A policy analyst can work in any number of positions. Once upon a time,
the term implied someone rather wonkish who worked in a large government
bureaucracy serving up very technical projections of possible policy impacts for
one or more policy alternatives to some undersecretary of planning. No longer.
Policy analysts help in planning, budgeting, program evaluation, program design,
program management, public relations, and other functions. They work alone,
in teams, and in loose networks that cut across organizations. They work in
the public, nonprofit, and for-profit spheres. Although their work is ideally
distinguished by transparency of method and interpretation, the analysts themselves
might explicitly bring to their jobs the values and passions of advocacy
groups as well of "neutral" civil servants. The professional networks in which
they work might contain-in most cases, do contain-professionals drawn from
law, engineering, accounting, and so on, and in those settings the policy-analytic
point of view has to struggle for the right to counter-or better yet, synthesize-the
viewpoints of the other professionals. Although policy-analytic work products
typically involve written reports, they may also include briefings, slide presentations,
magazine articles, and TV interviews. The recipients of these products may
be broad and difise audiences as well as narrowly construed paying clients or
employers.