The intent of this “Writers’ Guide” is to help you and your capstone team prepare the final capstone report.  It is organized as follows: The first section outlines the objective of the overall effort and indicates how this capstone project is intended to link to the full eight weeks Phase IV training program.  The second section discusses in general what is intended to be included in your team’s final Report; it is keyed to the General Template outline that is included as Annex A.  As is emphasized in various places, the template is NOT intended to be an outline that is set in concrete, i.e., your team may decide to alter it.  Our evaluation of your Reports will, however, anticipate that all of the issues included in the outline will be addressed.  We include the outline as a general guide to what the readers of your Reports are likely to be wishing to see.  And, as emphasized by most experienced policy analysts, a well-organized, well-written report is more likely to be effective than one that is not.  The third section provides some suggestions as to where information may be found to complete the effort.

  I.                   Rationale for the Capstone Project 

A primary objective of the Phase IV training effort is to improve your effectiveness as IAS officers.  As you gain additional experience many of you will be assigned to jobs which require greater involvement in policy-making as opposed to policy implementation.  Thus, one emphasis during these eight weeks is on the policy environment and tools necessary to carry out analysis of policy.  A second policy-related emphasis of the program is on the adoption and implementation of policy.  As most of you realize, adopting policy at either the state or central level requires the joint efforts of the bureaucracy and politicians; hence, these issues will be considered during the training program.  Finally, given your past assignments in the Service, you are fully aware that implementation of policy is absolutely critical to the success or failure of policies.  Hence policy implementation will be considered as well.  Finally, while all of you are already leaders, your leadership challenges will only grow as you move into higher ranks and more important positions within the IAS.  Thus, a final aspect of the training program will help you develop even more effective leadership skills.

 

With these various objectives of the Phase IV program, we at IIMB and Maxwell determined that one way of providing training in all these related areas is through this capstone assignment.  As discussed below, your group’s final report will need to analyze a potential policy that might be adopted and implemented within India (any level of government – central, state, municipal).  This will require an understanding of the issues related to the policy, a well articulated formulation of the proposed policy, and a thorough discussion of the intricacies of how that policy might be adopted and ultimately implemented.  The final component of the training program – leadership – will be reflected in your ability to work as a team.  Throughout the world it’s recognized that successful leaders in both the private and public sectors are able to work effectively in team environments.

 

Finally, we stress that this capstone effort is not intended to be akin to academic term papers that you perhaps wrote while at your university.  It’s meant to be an exercise that will make you more effective public sector managers who have a better appreciation of the design and analysis of policies and the strategic planning necessary to put them into place.

II. Components of the Capstone Report

 

The outline of the Annex is only suggestive.  Yet it may be useful to provide some perspective on what is likely to be addressed in each of the various sections.

 

Executive Summary

 

This is absolutely necessary since we all know that busy decision-makers are unlikely to devote large amounts of time to reading 20-30 pp. documents.  Hence the ES should succinctly summarize the main points of the entire analysis.  But by making the ES sufficiently interesting, even the busy executive will want to read it in its entirety.  Make the conclusions clear and forceful.  It’s also useful to keep the sentences short and to the point, use bulleted lists where appropriate. 

 

I.  Introduction

 

This should be a very brief statement of the policy issue being addressed.  However, it will also be useful if you conclude the section with a guide to how the Report is organized.

 

II. Background

 

This section will provide the reader with a good understanding of the policy issue being addressed along with its historical antecedents.  In addition, it can be helpful to provide context by illustrating how India compares with other countries around the world with regard to this policy issue. 

 

The extent of the issue may be most effectively presented by presenting quantitative data that detail the extent of the problem.  But it should be kept in mind that often the empirical evidence will primarily be indicators of the symptoms of the issue rather than go to its underlying causes.  For example, poor education outcomes can be easily measured in terms of the percent of the population that is illiterate or in outcomes from student examinations. 

 

The more complex analysis requires an attempt to look beyond the symptoms in order to ascertain the real underlying causes that lead to what’s observed.  This generally requires providing a more detailed description of the process that leads to the outcomes that are observed.  For example, inadequate education outcomes means that the education process is inadequate for some reason or reasons.  It may be due to lack of appropriate facilities, inadequately trained or absent teachers, absence from school for a variety of reasons including poor health, difficulties getting to school, or alternative pursuits such as paying jobs, etc.  The proposed policy or alternative policies that will be analyzed in more depth will likely stem from this assessment of the underlying reasons for the policy problem.

 

III. Objectives and Constraints

 

While it is possible to move from a discussion of the underlying causes of the policy problem to a discussion of policy options, it is critical to specify explicitly the objectives sought from policies and any particularly critical constraints.  The objectives provide a guide to what priorities are being sought and also provide insight into the implementation of the policy and how its effectiveness can ultimately be evaluated.

 

Ideally objectives will not be so broad or vague as to be impossible to ascertain whether they have been achieved through evaluation but also should not be so narrowly focused as to ignore a fuller set of potential effects of the policy that may be deemed either desirable or undesirable.  For example, if a tax policy is being evaluated, focusing exclusively on its effect on revenue generation would ignore its impact on different income or industrial groups, the incentives it creates, or its overall effects on the economy but each of these is likely to be critical to policy makers.

 

Just as objectives should be defined, there should also be consideration of constraints.  Most obvious here are potential budget constraints.  While exact a priori budget constraints need not be made at this point, recognition of such constraints implies that some cost analysis should be conducted on the proposed policy.  Constraints placed on policy by the political system should also be considered and articulated.

 

The discussion of objectives and constraints need not take up much space in the final report, nevertheless, team-based discussion of both is critical as you proceed to consider alternative policies.

 

IV. Policy Alternatives

 

Although it is likely that you will ultimately focus on a single policy alternative, it will be desirable for your team to spend some time discussing a variety of policy approaches to your chosen policy issue.  As will be discussed during the first two weeks of the program, there are several different types of policy instruments available, e.g., market-oriented policies such as deregulation or bureaucratic centered command and control policies.  Likewise, there are often a variety of arrangements available to provide public services, e.g., direct provision, private contracting or public-private partnerships.

 

Given the breadth of the possible policy issues addressed in the various capstone project efforts, it is not possible to give much specific guidance here.  However, when coming up with potential alternatives some research will probably be necessary.  There is a variety of places where you might find information.  They include: international experience and findings on ‘best practices,’ recent reviews and reports on the issue in India or elsewhere, policy-oriented journals (although these are often overly ‘academic’ to be of great help.

 

Even more relevant however may be sources directly from India.  These may include your discussions with the joint secretaries who are scheduled to be visiting LSBNAA, review of Government documents, review of documents published by Indian academics and policy analysts, and experiences from the state level in India. 

 

Policy initiatives come in a variety of forms.  They may be policies that are created where no policy has previously been articulated (not a common occurrence) but are more likely policies which represent a change in current written policies.  Likewise, policies may focus on the mechanisms underlying the delivery of public services; for example, charging for certain services that heretofore have been available free of charge.

 

The Indian sources together with your own assessment of the situation will also provide important insights regarding the policy environment in Government.  It is often the case in all countries that some suggested policy changes are considered ‘dead on arrival’ given the philosophy of the current government.  Even though such policy analyses may be useful in broadening the perspective of government officials, the total lack of political feasibility may make them wholly unlikely to be adopted and implemented (at least as long as the current government is in power).

 

Ultimately, however, your task will be to articulate as clearly and comprehensively as possible the policy your team will put forward and evaluate in the sections that follow. 

 

V. Technical analysis of the alternative(s)

 

We term this portion of the effort as ‘technical’ although there is no expectation that your team will conduct independent and original research on the issue.  What is critical is that the policy be evaluated vis-à-vis the objectives and constraints discussed in Section III.  Here are some examples:

 Economic Effects 

Economic cost-benefit analysis (CBA):  what will be the net benefits (benefits less costs) to the society?  Here the focus is on the country as a whole rather than simply the cost to the government treasury.  Ideally the analyst would estimate fully what society would have to give up (bear in costs) if the policy were implemented and what it would gain with both costs and benefits expressed in monetary terms.  Given the complexity of such analysis, it is not anticipated that your team will attempt to produce one of your own.  However, for some policy areas, there will be analyses that can be relied upon.  For example, there may have been analyses of the gains to society from decreased pollution due to improved health and costs to industries relying on resources such as the air or water.  But even in formal CBA there are often benefits or costs which analysts find difficult or impossible to estimate, e.g., the value of unpolluted air for viewers of the Taj Mahal. 

 

Cost-effectiveness analysis:  Particularly when benefits of a policy are hard or impossible to evaluate, e.g., the benefits of national defense initiatives, cost-effectiveness analysis is carried out instead.  Here the focus is on the relative costs of alternative approaches to the same outcomes.  For example, what are the relative costs of using contracts for private vendors to pick-up and dispose of garbage vis-à-vis a government enterprise.

 

CBA and cost-effectiveness analysis are the most natural analytical techniques where applied to ‘real’ services, e.g., the costs and benefits of extending land-line telecom services to rural areas.  However, they should also be applied to less ‘real’ policies such as changes in regulatory policies.  Such regulations not only have direct administrative costs but also entail compliance costs and may also lessen competition that leads to higher prices paid by consumers; on the other hand, there may be benefits from such regulations that all of society enjoy, e.g., clean food that results in decreased illnesses.

 

It is not anticipated that any group will conduct a full-fledged cost-benefit study in the course of this capstone writing effort.  However, two types of activities should be very feasible.  First, for policies that have been the subject of such analysis (preferably within India, but for some cases, in other settings), the findings should be reviewed, evaluated, and reported upon.  Second, even if no such studies are extant, the group can at a minimum list the primary direct and indirect benefits and costs associated with the policy.

 

Social Effects

 

Equity:  how are different groups likely to be affected by the policy?  Generally of most interest to policy makers are the effects of policies on different income groups, particularly the poor.  However, there may be other groupings that are of interest.  For example, a policy may affect different occupation groups, industries, genders, regions, or rural versus urban population groups differently. 

 

Participation and access: is a policy likely to be accessible to the target group(s) and permit all to participate?  These criteria, closely linked to equity, are particularly important when the policy may exclude certain groups due to their lack of resources, location, or level of literacy.

 Fiscal Effects 

Budget cost analysis:  what will be the budgetary costs of implementing the policy? This analysis, of course, addresses what often a policy constraint and is particularly relevant where a policy is being implemented where no policy has heretofore been in place or where current policies are being supplemented. 

 

Budget revenue analysis:  what will be the effects on government revenues?  Some policies have as their primary focus the generation of additional taxes or user charges.  Those effects should be estimated.  It is, however, not appropriate to include these as ‘additional’ benefits of a project that is expected to lead to increased incomes in the economy which, in turn, will generate additional revenue to the public treasury.  The additional tax revenues also represent a decrease in spendable incomes of households, so represent only a transfer from the people to government.

Environmental Effects

 

Some policies may have implications for the physical environment.  Although these effects ought to be included in the economic effects mentioned above, the importance of the environment can justify specific attention given to these effects.  Especially difficult, but hard to measure, are effects on biodiversity and ecological sustainability including habitat preservation.

 

Evaluations of these various effects are nearly often liable to certain risks that cannot be controlled or fully predicted.  For example, international events such as economic downturns in India’s main trading partners can arise that can threaten the anticipated effects of at least some policies.  It is, therefore, useful to hypothesize how the predicted effects of policies might be affected by such events and consider how the policy or ancillary policies might be put in place to lessen the potential negative effects of those events.

 

VI. Implementation analysis

 

Policies, regardless of how well thought out and designed are useless unless implemented.  Hence implementation requirements and constraints must be considered a critical part of policy analysis.  Even though the description of the policy (section IV) will need to describe in general how the policy is to be implemented, this section is intended to analyze in more depth actions that may need to be taken to insure that the policy will be implemented as planned.  Keep in mind that simple writing ‘rules’ in line with the new policy is likely to be insufficient to insure that the desired actions will necessarily take place.

 

There are numerous reasons why policies fail; some are due to poor program design but many are due to the fact that the program could not be implemented as designed.  Here are some of the questions that might be considered in the implementation analysis

 

• Is the policy designed in such a way that it will fit into existing, related Government policy?  If not, it’s likely that, as originally designed, it will not be adopted.  What changes to the policy are necessary to make it ‘fit’?

 

• Even though the policy falls within the domain of a single ministry, who else in government needs to be involved?  What strategies can be employed to make sure that these other ministries or agencies will be ‘on-board’? 

 

• During implementation of the policy, what inter-ministerial coordination may be necessary?  How can this coordination be assured?

 

• Are there likely to be civil service or union issues associated with the policy?  How are they to be addressed?

 

• Will the policy require expertise or skills not currently available by the units responsible for operationalizing the policy?  What training or reorientation of employees will be necessary and how much will that cost?  Will additional support be necessary over some time period to insure that the policy is fully implemented?

 

• Will implementation of the policy require active participation by state or municipal governments?  What incentives (positive or negative) can be put in place to insure that the necessary actions by these sub-national units will occur?

 

• What accountability mechanisms are in place or will need to be created to insure that all involved in the policy act in a manner to insure that the policy is implemented?

 

• What monitoring and evaluation system will be put in place and what are the performance targets that can be used by this system?  If you recommend a ‘pilot’ program, that will need to be designed as well along with the methods for evaluating the outcomes of the pilot.

 

VII.          Stakeholder analysis

 

Here the intent is to account for and possibly incorporate the needs of groups or individuals who are likely to have an interest in the policy.  The analysis, which is likely to be qualitative, requires that you identify the ‘stakeholders’ in the policy and several attributes concerning their likely positions on the policy.

 

Stakeholders come in a variety of forms.  They might be individuals, organizations, or even unorganized groups.  While the bulk are likely to be domestic, international organizations may also have a stakeholder interest in a policy.  Here are some examples – political leaders, public sector agencies, interest groups such as unions or associations of manufacturers, nonprofit organizations (NGOs, foundations), civil society groups or members thereof, and ordinary users/consumers affected by the policy.

 

Once identified you might then assess the following for each group and conduct a SWOT analysis.  Among the attributes of interest are your assessment of (1) the stakeholders position on the issue, (2) their level of power, resources, or influence over the decision, (3)  the level of interest they have in the issue (since even very powerful groups may have little interest in which case they are unlikely to try hard to influence the outcome). 

 

From the SWOT analysis is should be possible to write a strategy (and include it in your Report) to increase the power of those who are likely to support your policy by building coalitions of those in favor and either convert the opposition (perhaps through negotiations or tradeoffs) or at least neutralize it.

 

VIII.    Communications issues

 

The media (print, radio, TV, and now, even internet) can play important positive or negative roles in aiding the adoption and implementation of the policy.  In this section you will want to address those issues and devise a strategy not unlike that for the stakeholder analysis – how to obtain support from the media or prepare a defense against potential media opposition. 

 

The bulk of the section should detail your media communication plan and strategy for handling media relations.  You should also prepare a press release (perhaps placed in an annex).

 

Finally, policies may entail issues associated with the Right to Information Act.  Those issues should also be raised in this section and indicate how the issues will be addressed.

 

IX. Political Context

 

Public policy making and implementation is ultimately a political process.  And at least some of the previous sections will be addressing what are, in fact, political issues.  However, we ask that your group also prepare an analysis of the political context in which the policy is to be adopted and implemented.  Here you might address the series of questions posed on p. 226 of “Navigating the Public Policy Terrain: A Primer on Policy Process and Politics” by R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar.  Among these are:

 

How does the policy fit with government manifesto and priorities?

What policy conflicts need to be resolved (and how do you plan to resolve them)?

Is a cross cutting approach needed?

Who are the key political representatives that must be brought on board for this policy and what is your strategy for doing so?

What is your strategy for getting this policy on to the political agenda?

  

Annexes:  There is likely to be supporting documentation that is not critical to the flow of the argument but helps buttress the points that are made in the main body of the Report.  These are most conveniently placed in annexes so as not to interrupt the flow of the argument.

 

References:  It is critical that all sources of factual material as well as the source of published material relied upon in compiling the Report be included in the list of references.  Only in this way can the interested reader be able to find the supporting material for himself or herself.

III. Information Sources

 

Although much of the necessary general background for completing the Capstone project will be provided from the training sessions themselves (particularly your interactions with the Government officials participating in the Policy Conference), there are likely to be portions of the Report that will be drawn from existing literature and studies.

 

Some of this literature may be obtained from international sources including the IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, etc.  In addition there are numerous development-oriented think tanks that can provide such information on an international level.  It’s likely that you will want to use the World Wide Web to locate these sources.  Useful websites include:

 

International Monetary Fund: http://www.imf.org/external/index.htm

World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/

Asian Development Bank: http://www.adb.org/

UNDP: http://www.undp.org/

United Nations On-Line Network in Public Administration and Finance: http://www.unpan.org/

Organisation for International Co-Operation and Development: http://www.oecd.org/home/0,3305,en_2649_201185_1_1_1_1_1,00.html

 

Even better will be information from within India itself.  Obviously, a particularly useful source of information is the Economic and Political Weekly.  In addition, there are numerous research units that can provide published information.  Finally, Government ministries as well as many state agencies can be important sources of information.