Guest Lecturer | The Urgency of Policy Brief and Policy Paper

This guest lecturer will specifically provide additional knowledge and insight to students to prepare policy briefs and policy papers as short documents that provide findings and recommendations from research aimed at non-expert audiences, and are a tool to convey input on a policy. The second session will provide additional knowledge and insight to students about public administration ethics between theory and practice.

A Policy Brief is a document that outlines the basic rationale for the selection of a specific policy alternative or course of action within a current policy. A policy brief may focus directly on providing an argument for the adoption of a particular alternative that aims to convince the target parties of the importance of the current problem and the need to adopt the chosen alternative. It then serves to encourage action. In this case, the results of existing research are expected to be able to provide input for the government in initiating more effective policies. In countries or governments that have a strong tradition of writing, policy briefs and policy papers have an important position and role as one of the media or communication tools that are quite influential in the public policy making process. The strong tradition of writing is one of the bases for the rulers before making policies. Otherwise, in a country or government without a strong tradition of writing, a writing is not enough to be a factor that influences a ruler in making a policy. There are still many people and even government officials who do not know the function of policy papers or policy briefs, a policy brief is not a newsletter. Writing a policy brief and using it as part of a tool in the policy advocacy process is still rarely done by institutions in Indonesia. Although the benefits of policy briefs or policy papers are still not maximized in the policy advocacy process, policy briefs are part of policy advocacy.

The purposes of the Guest Lecturer activity are: