TRENDS FOR THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY

A Public Policy Advocate is someone who analyzes policy challenges and try to find solutions in closed circles tapping stakeholders. But the future of Public Policy Advocacy might very well look more like a co-working space, where collaborative brainstorming formats are organized to tap the knowledge and ideas of creative minds from all walks of life not just stakeholders.

Public Policy Advocacy is an art and a craft and it takes experience and knowledge. Not only are the topics new, disruptive and highly technical, but they are also emerging with increasing speed. Also communication, the cornerstone of Public Diplomacy Advocacy has been radically changed by electronic and social media, by smartphones, by the internet.

A New Era

To be sure, there is no panacea for all the current challenges in Public Policy Advocacy.  But there are some key factors that are to be taken into account when engaging in Public Policy Advocacy at either EU, national or global level:

• Think outside the box:  Some may think that there is a Public Policy Advocacy recipe for every challenge. But the opposite is true. There is hardly another discipline where the circumstances are as dynamic as in Public Policy Advocacy and hence, hardly a field where creativity needs to be embraced more. Today, this applies more than ever.
• Become an Expert: In order to be creative, Public Policy Advocates can no longer be generalists, knowing bits and pieces of every subject they might encounter. Today human knowledge now has to go deeper than ever before.
• Mix Disciplines: Solving problems not only requires a deep understanding of specific issues, but also the inter linkage between various subjects. In order to find answers, today’s Public Policy Advocates need to look for them not only in politics  and in business, but also in arts, social movements and creative industries.
• Be Fast: The sun never sets on Public Policy Advocacy; issues can pop up at every time of the day or night. And they develop at an increasing speed.
• Create Communities: New ways of tapping into creative, wide and interdisciplinary communities of experts within an extremely short time-frame have been opened up by social media. By creating communities, a global task-force is on standby. The only question is: who gets the brightest minds.
• Be Open and Accessible:. The sharing economy has set the tone for Public Policy Advocacy. Creating the best approaches can no longer be done in closed circles. Only dynamic, accessible and permeable networks of like-minded people are able to exert impact on a global scale.
• Inform: There may still be moments, when negotiations have to take place behind closed doors but as a principle, these doors must be kept open. It is the only way to create trust in societies that are aware of the fact that the era of privacy has come to an end.

It is our view that Public Policy Advocates need to radically alter their approaches and it is now high time for them to change their modus operandi. Public Policy Advocacy has to become more innovative, more interdisciplinary, more open and happen much faster. If they are successful in adapting to the new and complex global realities and only then will Public Policy Advocates remain key players.