Dears,
One of your colleagues contacted me via email with some relevant doubts.
Since the answer may be helpful for all of you, she kindly agreed to share the questions and the clarifications I provided.
Q: I have some questions regarding the difference between policy and strategy. One of the objectives identified in the last lecture about EU digital strategy was to define what is a "policy strategy", while later a definition of the two single terms has been given. I got that the policy defines "the principles" that should guide - for example - a company to achieve its goals, while the strategy defines a plan on how to do it (following the principles defined by the policy). My questions are:
- Is the policy strategy a combination of the two?
- Is the EU digital strategy actually a strategy, a policy or a policy strategy? (I also refer to the digital decade pyramid, the digital compass).
A: Basically, we can say that strategy and policy are two complementary and scalar notions.
In general, a strategy is a long-term plan and can be implemented by means of different policies.
The reason why we can use the two together – Policy Strategy – is to specify the nature of the strategy.
Indeed, in general, we can have different sorts of strategies, not limited to policymaking.
These latter usually have sectoral nature (data protection policies, cybersecurity policies…etc.)
Anyway, we will see these topics better in the lectures we will have in November.
Wednesday's class was a sort of entree. The following modules will be the main course 😉
If you have doubts or questions, please, do not hesitate to contact me.
Wish you all a nice weekend!