Policy Brief Template with Options Analysis

Before you list a single option, answer four questions: who decides, what they are choosing between, by when, and what is outside their power. An option the reader cannot take, such as asking a city council to change state law, tells them the brief was not written for them.

Write the decision as a choice. "Rural bus service is declining" is a problem. "Whether to fund the Route 9 subsidy in next year's budget" is a decision. The deadline matters too: it tells you which missing evidence you can still get.

Start with a longlist of six to eight options, then cut it to a shortlist and write down why you dropped each one. Include one option bolder than anything under discussion and one that costs less. A shortlist of variations on the option you already wanted is not an analysis.

HM Treasury's Green Book, the UK government's guidance on appraisal, says a shortlist should generally include around five options¹. That way, decision-makers see "genuine choices rather than a single pre-determined outcome." Its typical five are:

• Business as usual (current arrangements carry on), which always makes the shortlist
• A do minimum that just meets the objective
• The preferred way forward
• A more ambitious version: more benefit, more cost or risk
• A less ambitious version: less benefit, less cost or risk

In the US, Circular A-4 is the Office of Management and Budget's guidance on analyzing federal regulations. Where a rule can be stricter or looser, it generally asks for at least three options²: the preferred one, a stricter one and a cheaper, looser one. Comparing only the preferred option with the baseline, it says, "is not adequate."

Keep an evidence register with one row per claim, not one per source. One report can support a strong claim and a weak one, and a single row would give both the same grade. Record the claim, its source, when you checked it, a grade and the reason for it.

Medicine has a formal version. Cochrane, which publishes systematic reviews of health research, uses the GRADE approach to rate certainty as high, moderate, low or very low³. Its handbook asks authors to explain any rating below high. Three grades, each with its reason, are enough for a brief.

Grade the source, never the direction: a strong claim against your favorite option stays strong. Give gaps their own rows, since a figure everyone assumes but nobody has sourced is a finding. If your evidence is a pile of studies, a literature review synthesis sorts their findings by claim.

Many options tables list benefits and stop there. Circular A-4 notes that the people who bear a regulation's costs are often not the ones who enjoy its benefits². It asks agencies to describe separately how costs and benefits fall on different groups.

So name the parties each option leaves worse off, specific enough that someone could write to them. "Small business" is not a party. "About 1,100 residents who rent out a room in their own home" is. Do the same for no change, whose costs often fall on the people the proposal was meant to help.

Then check what each party has said in public (a filed comment, testimony, a letter) and who speaks for them. Record the document and date, not your impression. UNC's Writing Center tells brief writers to double check whether they have inadvertently excluded any stakeholders⁴, and a stakeholder analysis template helps you list them.

Pick three to five criteria the decision-maker really weighs, such as cost, reach, speed or legal durability, and score each option from 1 to 5. Make 5 always mean best, even for cost, where best is cheapest.

If you add the scores without weights, say so: an unweighted total treats every criterion as equally important. Ask the decision-maker for weights rather than picking ones that make your favorite win.

Beside each option's total, print two more numbers: the share of its supporting claims graded strong, and how many of the parties it hurts are on the record. If the top scorer has the weakest evidence or the quietest losers, say so plainly. It may be the most useful sentence in your brief.

Canada's International Development Research Centre, a public research funder, tells its grantees to keep a brief within 1,500 words or two pages⁵. Six parts fit, in this order:

1. 1

   The decision

   What is being decided, by whom and by when.

2. 2

   What is happening

   The few facts that change the decision, each traced to your register.

3. 3

   The options

   One block each, in the same shape: what happens, who pays, who objected and how strong the evidence is.

4. 4

   The finding

   Where the score, the evidence and the visible opposition disagree.

5. 5

   The recommendation

   Your pick and what would change it, or what would settle it.

6. 6

   The annex

   The register and position map, so a doubtful reader can check any sentence.

A recommendation is allowed, but not one the options were built to make inevitable. UNC's Writing Center notes that briefs may summarize research, suggest options or argue for a course of action⁴.

The template on this page sets up the register, position map and trade-off matrix with a worked example. To start from a draft instead, River's policy brief writer writes the two pages from your research, with each claim tied to its source.