Chapter 1: Introduction to Policy Design

This chapter starts the journey of understanding policies, their use, their importance, and how they are effectively used.

This chapter discusses the foundation of policy design, what constitutes a policy, how it is sketched together, and why policies are used. We will discuss design theory and how to create sound policies while demonstrating the most common instruments used to develop policies and their life cycles.

Once these elements are established, parallels from public policy to the digital organizational context later in the book will be more straightforward, as well as understanding how policies can help organizations in their digital journey by enabling faster digital adoption across the organization.

By the end of this chapter, you will understand how the field of public policy and associated tools can be transposed for digital adoption in an organization. This is typically achieved by a layer of governance that encompasses people, processes, and technology by creating coherent policies using persuasive system design (PSD), nudging, and incentives for more effective digital governance.

In summary, this chapter highlights how the field of policy design can be used to create a proactive governance model that goes way beyond enforcing and authorization, to increase digital adoption throughout an organization.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following main topics:

• The why, what, and how of policies
• From design theory to policy implementation
• Policy design – key issues, tools, designs over time, effectiveness
• The business value of digital policies