Guidance for Policy Consultants
Who is this for?
This section is for professionals who work with data to inform policy, programmes, and decision-making, in the Indian public and social sectors.
It will be most useful if you are:
- A policy researcher or analyst working in a think tank, consultancy, or research organisation
- Part of an NGO, foundation, or CSR team involved in programme design, monitoring, or evaluation
- A government official or programme manager responsible for using data to plan, review, or report on initiatives
- An education, health, labour, or social sector practitioner working with administrative or survey data
- A student or early-career professional in public policy, development studies, economics, or related fields
The guides and references here are designed for people who:
- Regularly work with government datasets and reports
- Need to translate data into clear notes, briefs, dashboards, or presentations
- Care more about practical use and decision relevance than theoretical methods
- Want checklists, templates, and examples that reflect real constraints (time, data quality, stakeholders)
This is not a statistics textbook.
The focus is on using data well in real policy contexts — from collection and cleaning to analysis, communication, and application in decision-making.
What can you find here?
The Guides are organised as a practical knowledge base for people working with data and evidence in policy contexts. It is divided into two broad sub-sections: How To and Resources.
How To
The How To section contains step-by-step, task-oriented guides focused on common analytical and knowledge-production activities in policy and programme work.
These pages typically answer questions such as:
- How do I write a policy note or analysis brief for a decision-maker?
- How do I build and maintain an archive of datasets over time?
- How should I compare indicators across years when definitions or sources change?
- How do I think about data collection, validation, and documentation in real projects?
These guides focus on process, structure, and judgement rather than tools alone. The aim is to help you make better decisions about how to approach a task, not just what buttons to click.
Resources
The Resources section provides reusable reference material that you can return to during your work.
This includes:
- Sector-specific dataset wikis (for example, education or health), listing key government surveys and administrative data sources along with context on what they are useful for and their limitations
- Ready-to-use checklists for data collection, data entry, documentation, and quality control
- Practical tips and references for producing clearer knowledge outputs, such as reports, presentations, dashboards, and analytical notes
These resources are designed to reduce friction in day-to-day work and help maintain consistency and clarity across teams and projects.
A note on perspective
The content here is not meant to be definitive or universal guidance.
The guides and resources reflect opinionated suggestions based on experience working with data, research, and decision-makers in the Indian public policy and social sector ecosystem. They are shaped by real constraints: limited time, imperfect data, diverse stakeholders, and practical trade-offs.
You should treat them as:
- A starting point for thinking and discussion
- A set of heuristics that can be adapted to your context
- Practical guidance, not hard rules or “best practices” in the abstract
If something here helps you work more clearly or efficiently, use it.
If your context demands a different approach, that is expected.