DRAFT ONLY!
Guideline on Policy formulation
FTI follows the following policy formulation process. Please note that policies drafted by FTI are all draft policies only and will be finalised only when formally adopted to by at least 1500 FTI members willing and ready to contest elections.
STEP 1. Initial discussion on FTI Google Group through Google Pages
- Any FTI member can propose a policy on any issue, demonstrating clearly how it is compatible with freedom. Their proposal can come from any source, including (but not restricted to!) previous work done in this area by the India Policy Institute (People’s Manifesto), previous writings of members (e.g. Breaking Free of Nehru), political party manifestoes (e.g. SBP’s manifesto), Swatantra Party’s 21 principles.
- Policy leaders: The member proposing the policy would normally take leadership on the policy. Any member could work on the policy, in addition – volunteers only.
- As soon as the topic for the policy has been identified, the policy leader will check if page already exists on this subject at: http://groups.google.com/group/freedom-team-of-india/web. If not, he or she will create a suitable policy page.
- The page will become the hub centre for policy development. Through that page, policy will be developed on the main FTI Google Group. All other members should respond to this thread only, and avoid creating a new thread.
- At a suitable stage, the FTI policy leader/s will consolidate the discussion and provide a simple and clear Word document summarising the agreed position/s.
- Members should then be encouraged to track changes on these Word drafts. This way FTI will iteratively arrive at a broadly agreed position After initial debate, the policy leader will seek final comment from the FTI Google group, giving them (say) two weeks to respond. If no further comments are received, the policy is ready to go to the FTI blog.
2. Discussion on FTI blogs
In general, policies on FTI blog are dealt with as follows:
a) Two blogs are established on each policy, say education. One is FTI members only and the other, Public (in the first instance only the FTI members blog is established).
b) On the FTI members blog, only FTI members are able to comment. Policy leader/s will continue to edit/modify the original blog posting to reflect the ongoing consensus. On the Public blog, the public will be allowed to comment (moderated for language).
Note that ALL discussions of FTI members on the FTI members only blog will be released publicly after the policy is agreed to be publicly released. After the policy is released publicly, FTI members will continue to develop that policy publicly, keeping in mind the comments received from the public. Note that FTI is not obliged to debate with the public – and, indeed, should avoid doing so. We should, however, report actions that we have taken in response to their suggestions.
3.Policy blueprint
Once a policy has been released publicly and has fouind general consensus for a while, steps should be undertaken to develop a detailed policy blueprint on that policy. These blueprints will specify the exact legal or other changes that FTI would bring about in order to implement its proposed policy.
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