Essay 2

Important

This is a group project. Your team will submit one joint essay.

Note

One page summary due by midnight on Monday, November 20th via Blackboard. Final paper due by midnight on Monday, December 11th via Blackboard. Group evaluation due by midnight on Monday, December 11th via Blackboard.

Overview

In this essay, you are to draft a plan to address one of the three policy problems mentioned in the next section. Your essay will propose a solution for the problem and conduct a “make or buy” analysis for implementing your solution. Specifically, you will:

1. Develop a policy or program that will effectively solve or reduce the problem you choose to work on.
2. Create a plan that contracts implementation to a contractor or network of organizations.
3. Create a plan that creates government capacity to directly implement the program or policy.
4. A make or buy analysis that compares the two plans in terms of trade-offs and costs and benefits (both in monetary, effectiveness, and accountability terms).

Your overall policy and program should include a budget, specifically identified outcomes, and any additional revenues or offsets needed for the program to fit into existing budgets. For item number 2, your plan should include specific contract design elements, including the type of contract, vendors available and likely to bid, type of bidding that will be allowed, price of the contract, and agency responsible for managing and oversight. For item number 3, your plan should include a plan for personnel hiring, performance evaluation and monitoring (including the measures that will be used to judge performance), staffing needs and skills expected for each role in the program/project, and whether the program will be run by an existing agency or new agency. Finally, your make or buy decision should draw comparisons between these two plans, consider the trade-offs in both cost and other considerations (e.g., accountability, additional policy goals, etc.) and justify your final recommendation.

Formatting

In addition to the formatting guidelines in the syllabus, this essay should be double-spaced and no longer than 20 pages (excluding the bibliography, tables, and appendices). All charts, tables and figured should be in a separate section, after the references section, with a reference provided in text (e.g., Table 2 outlines the budget for…). As always, use APA formatting. There should be four sections: 1) introduction, providing an outline of the problem, discussing your policy/program solution, and outlining briefly that you will be presenting a contracting and direct delivery pair of plans; 2) Contracting plan; 3) Direct delivery plan; and 4) Make or buy analysis with concluding recommendation. A template for the paper formatting with descriptions of sections can be found on Brightspace.

Grading

As with Essay 1, this will be both the standard rubric for the paper overall (80%) and your peer evaluation average (20%)

Submission

ONE PAGE outline may be submitted November 20th for feedback before the paper is due. When submitting outlines, be sure to include ideas for any data you might use and a list of potential sources you plan to draw upon in addition to an outline of your paper’s focus and structure.

Final paper will be submitted December 11th via Brightspace. One submission will be accepted per group.

Problems

Opiate Addiction and Deaths.

Upstate New York has seen an annual increase in opioid related deaths in recent years. Beyond the human toll of the deaths themselves, overdose related deaths reflect a growing problem with addiction to opiates, and addiction carries large economic and social costs.

You are the Commissioner of the New York Department of Health. Create a program designed to not only reduce the death toll of opiates, but to mitigate the growth of opiate addiction in New York. Your focus should be on upstate New York, as this region has seen an even steadier increase in recent years than downstate. Your program should be targeted to more effectively fill gaps in current efforts.

Resources: - Recent Times Union Article - Current Department of Health efforts - Helpful data - Task Force Report - Helpful Times Story

Prisoner Re-entry.

New York has around 51,000 inmates housed in its prisons and jails. Of those released, 40.9% return to prison. Moreover, many of these prisoners lack skills or credentials.

As the head of the Division of Criminal Justice Services, you are to create a plan to reduce the prison population and reduce recidivism rates. Your focus should be on state prisons throughout the state. You can build on existing efforts, making additions or substantive changes, or design your own program that you believe will be more effective.

Resources: - Times Union Story - Current Initiatives Information - Re-entry support network - Jail population trends report - US DOJ report statistics

Capital Region Urban Blight.

All three major cities in the capital region of New York (Albany, Troy, and Schenectady) suffer from extensive urban blight (abandoned or underused buildings in various states of disrepair).

As the head of the Albany City Community Development Agency, create a plan to reduce the stock of abandoned and condemned building stock in these three cities. Your plan should be aimed at getting the relevant departments of the other two major cities and city councils of all three cities to agree to establish a regional program that draws resources from all three cities for your plan.

Resources: - Albany Community Development Agency site Also, the site is part of the Albany city government site, which provides information on annual budgets and other city initiatives. Visit the Schenectady City government and Troy City government websites as well. - City Lab story about Breathing Lights, an initiative to raise awareness about the problem with links to other background and information on existing efforts. - Albany Grant Program - Similar cross-city collaboration - Schenectady Program