Phases of Public Policy: Programming and Decision-Making

Posted on Feb 9, 2025 in Business Administration and Management (BAM)

Second Phase: Programming

After browsing reality, assessing available resources, and identifying needs, we can diagnose the situation and take stock. This offers a social diagnosis. From this basis, we should establish the means of action on priority problems. The restoration will always bear in mind that needs exceed available resources. Ultimately, it is a schedule distinguishing between urgent needs to address in the short, medium, and long term.

Questions for Scheduling Action

In scheduling the action, we raise the following questions:

  • What do you want to do?
  • What is going to be done?
  • How much is going to be done?
  • Why are you going to do it?
  • How are you going to do it?
  • Accounting/Finance/Financial/Technology
  • Where are you going to do it?
  • When will we do it?
  • How are you going to pay for it?
  • Who will do it?

The program also involves several core activities:

  1. Formulation of specific objectives and goals.
  2. Formulation of policy to achieve a target.
  3. Formulation of the program.
  4. Design of the plan.
  5. Identification of projects.

Projects naturally contain a set of specific actions to measure the achievement of more specific objectives. The projects are:

  • To be listed accurately
  • Specify the duration of its implementation
  • Have the foresight of economic cost
  • Be linked to any program or objective
  • Must be complied with

Planning requires several requirements to achieve success. Among them are objectivity and rationality, setting realistic goals, and prioritizing making them complementary and mutually compatible.

Formulation of the Problem and Agenda Setting

To meet needs, many conflicts are generated in society due to diverse interests and the existence of limited resources.

There are three general overviews:

  1. The population would have several problems and pose a series of lawsuits that would be grouped by political parties and interest groups, becoming representatives to the State.
  2. We would find a position clearly contrary to the foregoing, the tyranny of the offer, under which public authorities are shaping people’s needs.
  3. Finally, we note the existence of another point of view: public policy not only does not arise in a vacuum, but political actions arise in the development of existing public policy.

Culture, consensus on values, or pillars condition the mixing agenda, setting preferences of actors, with practical ideas and empirical judgments. The agenda includes the issues within the public debate and becomes subject to intervention by public authorities legitimized by the political process of representation. We can distinguish different types of calendars:

  1. Government Agenda: Problems are defined more precisely by giving concrete solutions to the needs presented.
  2. Political System Agenda: Focused on issues very broadly defined.

In the dynamics of agenda formation, several elements must be present, including the degree of support for the issue raised, assessing its impact on social reality, and the feasibility of the suggested solution.

Also to be taken into account:

  1. The facts.
  2. The organization of the groups present.
  3. The problem of representation.
  4. Determining structure.
  5. Tradition or responsiveness of the system.
  6. Leadership.

Choosing Between Alternatives: Decision-Making

For decision-making, either daily or in a matter of public importance, we try to do so by following logical arguments. The sequence following decision-making, as this approach would include, involves several activities that must be performed by a rational subject. First, we must be aware of the problem, define its limits, and raise the alternatives we can provide for its solution.