
• Policy analysis attempts to understand the role of
government with their outputs and outcomes of the
programs being pursued.
POLICYMAKING DESIGN: POLICY SYSTEM OUTPUTS MODEL

Environment

Policy
Policy
Policy Inputs Process or
Outputs
Conversion
 POLICY MAKING PROCESS
• Policy process relates to the mechanisms through which
public government policy is made. Policymaking is a
process in two aspects:
1.) It involves a linked series of actions or events.
2.) It is a Process in the sense that it distinguishes the ‘how’ of
the government from the ‘what’ of government.
POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT: PUBLIC POLICYMAKING PROCESS

Environment
Situationer
Feedback

Criticism from
Implementation
Agenda Policy Decision Citizens and
of a New
Setting or Non-Decision Formal Program
Program Evaluation
STAGES OF POLICYMAKING PROCESS
Stages of
policymaking process

Policy Initiation Process

Policy Formulation
Process

Policy Implementation
Process

Policy Evaluation
Process
POLICY INITIATION/AGENDA SETTING
• Initiation refers to the making of decisions in a certain aspect
where policy initiation determines the political agenda through
identification of emerging problems as issues of relevance, and
by determining how significant matters are to be responded to
by the government.
• Agenda setting is the process by which ideas or issues bubble up
through the various political channels to wind up for
consideration by a political institution such as legislator or court.
The agenda setting process often makes extensive use of the
mass media to expand the numbers of people who care about
the issue to force the institution to take some action.
• Factors that can influence policy initiation:
1. Political factors
2. Media
3. Science
4. Technology
The Agenda Setting Process

An issue is identified by
citizens, groups or a public
policy

High publicity like press Because of the noise

releases, violence and the created by its supporters,
media, the issue then formal decision-makers are
expanded to larger audience forced to consider the issue
• Anthony Downs attempts to explain the way which policy
problems evolve on the political agenda. The cycle
premised on the notion that the public attention rarely
remains focused on any one issue. Downs in Shafritz (2009)
said that the cycle consist of five steps:
1. The pre-problem stage
2. Alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm
3. Recognition of the costs of change
4. Decline of public interest
5. The post-problem stage
POLICY FORMULATION
• It entails the definition issues, framing objectives, and setting of
priorities. There is also the review and analysis from the
different policy choices resulting in the adoption of the most
preferred option. There are factor that would likely be
regarded like the political electoral culture and consensus of
the people other than the traditional administrative goals of
efficiency, effectiveness and economy.
• Policy Formulation is the conceptualization stage of policy
process where the detailed development of a policy is framed
into more or less concrete proposals. Formulation of policy
includes “not only the translation of broad proposals into
specific and detailed recommendations, but also the filtering
out of proposals and perhaps even the fundamental
recasting of the issue under consideration.
Two models developed in analyzing policy formulation/making:
• Incremental Model (Lindblom’s, 1979)
• Radical Model (Simon’s, 1983)

Rational Model Incremental Model

Goals are set before means are Goals and means are considered
considered. together.
A good Policy is the most A good policy is one in which all
appropriate for the desired ends. main actors can agree.
Analysis is comprehensive, all Analysis is selected. The object is
effects of all options are good policy, not the best policy.
addressed.
Theory is heavily used. Comparison with similar is heavily
used.
 Incrementalism suggest the theory that decisions are made
not in the light of clear-cut objectives, but through small
adjustments dictated by changing circumstances.
Rationalism as a way of formulating decisions or policies is
posited on the following rational decision-making approach.
Quoting Lasswell’s book seven significant phase for every decision
should be considered.
1. Intelligence phase
2. Promoting or recommending phase
3. Prescribing phase
4. Invoking phase
5. Application phase
6. Appraisal phase
7. Terminating phase
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

• Implementation is the process of putting the government

policy into effect; it is the total process of translating a legal
mandate, whether an executive order or an enacted
statute, into appropriate program directives and structures
that provide service or create goods. Implementation is,
thus, the doing part of public administration.
• Policy implementation is also called policy execution,
meaning putting out the policy into practice. Putting policy
into practice is a technical matter of administration.
 APPROACHES OF IMPLEMENTATION
• Top-down approach conceives the task of policy
implementation as ensuring that policy execution delivers
the outputs as specified by the policymakers. This considers
that the role of those who execute policy in reshaping
broad objectives to fit local and changing circumstances
should be both recognized and welcomed.
• Bottom-up approach reflects the contemporary emphasis in
governance, with its stress on the multiple actors involved in
the policy process.
 There are some conditions to be required in order to
achieve ‘perfect implementation’ in the sense of ensuring
that policy is delivered exactly as intended:
• A) a unitary administrative system with a single line authority
to ensure central control;
• B) unitary form norms and rules that operate through the
system;
• C) perfect obedience or perfect control;
• D) perfect information, perfect communication and perfect
coordination;
• E) sufficient time for administrative resources to be modified.
POLICY EVALUATION

• Policy evaluation is the appraisal or review of a policy being

implemented as to its success or failure. The task of the
Policy Analyst is to review whether a policy has achieved its
objectives. Policy Appraisal is the culmination of a course of
action, which will result in a decision whether it will be
continued, altered or terminated. This stage completes the
policy process in that the result or the information acquired
by means of evaluation can be fed back into initial and
formulation cycles.
 DISTRIBUTIVE, PREVENTIVE, AND
REGULATORY POLICIES
• Preventive policies-are those courses of actions intended to
curb or derail any significant impact of an issue or
perceived problem to arise by preventing the occurrence
of a shock.
• Distributive policies-are programs which by nature aim to
provide goods and services among members of the society.
• Regulatory policies-do impose certain performance
operations, standards of service delivery and other rules and
mandates are rigid policies to ensure continuity, consistency
and accessibility of these provisions to the general public.
 STRENGTHENING PUBLIC POLICY
• Any effort to review the performance of government or the
political system should always consider some of its ideological
ramifications. For a public policy to work effectively, a constant
evaluation is truly necessary, but when everything seems not to
do well, an innovation of management approach may perhaps
bring in some success stories like the application of strategic
management and benchmarking in the overall policy design.
• The concern about policy implementation being the most critical
area of the policy process has resulted from lack of political will
from below.
• The new concept of public management allows business and
private sectors to assume great responsibility for delivering
services through a privatization policy, contracting out and
market testing.
 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND
BENCHMARKING APPROACHES
• Strategic management is basically culled from
military strategy of operation success through
tactical planning and systematic execution.
• Benchmarking offers new meaning in public
administration as it tries to look into best practices of
other governmental entities as to how they
operationally work successfully thereby enticing a
unique and more effective governance framework
being demonstrated in some parts of the world.
 DEFINING STRATEGIC
MANAGEMENT APPROACH
• Strategic Management is the art and science of
formulating, implementing, and evaluating cross-
functional decisions that will enable an organization
to achieve its objectives. It involves the systematic
identification of specifying the firm’s objectives,
nurturing policies and strategies to achieve these
objectives and acquiring and making these
resources available to implement the policies and
strategies to achieve the firms objectives.
 NATURE AND THRUST OF
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Six features that identify a strategic management approach:
1. The identification of objectives to be achieved in the future which are often
announced in a vision achieved;
2. The adaptation of a time frame or planning horizon in which these objectives are
to be achieved;
3. A systematic analysis of the current circumstances of an organization especially its
capabilities;
4. An assessment of the environment surrounding the organization both now and
within the planning horizon;
5. The selection of a strategy for the achievement of desired objectives by future
date, often comparing various alternatives; and
6. The integrity of organizational efforts among this strategy.
• Strategic formulation is the process of developing long-range plans to
deal effectively with environmental opportunities and threats in light of
corporate strengths and weaknesses.
• Strategy implementation is the process of putting strategies and
policies into action through the development of programs, budgets,
and procedures.
• Strategy evaluation is the process of monitoring corporate activities
and performance results so that performance can be compared with
desired performance.
• Strategic management is set of managerial decisions and actions
that determine the long-term performance of an organization,
assesses the general performance in the environment like sociocultural
and economic forces, inducting the political legal character and
impact of technological advancement in the society.
 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN THE
PUBLIC SECTOR
• It was said that “new approaches to management in the public
sector are imperative as governments enter the new millennium.
Market dynamics have created challenges for public organizations,
with the emergence of the global economy, advances in technology,
increased societal demands, and the need to provide more social
services with fewer resources”. One of the public sector management
approaches then was adoption of strategic management from the
business sector. It was believed that strategic management would
make clear-cut choices for successful policy direction and with
established mission and vision and planned strategies; likely success
could be attained in the administration of government bureaucracy.
 The introduction of management techniques predominantly rooted in
the private sector into the public sector environment presents public sector
managers with two major challengers:
1. the long term policy consistency
2. the relative simple accountability
In public sector organization the accountability model is more
complex-typically a political leadership is responsible for strategy formation
and executive leadership is responsible for managing implementation of these
policies. Two aspects of accountability in public sector organization:
1. The potential negative impact on radical performance improvement
caused by political ‘abuse’ of public accountability.
2. The importance of internal accountability between layers of management
within public sector organizations.
 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
FRAMEWORK AND PROCESS
Setting Mission,
Environmental Information
Vision, and
assessment Gathering
Goals

Developing
Strategies
Executing
Review Strategic
Performance Planning Operational
and Review (Response to Planning
Process Challenges)
A case of Strategic Management in Microfinance: Philippine Experience

Source: Credit for Chona David. This

article was published on May 5, 2009.
 ATTEMPT AT STRATEGIZING
SECURITY FRAMEWORK
• The proposal for strategizing national security framework was first
propounded by Col. E. Demacali in 1996. He argued that designing a foreign
policy direction should anchor on multifarious national goals. He propagated
the framework of geopolitics vis-à-vis foreign policy objectives for national
security device. This strategy addresses the following 12-point consideration
in assessing the environment.
Step I: What is the most problem form among array of problems you
discovered? Why is it a problem? to what extent does it veer away from our
national security? How does it threaten national security? What are its political
nature, sociocultural characteristics, economic dynamics, and military
posturing
 Step II: To resolve this problem, what national objectives or ends should
be adopted to give directions or focus to its resolution?
1. Identify the key and peripheral actors
2. What are the actors’ interests and the significance of such interests to the
pursuance of their respective objectives?
3. What are their divergent and shared interests?
4. Estimate the mean available to the parties involved, their relative streghts,
the balance of forces and their comparative power or capabilities in terms
of operational and logistical aspect.
5. Calculate the relation of forces, together with the criteria of risk and
expected cost when these elements are employed in terms of space and
time.
6. What are the breadth and width of our freedom of action through the
pathways of our ends?
7. How does the environment, within which we operate, affect our freedom of
action? Regional? International?
a. Resources
b. Sociocultural immersion
8. What are the uncertainties that may affect our strategy? Can we resolve
the problem in a straightforward manner despite these uncertainties? Do we
seek and use intelligence wisely to its optimum value to reduce or minimize
these uncertainties?
9. How strong are the friendly and/or hostile actors’ initiatives.
10. Are the key actors inclined to maneuver their resources to sustain the
initiative, to exploit success, to preserve freedom of action and to reduce their
vulnerabilities? What are the effects of the strategic variables, to include the
dimensions of strategy in the maneuvering of resources and/or forces? Are
there principles of surprise; economy of force, mass and unity of command
relevant in reinforcing the friendly maneuvers? Hostile maneuvers? How would
the factors of movement, secrecy, deception, and dispersion affect the
maneuver of resources and/or forces?
11. What are the options available to the key actors? Offensive? Defensive?
Are these options feasible, sustainable and acceptable? Are the actors
capable of performing their contemplated actions? Are staff estimates or
recommendations considered in the overall estimate of the situation? Do
actors consider their relative usable capabilities and power in selecting their
options?
12. Develop the strategist’s own options. Analyze each option.
 ADOPTING STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
APPROACH IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
• Public sector was slower that the private sector in
embracing strategic management notions. This is
because administrators were expected to focus not
on their objectives-what they were trying to achieve-
but on their functions and responsibilities-that is, the
duties assigned to them by law. Indeed, public
administration was traditionally define as the
enforcement or implementation of public policy-
that is-the law. But strategic management is
considered as the modern application.
 BENCHMARKING THE BEST
PRACTICES
• Benchmarking (Shafritz, 2009:360) systematically
compares work processes with those of competitors
or with best practices in the industry. It involves
choosing and strategizing key performance areas in
an organization and often involves entering into
cooperative arrangement with particular
organizations.
• As demonstrated by Rainey in his “Benchmarking to Become Best in Class”,
he advances three types of benchmarks:

1. Strategic 2. Performance
Benchmarking Benchmarking
Look for best practices Compare products
and compare and and service features
imitate with other
organizations

3. Progress
Benchmarking
By comparing
organizations that
perform similar work
process
 BENCHMARKING PERFORMANCE
AND LIMITATION
• Benchmarking performance is an extension of measuring that tries to raise a
program’s performance by comparing it with comparable programs.
• Public administrators report that benchmarking provides some substantial
benefits, notably the identification of unusually high performance costs and
its use enhances the probability that performance measures will influence
governmental operations.
• “The empirical research shows that, with low exposure to economic markets,
public sector organizations may ignore information that indicates that their
relative performance is poor”.
 BENCHMARKING SOME BEST
PRACTICES IN PHILIPPINE
GOVERNANCE
• Best practices
• Define as a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is
believed to be more effective at delivering a particular outcome that any
other technique, method or process.
• Also defined as the most efficient and effective way of accomplishing a
task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over
time for large numbers of people.
• Considered as business buzzword used to described the process of
developing a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations can
use for management and policy making to policy evaluation.
• Samples of best practices in the service delivery and
developmental programs in the Philippines:
1. Naga City Participatory Planning Initiatives,
Philippines
2. Participatory Urban Planning for Improved Local
Governance Province of Guimaras, Philippines
3. Socialized and Incremental housing Project –
Philippines
4. Makati Health Program (Yellow Card), Philippines
5. Bantay Puerto Program “Puerto Princesa Watch” -
Philippines
 THE ROLE OF NEDA IN
PLANNING DEVELOPMENT
• National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) serves as the
national and regional development plan and program coordinator based
on its mandate from Presidential Decree 1 (September 2, 1972) and
Executive Order 230 (July 22, 1987). It issues the planning guidelines and
conducts multisectoral and regional consultations for inputs to the
development plan, that is, the Philippine Medium Term Development Plan. It
is tasked with the coordination of official development assistance and the
appraisal of programs and projects and conducts program and project
evaluation and onsite reviews and consultations.
• It has two separate distinct entities:
1. NEDA Board-is a cabinet level board composed of major government
departments and is chaired by the President of the Philippines.
2. Secretariat-provides technical and secretariat services to the different
NEDA Committees.
THANK YOU!!!