Policy without (much) pain - University of Ballarat

Policy without (much) pain23. The ‘policy industry’It is our experience from discussion in many professional development workshops on policydevelopment that staff of tertiary institutions have mixed feelings about policy. Academic staffmay associate it with burgeoning managerialism and excessive regulation. Many professionalstaff, particularly in academic units, are likely to question whether quite so many policies andprocedures are needed. Is there a policy industry? Are policy managers (and quality assurancemanagers) making a comfortable niche for themselves, like spiders spinning endless webs of redtape?Effective policy development is the best way to counteract distrust of policy. The first essential isgood consultation to ensure policy meets the needs of the institution. Policy managers and policydevelopers should be the first to ask questions such as ‘Is such a policy needed?’ and ‘Will thispolicy option be too resource-intensive?’ Alongside staff distrust of policy is a craving forconsistent, sensible policy to provide clear answers and a basis on which to defend decisions. Ifwe can satisfy this need, policy will be perceived as helpful rather than hindering.There is a policy industry in the sense that, over the past 15 years, most Australasian tertiaryinstitutions have set up policy frameworks. In Victoria, for example, Deakin University andSwinburne University of Technology were the first to do this, from the late 1990s. In the newmillennium, the other Victorian universities have run similar projects. A survey of Australasianinstitutions’ websites in 2010 shows that a large number have such projects under way or recentlycompleted. Some are undertaking second phase projects to improve and consolidate their policyframework. Why all this activity?In Australia, the merging of institutions during the Dawkins reforms of the late 1980s led to a needfor institution-wide policies to bring about consistency. Where two or three institutions hadmerged, each bringing different practices, policy was seen as a way to achieve homogeneity.From the 1990s, the introduction of external audits of tertiary institutions has produced rafts ofrecommendations for improvement. These typically include recommendations that institutionsdevelop or improve specific policies. The Australian Universities Quality Agency website featuresa best practice repository, and many of the examples in the repository are institutional policies~ 46 ~