The Art of Crafting Policy Briefs

High quality research evidence is one of the critical preconditions for employing the evidence by policy makers into policy making. However, high quality research evidence itself is not sufficient; it must be communicated in ways that make it compelling.

On February 5-6 alliance of Georgian NGOs attended the training in designing policy briefs. The course took place in the framework of the Strengthening Capacity of Civil Society for Promoting Research Evidence into Policy Development in Georgia and was led by Ketevan Chkhatarashvili, the President of Curatio International Foundation.

The course on policy briefs is designed to enhance participant’s skills in writing policy brief in a way that will enable them to adapt/summarize a more reader-friendly research and to disseminate research findings. Research evidence is one important consideration in the decision-making process. However, one common complaint from policy makers is that they have little time to read full research reports. Therefore, well structured, concise and easy to read policy brief is an important tool for researchers to effectively communicate research findings to policy makers.

The course gave the clear insight of why is the policy brief important, who can be the target audience of the policy brief and how the messages should be conveyed in order to influence the reader and trigger the interest of the policy maker to choose a particular policy alternative or course of action in a current policy debate.

Participants discussed some common and well known policy briefs and practiced in criticizing as well as finding positive sides. At the final session participants were requested to choose the policy topic and draft a policy brief in accordance with the knowledge obtained.

“This course was very timely. The topic is very relevant and lecurer led it exactly to the point. I found training extremely interactive and full of energy. It will really help organizations to acquire the knowledge and technique of writing policy briefs and thus raise the quality and effectiveness of their communication with policy makers”, noted Tamar Karosanidze, Director of Transparency International.

“There is a rich experience, knowledge and information accumulated over many years on public policy issues, although we find it hard to put together all these components and use them effectively. Training provided by CIF was timely and precisely responded to this need”- Nikoloz Loladze, Director of United Georgia Professional Network said.

Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) and Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF) support this effort.

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