Improving Policy Skills in Indonesia's Department of Foreign

Author: Gordon Evans
Publication Date: 2014

This case study describes a highly-successful project delivered through the CIDA-funded Deployment for Democratic Development program in 2010 to strengthen Indonesia's foreign policy analysis and research capacity. What distinguished the project was the job relevance of the policy training, strong political buy-in from the Minister, the training techniques used and the high degree of ownership by its client, the Policy Planning and Development Agency in Indonesia's Department of Foreign Affairs. The policy training focused on the development of policy proposals and presentations that addressed actual departmental and Ministerial strategic priorities (e.g., policy positions for an upcoming G-20 meeting). The end products were presented in a live situation to the Department head. A train-the-trainers program was developed in parallel to ensure that the new policy analysis process could be sustained and continuously improved going forward. A component on conducting policy research using electronic sources was fully integrated within the training program and used to support the development of the policy presentations. Remarkably, the project itself was completed in less than a year. Given the relative scarcity of technical assistance projects which work directly on foreign policy or which provide job-relevant policy training, the knowledge transfer potential for and lessons learned from this project are significant.
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