Reimagining the Policy to Service Continuum
Federal public servants are expected to design and deliver relevant, high-quality, and impactful policies and services for the people and organizations they serve. Achieving this in a complex environment with growing demands requires adaptability and collaboration across the public service.
In November 2024, the Canada School of Public Service (the School) hosted the Policy and Service Conference: Delivering Impact Through Collaboration. Focused on bridging the gap between policy, service design, and service delivery, the event emphasized the importance of policy and service teams working together to address user needs. Attendees also explored emerging trends and best practices, discovered how policy and service are part of a unified system, and embraced new collaborative approaches to driving stronger outcomes and lasting impact.
This article highlights key insights from David Eaves, Associate Professor of Digital Government at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London, during his presentation "Demystifying the Policy-Service Continuum."
The policy to service continuum refers to the entire lifecycle of a policy, from the initial idea and formulation stages to implementation (service delivery), assessment, and potential revisions. Thinking in terms of a continuum, rather than independent steps, ensures that policies are not just created but also effectively delivered and adjusted based on real-world feedback from the users of the services and the people who deliver them.
Example
Imagine a single-parent family in Toronto budgeting every dollar to cover rent, groceries, and school supplies. For this family, the Canada Child Benefit is impactful. Introduced as a tax-free, income-based cash payment, the Canada Child Benefit was designed to ease the financial strain of raising children, especially for low- and middle-income families. Over the years, the program has evolved, shaped by shifting economic realities and policy updates. Each change has aimed to keep pace with the rising cost of living (including indexing to inflation), ensuring the benefit continues to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the Canadian families it was created to support.
When this continuum is broken or disconnected, it creates inefficiencies, waste, and dissatisfaction, ultimately undermining a government's ability to serve its citizens effectively.
In his presentation, "Demystifying the Policy-Service Continuum," Professor David Eaves outlined three essential strategies to addressing common challenges that can emerge when policy and service teams work in isolation: know the terrain, know the goal, and know the team.
1. Know the terrain: Practices for strengthening policy and service outcomes
As a practitioner, knowing the terrain is crucial. This means recognizing whether you're facing a problem with high certainty or high uncertainty. This will guide you in choosing the right approach for solving the problem or implementing a solution. As described in the examples below, you could choose a waterfall approach to solve a clear, identifiable problem with an obvious solution. The waterfall approach is a structured, step-by-step method of traditional project management. In contrast, the flexible, adaptive approach of agile methodologies may better support delivery when the problem or solution is less certain.
High certainty versus high uncertainty
For example, a high degree of certainty can be seen in the government's implementation of a seat belt law, which requires all car passengers to wear seat belts. The outcome is highly predictable, as decades of data support the fact that seat belt usage significantly reduces injuries and fatalities in car accidents.
On the other hand, a high degree of uncertainty can be seen in the introduction of a new bus route. While the city can estimate potential ridership based on demographic data and surveys, the actual number of passengers, operational challenges, and the route's effect on traffic flow remain uncertain until the service is launched and evaluated over time.
Diagram titled "Waterfall: High Degree of Certainty" showing a step-by-step sequence along a timeline. The steps are Analysis, Draft, multiple steps labelled Implement, and Roll Out, representing a step-by-step policy process with clear outcomes.
Diagram titled "Agile: High Degree of Uncertainty" showing overlapping arrows for Analysis, Draft, Implement, and Roll Out repeated over time. The layout illustrates a repeated cycle of policy steps that adapt as the policy becomes clearer.
In a waterfall approach, the stages of project management (analysis, drafting of options, implementation, and roll out) take place in succession. This approach is well suited for situations where the policy outcome is well defined and there is a high degree of certainty about the future conditions or goals.
Under the right conditions, the waterfall approach has many benefits:
- It may be easier to measure results
- Projects follow a linear path
- Budgets are predictable
- Key decisions are made up front
One of the key challenges with waterfall project management is that problems tend to appear at the project implementation stage, when it is most difficult to make changes.
In comparison, the agile approach is iterative and features smaller cycles of analysis, drafting, implementation, and roll out. With built-in feedback loops, this method allows practitioners to continuously assess progress, adapt, and refine strategies in real time. Agile is suited for situations where the policy intent is clear, but future conditions and potential challenges remain uncertain. It enables teams to stay flexible and responsive as they move forward.
2. Know the goal: Delivery to support user needs
The dynamics of today's society increasingly demand a shift in government practices towards more flexible and adaptive policymaking. This requires continuous learning, information sharing, and real-time adjustments to address policy challenges effectively. Policies and services must be designed to evolve, ensuring transparency and iterative adjustments based on new insights and emerging challenges.
Policies, plans, and solutions can't be designed for technologies and contexts that don't yet exist. While high-level principles provide direction, detailed plans must remain flexible. The way services are designed depends heavily on how people are meant to access them, and policies are often written with fixed conditions in mind, which can be unfair to service teams who must adapt when circumstances change.
In such situations, Professor Eaves recommends equipping service and delivery teams with a clear understanding of policy intent, or the overarching goal, rather than prescribing rigid plans. Programs are often developed with specific preconditions, but the reality at implementation can look quite different. When policies are too narrowly defined, service teams may be forced to follow outdated instructions that no longer serve the intended purpose.
Take, for example, a delivery company. Plans could assume estimated delivery times based on normal road conditions for the most efficient route. However, if a snowstorm suddenly hits, those carefully planned routes may become hazardous or impassable. If drivers are strictly instructed to stick to the plan or route, deliveries will be delayed and the safety of the driver may be compromised. But if drivers understand the intent—which is to deliver packages efficiently and safely—they can adapt, choosing safer alternative routes, adjusting schedules, or using different vehicles better suited for winter conditions.
The same principle applies to policy and service teams. By working with the broader policy intent rather than strict directives, teams can be proactive in adjusting their approach to better serve users as conditions evolve. Empowering teams with policy intent fosters a more resilient, responsive service delivery model, one that balances structure with adaptability, ensuring government services remain effective in an ever-changing world.
3. Know the team: Strengthening connections between policy and service
Finally, Professor Eaves emphasized the importance of building bridges between policy and service teams. For effective policymaking and service delivery, these teams must collaborate closely, rather than working in isolation. Traditionally, policy practitioners, who are closer to decision-making power, develop detailed plans and pass them off to the service teams with limited opportunities for real-time feedback. Service delivery teams, which are more attuned to the user experience and aware of any edge cases that may not align with policy assumptions, often face challenges in adapting policies to meet the actual needs of people in Canada.
When these teams are disconnected (or function-based), problems can go unaddressed for longer periods, with few feedback loops beyond regular program evaluations. Professor Eaves recommends embedding policy leads within service teams to address issues as they emerge and to help service teams remain aligned with policy intent. So, what does that look like?
Disconnected teams
Disconnected (or function-based) policy and service teams
Imagine a government launches a new housing assistance program designed to help low-income families secure affordable housing. The policy team, based on broad assumptions, drafts detailed eligibility criteria and application requirements and hands them off to the service team to implement.
However, once the program rolls out, frontline service workers encounter significant challenges:
- Many applicants struggle to provide required documents due to unstable housing situations.
- The online application is too complex for elderly applicants or those without internet access.
- The approval process is too slow, putting families at risk of eviction while they wait.
The service team identifies these issues quickly, but because they have no direct communication with the policy team, they must escalate concerns through formal memos. By the time the policy team responds—weeks or even months later—many families have already lost their housing.
Connected teams
Connected (or cross-functional) policy and service teams
Now, imagine the same program, but with a cross-functional team where you have a policy team member embedded directly within the service team. As the program is implemented, the policy expert:
- observes challenges firsthand and speaks directly with frontline workers
- works collaboratively to adjust documentation requirements, making them more flexible
- recommends real-time policy updates, such as offering in-person application assistance or alternative verification processes
With this continuous feedback loop, the policy team can adapt quickly, ensuring the program works in practice—not just on paper. Families receive support faster, service teams operate more efficiently, and the program achieves its intended impact.
In summary, Professor Eaves' strategy for strengthening policy and service outcomes begins with knowing the type of problem you're facing and selecting the right project management approach to resolve it. From there, service and delivery teams need to be equipped with an understanding of the policy intent, which can allow them to be responsive to evolving user needs. Finally, it is important for policy and service teams to work in close collaboration with one another, leveraging the knowledge and expertise each team brings.
If you would like to extend your learning, consider referring to this extract from Professor Eaves' presentation at the 2024 Policy and Service Conference: Delivering Impact Through Collaboration:
Video: Reimagining the Policy to Service Continuum
Transcript
Transcript: Reimagining the Policy to Service Continuum
CSPS Descriptive: Demystifying the Policy/Service Continuum
[00:00:00 Animated CSPS logo appears. Text on screen: Webcast.]
[00:00:09 Split screen: David Eaves and a series of slides, as described.]
David Eaves: Okay. What does this mean for policy and service, though? You're like, Okay, cool, Dave. Where are we right now?
[00:00:16 Additional text on screen: David Eaves, Associate Professor, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London.]
David Eaves: Well, I have a bunch of tactical adjustments that I think I would make, if I was thinking about this domain through these angles now.
The first is, you've got to know the terrain. You've got to understand what kind of problem you are dealing with, whether you're a policy person, or a service person, and be able to have a candid conversation about that.
One of the key things is, are you in a situation of high certainty? Or are you in a situation of high uncertainty? Do you even know the difference between those things? Because one of the fad things right now is everybody's like, Agile, Agile, Agile. And I love Agile, don't get me wrong, it's super great. But it's not Agile versus Waterfall. It's about understanding what context you're in.
[00:01:02 Split screen: David Eaves and slide, Text on slide: Waterfall vs Agile.
Waterfall: High Degree of Certainty
- of terrain
- of future conditions
- of goals
Agile: High Degree of Uncertainty
- of terrain
- of future conditions
- of goals]
David Eaves: If I'm in a situation of high certainty, like in the first exercise, you should be using Waterfall. Planning is your friend. The policy people, they can make the upfront plans. They can write the memo. They can say, this is what we need to do, and they can give it to the ops people, and the ops people can be like, yes, this broadly makes sense. There's a lot of preconditions that make sense here. There's going to be corner cases, edge cases, and challenges we're going to run into. Give us some discretion to work with that, but we can broadly make this happen.
The problem is, I think there's a lot more uncertainty in the service delivery world than people realize. Often, we're actually dealing with high degrees of uncertainty with, particularly, new services. Then the question is, which one of these should we be using? So, I don't want people to end up in this world of this Waterfall or Agile, it's actually thinking about which one of these is the most appropriate.
That's my first tactical suggestion.
[00:02:08 Split screen: David Eaves and a series of slides, as described.]
David Eaves: My second tactical suggestion is, know the goal. You can't create policy, you can't create plans, and you can't procure solutions for technologies in context that do not yet exist. You can have general principles and North Stars and ideas of where you want to be going, but you can't write those in fine detail.
And my big challenge right now is a lot of policy is written with a very specific set of conditions in mind. I don't think that that's fair to the service people. We've got to be thinking about, no, what are the things that we're trying to accomplish? I'm very interested, not in talking about what is the policy plan in detail, but what is the policy intent? Service teams need to be equipped with what the service intent is, what is the North Star, so they can adapt to try to find ways to serve that intent, as opposed to just keeping following the rules no matter what.
[00:03:16 Split screen: David Eaves and slide, as described.]
David Eaves: Which takes me to tactical suggestion number three, which is you've got to know the team.
[00:03:25 Split screen: David Eaves and slide. Text on slide: Policy <–> Delivery.
Policy:
- Proximate to Power
- Setting Intent
- Setting Rules
- System wide Trade-offs
Delivery:
- Proximate to User
- Communicating Learning
- Adaptation and Allocation
- Local Trade-offs]
David Eaves: I talked before about the policy and delivery sides and the different skill sets and positional power and other attributes they bring. I really agree with the early comment. When these two things are working together, real magic can happen. Real magic can happen. The challenge is when they don't work together.
[00:03:50 Split screen: David Eaves and slide. Text on slide: Policy & Program Development; Analysis; Draft; Implement; Rollout; Time. The slide changes to show "Policy vs Delivery" and the words "Analysis" and "Draft" separated from the words "Implement" and "Roll Out".]
David Eaves: The big challenge I have is with this more traditional model of program delivery and program creation is almost always you have the policy people and the deliver people separated. Often you will dream up the plan, come up with the idea, articulate what it should look like, and then throw the plan over the transom and it lands on the delivery peoples' desk, and they're like, Okay, well now we've got to go build the service. And sometimes they're like, yes, this really makes sense. And sometimes it's like, this doesn't make sense. But they have no – what is their ability to solicit advice and engage with the policy people as they are getting lived and learned experiences about how it's actually happening?
[00:04:37 The CSPS animated logo appears onscreen.]
[00:04:42 The Government of Canada wordmark appears.]
Adapting to new collaborative ways of working
The School's November 2024 Policy and Service Conference marked a significant milestone as it was the first to unite the policy and service communities across the Government of Canada, showcasing the ongoing shift towards more collaborative ways of working. As you reflect on the tactical adjustments Professor Eaves highlighted, consider these questions:
- Where can you apply this shift in your own work?
- Are there feedback loops that you can embed within your own ways of working to ensure continuous improvement?
- How can you bridge the gap between policy and service?
While this shift will take time, we can start by adjusting our mindsets to value policy and service experience more equally. By being curious about the unique knowledge and expertise our colleagues bring to the table, we can better address user needs. Bridging the divide between policy and service will empower us to serve the Canadian public more effectively.
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