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Administrative Officer 2020 in the Civil Service
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Has any one get any advice on researching their presentation topic? I've a question involving the health system and I haven't the first idea of how to research it! Is is best to go with scholarly articles on jStore for example? Or are newspaper publications ok? How much detail should I go into? Should the presentation be referenced?
Newspaper publications are fine. For health issues, have a look at the HSE and Department of Health's websites, you may find some materials there. You may also want to look at some white papers for medtech / pharmaceutical companies as well. Academic articles are fine for background or to give information, but they're unlikely to be very helpful for convincing your boss to do anything!
Some general advice that I found really helpful for mine- remember that you're a prospective AO who's presenting to senior management at least three grades above you. There is no prospect at all that you'd be entrusted to do so by yourself. Refer to yourself in the first person plural (i.e. "we suggest" etc) and if they follow up on that, say that this proposal was devised by you but signed off by your manager and Principal Officer.
Think of benefits of whatever you're proposing through the point of view of the state and in particular the civil service rather than for their own sake, or vague concepts like "the population." For instance, nobody is going to say that having more hospitals for their own sake is a bad idea, but it's far easier to persuade someone to act on it if you can say that this will result in a healthier population, which means less absenteeism from the workplace, better preparation for epidemics or other health emergencies, and reduced litigation against the state (etc).
The main opposition you'll encounter to pretty much any practical proposal is its cost and you're better off pre-empting that rather than having them follow up. You'll need to prove that whatever you're proposing is so beneficial that inherently is worth the implementation cost (this is a difficult line to take), or that the benefits will save money in the long run and so are worth the start-up cost (e.g. better to pay to build a new hospital now, rather than have the health service overrun in an emergency and keeping a huge part of the population out of work, thus damaging the economy).
Other than that, try to generally think of pros and cons. Remember that vague concepts don't work well in the civil service; it works best when policies are clear and have discernable actions and timelines (e.g. "improve the health service" vs "build 10 new hospitals across the state by 2025"). The best of luck with it!
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This is absolutely super advice for anybody to bear in mind.Sweenin8tor wrote: »Some general advice that I found really helpful for mine- remember that you're a prospective AO who's presenting to senior management at least three grades above you. There is no prospect at all that you'd be entrusted to do so by yourself. Refer to yourself in the first person plural (i.e. "we suggest" etc) and if they follow up on that, say that this proposal was devised by you but signed off by your manager and Principal Officer.
Think of benefits of whatever you're proposing through the point of view of the state and in particular the civil service rather than for their own sake, or vague concepts like "the population." For instance, nobody is going to say that having more hospitals for their own sake is a bad idea, but it's far easier to persuade someone to act on it if you can say that this will result in a healthier population, which means less absenteeism from the workplace, better preparation for epidemics or other health emergencies, and reduced litigation against the state (etc).
The main opposition you'll encounter to pretty much any practical proposal is its cost and you're better off pre-empting that rather than having them follow up. You'll need to prove that whatever you're proposing is so beneficial that inherently is worth the implementation cost (this is a difficult line to take), or that the benefits will save money in the long run and so are worth the start-up cost (e.g. better to pay to build a new hospital now, rather than have the health service overrun in an emergency and keeping a huge part of the population out of work, thus damaging the economy).
Other than that, try to generally think of pros and cons. Remember that vague concepts don't work well in the civil service; it works best when policies are clear and have discernable actions and timelines (e.g. "improve the health service" vs "build 10 new hospitals across the state by 2025"). The best of luck with it!0 -
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