Policy Project’s Development Pathways Tool now live

The Development Pathways Tool usefully complements the Policy Skills Framework. It describes how to achieve all the knowledge, skills and behaviours that the Policy skills Framework identifies as needed to deliver quality policy advice. The tool does this by identifying the actions that a policy practitioner can take to develop their skills at three different levels of practice – developing, practising, and expert/leading. These actions are organised under three ways of learning – on the job experience, learning from others, and through formal training.

The Development Pathways Tool is a useful resource that will:

• Help policy managers to have much richer discussions with their team members about their professional development plans and career aspirations

• Help policy practitioners to identify activities that build their skills

• Provide practical ideas that are easily accessible, aligned to Government ways of working, and can be integrated by agencies’ organisational and development teams
• Encourage a more consistent approach to planning how to improve individuals’ policy skills and organisational policy capability.

Policy agencies can use the Policy Skills Framework to identify priority skills for development, and the Development Pathways Tool to identify how to develop them. This will help us achieve a shared understanding of what it takes to be a good policy practitioner, the pathways to get there, and a common language about policy skill building.

The Policy Project encourages you to look at the online Tool, and think about how it can assist you, your team, and agency to build policy skills. More skilled policy practitioners will contribute to improving the quality of policy advice and better government decisions across the public service.

Check out the videos to see what people say about how they think the Development Pathways Tool will help them.