The Development Academy of the Philippines, through its Center for Governance (CFG), trained some 61 participants from 26 various government, private, and academic institutions on policy design and development through the 2023 Course on Policy Design and Development (CPDD) held on July 17-21, 2023.
The 2023 CPDD participants with resource speakers during the closing ceremony.
The resource speakers included Gilbert Lumantao, director of DAP-CFG Policy Research Office (PRO); Dr. Jalton Taguibao, associate professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman-Department of Political Science; Maxine Tanya Hamada, country coordinator of the Advocacy Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids; Ramona Lissa Villegas, policy advocacy specialist of the United Cities and Local Governments Asia Pacific; and Jamie Lyn Daileg, senate committee secretary on Economic Affairs, and Science and Technology. Program Manager Sheena Carmina Mateo, from Capability Building on Innovative Leadership for Legislative Staff also participated as a panelist.
CPDD 2023 resource speakers and panelists: (top row, from left to right) Dr. Jalton Taguibao, Tanya Maxine Hamada, Gilbert Lumantao, (second row) Sheena Carmina Mateo, Jamie Lyn Daileg, and Ramona Lissa Villegas.
From policy process to design and development
The CPDD is designed as an improvement of the original Course on Basic Policy Process, and now focuses more on the design and development of public policies. The course aims to equip participants with a solid understanding of the key concepts in policy design, development, and analysis. It also aims to enhance their skills in applying the policy-making tools and concepts in crafting effective, evidence-based policies and in presenting comprehensive policy proposals.
In the session on policy design approaches, Dr. Taguibao underscored the importance of understanding policy issues from multiple angles saying one might think that the problem is a financial one only to realize that it has a legal dimension.
“We think that this is an issue of opportunity, particularly livelihood and employment opportunities, but we realize that in order to get to that point, you have to be able to also provide services together with livelihood opportunities, social services, health services in order for functional labor and employment to occur,” Dr. Taguibao explained.
Dr. Taguibao further highlighted the need for policies to address multiple facets of a problem, adding that policy design is important as policies should be optimized to cover several dimensions.
The 24-hour online training consisted of nine sessions, including revisions on the basic policy process overview, policy design approaches, problem analysis and agenda setting, policy formulation, stakeholder analysis, cost-benefit analysis, policy advocacy, adoption and implementation, policy monitoring and evaluation, and finally, policy proposal writing and presentation. The training also included two workshops, focusing on the decision matrix and on preparing a policy proposal to provide participants with practical experience.
The CPDD is one of the three public offerings of the PRO for 2023. PRO will also conduct online courses on Basic Monitoring and Evaluation, and Advanced Monitoring and Evaluation on September 18-22 and November 13-24, respectively. For more information on these annual offerings, visit the PRO Facebook page.
–Nivea Urdas