Blog: 20.12.22

It takes policy to make a thing go right

Modern-day organizations, be they public or private, increasingly understand the need for proactive and efficient policy management.

No organization exists in a vacuum, and its actions can have both a direct and indirect impact on others in the community. Taking a proactive step to craft data-driven and impactful policy for the good of the organization and the wider public is key to ensuring an organization’s reputation and success.

Effective policy management is crucial for organizations of all kinds. Public-sector organizations and law enforcement must be able to track internal and external data for reporting and transparency purposes as well as changes in their own operational policy. Financial institutions, social media, and other online platforms must learn how to adapt their own policies to ensure that actors can’t exploit extant policy loopholes for their own nefarious gains.

To ensure good policy management, leaders, stakeholders, and decision-makers in an organization need access to comprehensive reports about both internal and external affairs. Among others, policy managers and analysts exist to bridge the gap, presenting this information to key stakeholders in an accessible and actionable format. However, creating reports on organizational continuity and impact is easier said than done.

In this article, we take a look at what policy management is, why it’s so important, and some simple principles to follow to help you achieve better results, more reliably.

What is policy management?

For many people, policy management is little more than storing policy documents in a folder and trotting them out for the occasional review. However, in an ideal world, policy management should actually refer to the creation, review, renewal, storage, and distribution of all policy documents and relevant data.

In practice, good policy is the result of good data and analysis.

When done right, policy is more than the sum of the data that comprises it. Being able to connect the dots both qualitatively and quantitatively is key to impactful, effective, and equitable policy that benefits everyone. Fusing data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), analytical methodologies, and collaborative capabilities empowers policy managers and analysts to create a microcosm of the bigger picture. And it enables them to share impactful insights with the key decision-makers that need them.

Why is policy management important?

Today’s business landscape is different from the past. Clients, consumers, and the public at large expect, and often demand, more equity, transparency, and responsibility from organizations. Good policy is the key to ensuring that your organization acts in the public interest, and avoids any potential criminal activity by complying with regulations and best practices.

Today’s digital threat landscape is increasingly dynamic and diverse. Organizations must adhere to best practices to ensure that their platforms, data, and clientele aren’t in any way exposed to online threat actors. Doing so can improve an organization’s reputation, mitigate any exposure to risk or regulatory sanctions, and even increase profitability.

Implementing proactive, data-driven policy is thus critically important for any organization. But many organizations are large and highly complex. There may be dozens or hundreds of policies, multiple teams, and disconnected communication between stakeholders that make it difficult to have effective policies in place.

Simply communicating the right information to the right people (at the right time) can be hugely challenging, and the consequences of failure can be damaging to everything from a company’s reputation to its financial stability.

Policy management best practices

Have a policy team

It may seem obvious to some, but the importance of having a well-trained policy team is often overlooked.

A good policy team that’s composed of skilled and experienced industry experts can take firm ownership of its own processes. A competent and independent policy management team can take the initiative, analyze data, and proactively protect your organization and help position it competitively in the market.

Use more data

Implementing an effective and equitable policy isn’t easy. Policy managers, whether they be in government offices, VLOPs (very large online platforms), traditional industry, or any other organization, must take into account a multitude of factors when making any decision or forming a given policy. These factors and decisions can and should be driven by as much data as possible from as many sources as possible.

Equip your policy team with the best tools

However, the best policy team is only as good as its tools. Policy management teams – both managers and analysts alike – need cutting-edge and industry-leading tools. These tools help policy teams from drowning in a sea of data.

Policy management is a diverse field which by its very nature requires quality data input from both qualitative and quantitative sources. Fusing diverse data points – which can range from interviews, news articles, and professional opinions to quantitative datasets such as voter registration information, traffic data, and more – is no small feat.

Policy management teams need flexible, dynamic, and powerful toolkits that go beyond quantitative data analytics to uncover the hidden insights that their organizations need. Policy managers also need the ability to easily visualize and manipulate qualitative and quantitative data themselves.

Prioritize clear communication

If a policy is created in a forest, does anyone benefit from it?

Policies are only as impactful as their implementation. The first step in implementing a policy effectively is informing your organization and the public of the changes. Communication and transparency are key. Maintaining a clear record of all data used, where it’s stored, and how it contributed to the policy’s findings is crucial to explaining the logic underlying the policy. Additionally, easy and intuitive ways to share findings are needed to effectively share the new policy itself with stakeholders.

Develop a defined process

Having a strong policy management framework in place allows an organization to remain agile and aware of emerging threats, changing regulations, and other factors that might have an impact on the data it uses.

Formalizing and standardizing policy management processes further empowers the organization as a whole, and it can even serve as a foundation for the automation of data collection and analysis of data for better decision-making. Utilizing powerful and intuitive automation frameworks can thus further promote an organization’s policy and goals.

Tools for crafting and managing policy

While data is critical to modern policy management, policy managers are not necessarily data analysts, economists, social scientists, investigative analysts, or experts in a variety of fields. However, they must be able to conduct data analysis, analyzing and fusing data at scale so that they can dive deep into hidden insights. And also be able to then disseminate their findings effectively to large numbers of disconnected people and teams.

This is where Falkor can help.

Falkor empowers policy analysts and managers by giving them the right tools to analyze, visualize and communicate key data insights and policy recommendations to stakeholders.

Falkor’s investigation tools are used by governments, law enforcement agencies, and private businesses worldwide, to make data-driven investigations simple.

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