Government and Policy

This section is brought to you by a PhD Economics student at UCL and a former member of the Prime Ministers Strategy Unit

I always check my Blackberry during my commute into work to make sure nothing has happened overnight which requires urgent action when there have been tricky press stories running, I will often get asked to urgently work with communications specialists to pull together an official government response. Luckily today there is nothing unexpected in my inbox so I can get on with my project work.

As I make my way in through 1 Horse Guards Road (the building in Whitehall that houses the Treasury and parts of the Cabinet Office), I bump into a couple of my old colleagues they are currently feeling pretty stressed as theyre working on the upcoming Budget statement but we stop for a quick chat and promise to catch up properly at a less busy time.

Today Ive set up a 1.5 hour meeting with my teams analyst first-thing in the morning to go through the scope for the project were working on (the project is a result of a request from No10 and a Cabinet Office Minister to help understand the challenges frontline staff face in implementing a particular policy). I take him through the issues tree and key questions we need the project to answer as well as the timetable by which we need to get all work complete. By the end of our meeting we have agreed the quantitative data analysis he will lead over the coming weeks.

Following this I spend about an hour returning calls from social care commissioners in local authorities across the country - Ive been liaising with them to agree dates for upcoming field visits for the project.

By then its about 12:30pm and I now need to spend some time preparing for a ministerial meeting on personal budgets between senior advisors in No10, Cabinet Office Ministers, and the Department for Health. To prepare I go through the briefing note Id submitted to the Minister a few days beforehand, making sure Ive reminded myself of the salient points on the issue in case I need to step in and explain something during the meeting. At 1pm I head over to 11 Downing Street, going through the No.10 gate security, chatting to DH colleagues as I make my way in. Its interesting to see what the Minister chooses to focus on: this time he wants very clear details on the timetable for implementation and gives comments on an upcoming publication about the policy.

Just after grabbing some lunch, at 3pm the analyst and I head over to NHS England in Elephant & Castle so that I can take them through the plan for the project on a policy they own getting stakeholder feedback is always critical and I leave them with my slide deck asking for comments back within the next 48 hours.

Then back at the office at 4:30 pm I have a catch up with a junior policy advisor that I line manage and chat through how things are going for him at work and discuss approaches to particular challenges hes facing.

By 5:30pm my meetings have finally finished so I get some quiet time to sit down and plan the next stages of the project and go through my emails before finishing up at around 19:30.