Communicating information to a diverse audience of stakeholders. 

in 300 or more words, complete an organizational policy assessment on any organization in the criminal justice field.

EXAMPLE: an assessment of a policy requiring that all new employees be trained on the specifics of their job duties.

An organizational process assessment could examine whether a particular organizational process, such as the intake process for new clients, is gathering accurate information about clients prior to initiating services for them.  Another example might be whether the process for gathering feedback from users of a recycling center is being used effectively.

Each of these is an example of a specific organizational process or policy evaluation that should be designed to provide the organization with information about the efficiency and effectiveness of some aspect of the organization’s operations.  They might be conducted to meet the requirements of a legislative mandate or related to continued funding from a private foundation.  Or they might be conducted to ensure that the organization is meeting its commitment to its public service mission.  Such assessments might be used simply to meet the desires of the organizational leaders to use their resources in the most effective ways possible.

A program evaluation/assessment plan even one that focuses on a particular, and therefore limited, organizational policy or process provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate the critical thinking, research, analysis, and communication skills that they have developed over the course of the MPA program courses and in a way that is easily transferable to all aspects of their public administration practice whether their future focus is on public policy development or analysis, or on program development, implementation, and outcome assessment.  It does so by providing students with the critical steps needed in any aspect of public administration practice – identification, understanding, analysis, and application of research information, methods, and data and communicating that information to a diverse audience of stakeholders.

The process of designing an evaluation/assessment plan requires students to conduct research in the related academic and professional literature and apply it to other organizational processes or policies, to think critically about what is most important to consider, how to develop criteria for organizational policies and practices, how to develop measurable research methods and data collection strategies that are valid and reliable, and how to communicate effectively both in the written word and through presentations to appropriate audiences.