A policy memo

Actions analyzes a public policy problem and makes recommendations about how to solve that problem. It is written with a particular audience in mind- this audience is often a policymaker such as an elected official or director of a government agency, but it can also be written for an organization outside government (like Greenpeace) or for the media and general public. For this assignment, you will write a policy memo on an issue related to the topics discussed in this class: energy policy and physics. You will complete this assignment in two parts, as explained below.

Policy Memo Assignment PART 2

Write a policy memo on the issue that you have chosen in Part I, not to exceed THREE typewritten pages.

In addition to your policy memo, you must turn in a bibliography of your sources with full citations. You should have at least three sources of information from respected sources.

What is a policy memo?

A policy memo analyzes a public policy problem and makes recommendations about how to solve that problem. A well-written policy memo reflects attention to purpose; it is well organized and it has a clear, concise style.

• Respond to your audience
• Think carefully about the needs and expectations of your audience. For example, if your audience is an elected official seeking analysis on a highly technical matter, you should generally assume that the official lacks substantial technical expertise.
• You will need to define technical terms and provide enough background about the situation you are discussing that such a lay audience can grasp your arguments. On the other hand, if you are writing for a technically trained audience, you will waste time and energy providing background information that your readers already know.

How to organize your policy memo

Introduction: One distinguishing characteristic of a policy memo is that a summary of the document’s conclusion(s) and recommendation(s) is placed right at the beginning of the memo. Remember that the purpose of the document is generally to provide your audience advice about a particular decision, project, or policy stance. Thus, you open the memo by summarizing the problem or situation about which you are writing, and by providing a very brief summary of the conclusions/recommendations you have reached during your analysis, sometimes referred to as “Bottom line up front.” The rest of the memo is designed to support the conclusions or recommendations you present.

Background: Keeping in mind that different audiences need different amounts of background information (see above), follow your introduction with a concise summary of any historical or technical information your audience needs in order to understand the arguments you are building.

Supporting arguments or analysis: Once you have set the stage for your audience, show how this information leads logically to the conclusions and recommendations you have provided. Be sure to include an analysis of the likely outcomes of your policy recommendations- both positive and negative. You will be more convincing if you emphasize the positive outcomes of your recommendations, but you will fail to convince an educated audience if you ignore the potential negative outcomes altogether. Better to acknowledge them, and show how they could be mitigated or outweighed by the positive outcomes. You may also include alternative policy options and show how they are inferior to your recommendations.

Policy Memo Guidelines

By writing this policy memo, you will gain experience in relating physics and energy to common problems discussed in newspapers and other popular media. Your goal is to learn to analyze scientific information from a public policy perspective. This assignment will challenge you to think differently about physics and energy.

Essential Elements

Actions : Your memo should include:

1. a brief statement of the issue/problem;
2. a summary of current policy and relevant background;
3. your recommendations;
4. justification of your recommendations;
5. and the pros and cons of your recommendation (may be included in justification).

It is a lot to cover in three pages, so aim for brevity in your language- using big words and lots of unnecessary verbiage will only make it harder. Just give us the boiled down information and your ideas in your own words. Simple and well-organized writing that shows a true understanding of your chosen topic will take you far.

Samples: POLICY_MEMORANDUM_SAMPLES.pdf

Actions

Instructions:

Create a brochure that informs local residents about the hazards at either a National Priorities List (Superfund) site or sanitary landfill in your community. The brochure should include the following: 

• Front matter with a title and byline
• Inside and back panels:
  • Information about the site (location, previous use, current use, etc.)
  • Risk Assessment:
    • Site assessments and testing completed to determine contamination levels.
    • The hazardous agents present at the site.
    • The extent of the contamination at the site and where it has spread to the surrounding community, if applicable (water, soil, air, etc.).
    • How the site has negatively impacted the environment and the health of people in the surrounding community (if negative health effects have not been reported, list the potential health effects based on the matrices that have been contaminated and the hazardous agents that have been identified).
  • Risk Management:
    • Identify the clean-up or containment measures that were taken.
    • Discuss how the site is continually monitored to prevent future contamination and protect the health of the surrounding population.
• Back matter with references and contact information for the local health or environmental department (city/county/state)

References

Your brochure needs to include at least three (3) references, which may include the assigned reading material for Unit 3. 

Submitting your Assignment

Your brochure must be submitted in a Microsoft® Word® file. Save the brochure with the proper naming convention, using the last name listed in the grade book: lastname_HS415_Unit3.docx

Submit your file to the Unit 3 Assignment 1 Dropbox.

To view your graded work, come back to the Dropbox or go to the Grades tab after your instructor has evaluated it. Make sure that you save a copy of your submitted brochure

PROJECT: For this project , you will play the role of a consultant who has been commissioned to develop a record keeping system for a local college. This system will maintain some of the most basic activities of the college that will include support of student records, course records, and specific class offerings as well as student course records, which will track which students are in each offering of a specific class.

You are required to develop an UML with defined class and sequence diagrams for the project. This should include the support of all the identified classes and relationships in your project specification.

Feel free to include additional relationships that may fit your vision of how the project should work. (Note: you are not obligated to implement any relationships in your final application outside of the original specification)

Your project deliverables should include the following:

• Documentation of your selection of type of relational database that you will use for your project as well as schema of your database. This must include the DML code of the creation of your database tables in the database (mySql, SQL Server) of your choice.

• A UML Class diagram (minimally including the following classes: students, faculty, student records, course records and course offerings).
• Your Class diagram should also include all necessary attributes and methods associated with each class depicted.
• A UML Sequence Diagram, which must address all major objects in your application (students, faculty, student records, course records and course offerings) along with associated messages (communication) between them.

In a fluorescent tube of diameter 2.2 cm, 2.5×10^18 1/s electrons and 2.6 × 10^18 1/s positive ions (with a charge of +e) flow through across-sectional each second. What is the current in the tube? in Amps.