To start with, an effective policy is based on 5
things:
- Need Identification
- Market Research
- Differentiation
- Market share
- Budgetary considerations
Effective implementation requires a sound understanding
of the subject matter - based on good research. If the
idea is effective, managing its implementation will be like
cake-walk. The evaluation will include the following
steps-
- Assess your
policy (i.e. check if it's complete in all respects, feasible and
acceptable)
- Your goal is - "reducing veteran
homelessness by 100% in six months". This means your policy
should carry a broad picture with
statistics like - the number of homeless veterans
presently, why they are homeless, prevailing policies in this
regard, what all is being done in this area, who all are involved,
legal considerations, political environment etc.
- Your policy should include market research insights
(quantitative research on questions like)-
- On the marketing environment:
- Is housing for veterans a new concept?
- If not, who're the players in this market (only the
government?)
- what's the level of competition?
- what are the political/legal issues of concern?
- On the target audience/consumer
- what's a veteran's typical profile (culture gender,
religion)?
- How do they respond to homelessness?
- what are their perceptions on being homeless? how do they react
to being given a home?
- On the services/product
- where is the need maximum?
- what is the type of service you plan to provide?
- how do you plan to provide it?
- what are the costs and benefits? .....and so on...
- Your policy should define your target audience and your
product/service (and differentiation strategy) clearly
-
- Once you've considered your research findings carefully you
need to come up with a service that is unique and well aligned with
your final goal. Based on the insights from research you can
diversify your service offerings to suit the needs of the various
segments (based on culture, gender etc.). Create an appeal to
attract subscribers from all segments. What should you offer the
Hispanic veterans that is different and suits their needs better.
Is it the same for the African-American veterans? Do female
veterans require something more (or less)?
- Your Policy should have a clear list of financial goals
with an attached budget
- Your policy should clearly list all your strategic
goals and associated people (responsible for
implementation)
2. Once you know what your policy is and you've
checked it for its feasibility and comprehensiveness, roll it out
as planned. In this stage, you'd evaluate success based on whether
or not implementation guidelines have been followed to the word.
Carry out frequent audits and reviews to this end.
You might consider using check lists for example.
3. There's an old saying -"Proof of the
pudding is in the eating". Implementation is deemed successful
only if planned targets are accomplished. How is your policy
performing? Are your veterans satisfied? To evaluate all this you
need to work on a good feedback mechanism. Generate
feedback from the veterans and work on it. You should have a data
entry system to record these feedbacks in an objective way - so you
can analyse and improve your services.
4. It's imperative to keep evaluating the
impact of your policy when implementing it. Keep checking
the policy for its effectiveness and make changes to it if
required.
Finally, what
impedes effective evaluation (at all stages of
implementation) is -
- resistance to being evaluated (people may not be amenable)
- difficulties in measuring impact (qualitative v/s quantitative
data, calculation based errors, lack of apt measuring
instruments)
- lack of appropriate resources (time, money, man power)
- lack of vision and inappropriate understanding of the core
need