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WELCOME ...
Thinking of contributing? Click here for notes for authors.
Click here to view the press release about the announcement of prize winners in the first SOLACE Foundation Imprint essay competition.
The SOLACE SFI was launched in October 2005, details on the booklets that have been launched so far can be found here. Each edition is published and distributed by the Guardian’s Public magazine. SFI is an important new venture to commission and publish on public service improvement and excellence.
Filling the Policy/Practice Gap
The Imprint will help to fill the gap between policy analysts and researchers, on the one hand, and practitioners on the other. The policy research field is relatively well supplied at both the academic end and at the think-tank end, but until SFI there is no systematic tapping of the chief executive/senior manager experience in respect of the policy, organisational development and governance perspectives which they are capable of bringing to bear. While both the private sector and government can access the experience and knowledge held by SOLACE members on an ad hoc basis, this is not done and published systematically. SFI will support and stimulate writing, research and development which will utilise this relatively untapped resource to help inform both policy and practice.
Focus
SFI will be commissioning innovative research, stimulating original thought, and incentivising (through prizes and awards) excellent writing on public policy and management with a special emphasis on local government. SFI will concentrate on:
• Tapping into the perspectives of chief executives and senior managers.
• Local government futures, which includes forward looking, big-ideas papers as opposed to retrospective evaluation and work commissioned by government for governmental purposes.
• Condensing paper-heavy research and evaluation into high-level analysis for senior executive consumption.
• International perspectives on local government modernisation and public sector reform.
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