Governance and Public Policy
Governance and Public Policy tests how Sri Lanka turns political mandates into services: Cabinet decisions, ministry mandates, provincial and district administration, policy instruments, implementation and evaluation.
Core concepts
- Policy cycle: agenda setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and revision.
- Institutions: Cabinet and Cabinet committees; line ministries; Secretary to the President; Ministry of Finance; National Planning Department; provincial councils; District and Divisional Secretariats; Grama Niladhari.
- Instruments: law, regulation, circular, budget allocation, subsidy, procurement, public-private partnership, information campaign.
- A logic model distinguishes inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact.
Worked example
Policy goal: raise school retention in a district. Inputs: bursaries and attendance officers. Activities: identify absentees, counsel families, disburse bursaries. Outputs: number of students receiving bursaries. Outcome: improved attendance and retention. Impact: higher educational attainment. Reasoning: counting bursaries is not evidence of retention; evaluation must track the outcome.
Traps
- Reporting outputs as outcomes.
- Designing policy without implementation capacity or budget.
- Treating consultation as a ritual rather than a chance to identify constraints.
- Ignoring provincial-local mandates and duplication.
- Assuming a circular automatically changes frontline behaviour.
- Evaluating only at the end, when correction is impossible.