Thanks for the detailed response! I’ve included a few reflections on the work in the conclusion section. Fair point on the internal costs—I was thinking about this as a cost but not as an impact multiplier from funding. With some more work it could be used as justification for the existence of ECA and why consumers pay their salary. ~$200k seems right for staff time plus overhead.
Yeah, “over half” was quite surprising to me too. I wonder how much of this is because organisations may only lodge a rule change request if they have a decent sense that it is likely to be successful before doing so. If individuals and smaller/outside organisations took my advice and started lodging more rule change requests that ratio would surely change.
Thank you for nudging me to expand on the specfics of what I did. I think I’ll write something more detailed at some point, but for now I’ll just brain dump some dot points on what we did in those 6 months—hopefully that’s helpful for now.
ECA strategic planning to identify the energy consumer issues that are most important, tractable, and within ECA’s wheelhouse (see 3-year plan as the output)
Deep literature review (many rounds of this at each stage—I tried to just become an expert in the topic—I used AI pretty heavily as a learning companion)
Internal brainstorming with seniors to identify the problem and design a solution
Stakeholder mapping to identify who we need to involve, consult, mobilise, etc. (e.g., using IAP2 frameworks, plotting stakeholders on interest vs power axes)
Building a spreadsheet based on stakeholder mapping with details of key organisations including contacts
Identifying the value propositions of our rule change request—i.e. 4 main/unique values that different stakeholders would receive if the rule change were successful
Grouping stakeholders into one of 4 value propositions
Several rounds of seeking and incorporating feedback with key decision makers and stakeholders (sending dot point summaries, drafts, presenting to, meeting with, etc.)
Multiple rounds of internal drafting and review
Final checks (placed a high bar on being accurate and not having typos, etc.)
Lodged rule change
Offered briefings to interested parties
Media releases leading to some articles in industry press
Developed fact sheet to help stakeholders understand issue and lower the bar to making a submission
Social media posts to create awareness and (primarily) to encourage submissions
Running 4 workshops/briefings (one for each value proposition) to mobilise stakeholders to make a submission and collect feedback
Responding to government consultation papers (some more literature review, feedback, brainstorming for solutions to specific issues raised)
Commissioning external expert analysis as needed
I was the project leader for all of this (except the strategic planning which happened before I joined) but didn’t necessarily do all of it myself.
Yes definitely helpful, both for my own thinking and to be able to have something to point others to. With the caveat that learning from success stories requires some sort of survivorship bias adjustment, I think nuts-and-bolts writeups of technical policy reform success stories (as opposed to more high-level guides) are valuable and undersupplied, so if you ever get round to the more detailed writeup that would be great.
Thanks for the detailed response! I’ve included a few reflections on the work in the conclusion section. Fair point on the internal costs—I was thinking about this as a cost but not as an impact multiplier from funding. With some more work it could be used as justification for the existence of ECA and why consumers pay their salary. ~$200k seems right for staff time plus overhead.
Yeah, “over half” was quite surprising to me too. I wonder how much of this is because organisations may only lodge a rule change request if they have a decent sense that it is likely to be successful before doing so. If individuals and smaller/outside organisations took my advice and started lodging more rule change requests that ratio would surely change.
Thank you for nudging me to expand on the specfics of what I did. I think I’ll write something more detailed at some point, but for now I’ll just brain dump some dot points on what we did in those 6 months—hopefully that’s helpful for now.
ECA strategic planning to identify the energy consumer issues that are most important, tractable, and within ECA’s wheelhouse (see 3-year plan as the output)
Deep literature review (many rounds of this at each stage—I tried to just become an expert in the topic—I used AI pretty heavily as a learning companion)
Internal brainstorming with seniors to identify the problem and design a solution
Stakeholder mapping to identify who we need to involve, consult, mobilise, etc. (e.g., using IAP2 frameworks, plotting stakeholders on interest vs power axes)
Building a spreadsheet based on stakeholder mapping with details of key organisations including contacts
Identifying the value propositions of our rule change request—i.e. 4 main/unique values that different stakeholders would receive if the rule change were successful
Grouping stakeholders into one of 4 value propositions
Several rounds of seeking and incorporating feedback with key decision makers and stakeholders (sending dot point summaries, drafts, presenting to, meeting with, etc.)
Multiple rounds of internal drafting and review
Final checks (placed a high bar on being accurate and not having typos, etc.)
Lodged rule change
Offered briefings to interested parties
Media releases leading to some articles in industry press
Developed fact sheet to help stakeholders understand issue and lower the bar to making a submission
Social media posts to create awareness and (primarily) to encourage submissions
Running 4 workshops/briefings (one for each value proposition) to mobilise stakeholders to make a submission and collect feedback
Responding to government consultation papers (some more literature review, feedback, brainstorming for solutions to specific issues raised)
Commissioning external expert analysis as needed
I was the project leader for all of this (except the strategic planning which happened before I joined) but didn’t necessarily do all of it myself.
Yes definitely helpful, both for my own thinking and to be able to have something to point others to. With the caveat that learning from success stories requires some sort of survivorship bias adjustment, I think nuts-and-bolts writeups of technical policy reform success stories (as opposed to more high-level guides) are valuable and undersupplied, so if you ever get round to the more detailed writeup that would be great.