Strategic Planning for Government and Public Sector Training Course

Course overview

Public-sector strategy must do more than state ambitions. It must translate statutory duties, ministerial priorities, community needs, funding limits and delivery capacity into defensible choices. Many agencies produce plans that are difficult to fund, measure or execute across departments and partner organisations. This course equips participants to develop strategies that withstand scrutiny from elected officials, auditors, regulators, employees and service users.

Participants learn a practical planning cycle for government and public bodies: clarifying mandate and strategic intent; analysing the external environment; mapping stakeholders; defining outcomes; selecting priorities; designing performance measures; allocating resources; and establishing delivery governance. They use PESTLE analysis, stakeholder power-interest mapping, Theory of Change, SWOT/TOWS, risk registers, balanced scorecards and implementation roadmaps. Particular attention is given to aligning strategy with budget cycles, public-value objectives, equity commitments, statutory obligations and cross-agency dependencies.

The course is delivered through facilitated instruction, public-sector cases, structured workshops and peer review. Each participant works on a live or realistic organisational challenge and progressively builds a strategic planning pack: a mandate statement, diagnostic, outcome map, priority portfolio, performance framework, risk register and 12-month implementation roadmap. This provides a practical document to refine with colleagues after the course, rather than a set of disconnected templates.

It is designed for managers and advisers who contribute to organisational, departmental, programme or service strategies. It is especially valuable where a public body needs to refresh a corporate plan, establish a new programme, coordinate multiple agencies or improve the connection between strategic goals, budget decisions and operational delivery.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Analyse a public-sector mandate, statutory duties and policy commitments to define a credible strategic planning scope
• Conduct a PESTLE and SWOT/TOWS diagnostic that identifies service pressures, policy shifts and delivery constraints
• Map stakeholders using a power-interest matrix and plan engagement for elected officials, communities and delivery partners
• Construct a Theory of Change linking strategic interventions to public-value outcomes and measurable assumptions
• Prioritise strategic initiatives with weighted criteria, affordability tests and dependency analysis
• Design a balanced scorecard with outcome, output, efficiency, equity and service-quality indicators
• Build a strategic risk register with risk owners, controls, tolerances and escalation routes
• Produce a 12-month implementation roadmap with milestones, governance forums, resource actions and review points

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Public Sector Managers — who must convert policy commitments and service pressures into funded operational priorities
• Strategic Planning Officers — who coordinate corporate, departmental or service planning cycles
• Programme and Portfolio Managers — who need to align initiatives, dependencies and benefits with organisational strategy
• Policy Advisers — who develop proposals that require clear outcomes, evidence and implementation arrangements
• Local Government Service Heads — who balance community priorities, statutory duties and constrained budgets
• Government Agency Performance Managers — who establish measures and reporting arrangements for strategic plans

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience working in a government department, local authority, regulator, public agency, public service provider or public-private delivery partnership. They should understand their organisation's basic mandate, annual planning or budget cycle, and the services or programmes for which they are responsible. Familiarity with objectives, KPIs, risk registers or stakeholder engagement is helpful but not essential. Participants should be comfortable reading policy documents and working with simple spreadsheet tables. No prior strategic-planning qualification, finance specialism, Power BI expertise or formal project-management certification is required.

Training methodology

Instructor-led sessions introduce each planning method through public-sector examples involving local government, agencies and cross-department programmes. Participants apply the tools in guided workshops, using templates for mandate analysis, stakeholder mapping, Theory of Change, prioritisation, scorecards and risk registers. Small groups test strategic choices against budget, statutory, political and delivery constraints, then conduct peer reviews as if briefing a senior leadership team. The final day is an application-planning clinic in which participants assemble their own strategic planning pack and identify the first actions needed on return to work.

Course outline

Day 1: Mandate, public value and strategic diagnosis

• Public-sector strategy within statutory duties and ministerial direction
• Defining public value, service obligations and organisational mandate
• Planning horizons across political, budget and operational cycles
• PESTLE analysis for policy, demographic, fiscal and technological change
• SWOT and TOWS analysis for strategic option development
• Evidence sources including service data, inspections and citizen feedback
• Strategic issue statements and planning-scope definition

Workshop: Participants complete a mandate and environmental diagnostic for a public-service case and produce three evidence-based strategic issue statements.

Day 2: Stakeholders, outcomes and strategic choices

• Stakeholder power-interest mapping for public bodies and delivery networks
• Engagement strategies for elected officials, regulators, staff and communities
• Equity, inclusion and place-based considerations in strategic design
• Theory of Change outcomes mapping
• Assumption testing and external dependency identification
• Writing outcome statements distinct from activities and outputs
• Strategic options generation through TOWS and scenario thinking

Workshop: Participants create a stakeholder engagement map and Theory of Change for a selected service-improvement challenge.

Day 3: Priorities, resources and strategic alignment

• Weighted prioritisation criteria for public-value decisions
• Affordability, feasibility, impact and statutory-risk scoring
• Portfolio mapping across mandatory, transformational and discretionary work
• Resource alignment with annual budget and medium-term financial plans
• Benefits realisation and service-demand assumptions
• Cross-agency dependencies and partnership operating models
• Drafting strategic themes, goals and initiative charters

Workshop: Participants score competing initiatives using a weighted decision matrix and produce a ranked strategic priority portfolio.

Day 4: Performance, risk and delivery governance

• Balanced scorecard design for public-sector strategy
• Outcome, output, efficiency, equity and quality indicator selection
• Baselines, targets, data ownership and reporting frequency
• Strategic risk registers aligned to ISO 31000 principles
• Risk appetite, tolerances, controls and escalation thresholds
• Governance structures using accountable owners and decision forums
• Performance review cycles and corrective-action mechanisms

Workshop: Participants build a scorecard and strategic risk register for their priority portfolio, including owners and escalation routes.

Day 5: Implementation roadmap and strategy communication

• Translating strategic initiatives into phased delivery milestones
• RACI responsibility mapping for cross-functional implementation
• Twelve-month roadmap sequencing and critical-path analysis
• Change-readiness assessment and workforce engagement actions
• Strategy-on-a-page communication for leadership and staff
• Briefing decision-makers on trade-offs, risks and resource implications
• Annual refresh, evaluation and lessons-learned mechanisms

Workshop: Participants assemble and present a strategic planning pack containing a strategy-on-a-page, roadmap, scorecard and governance actions.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, ISO 31000, ISO 37000

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions