Kate Savenko interviews Dr Simon Bailey about his book, The Projectification of Public Policy
Kate Savenko is a Level 4 Policy Officer apprentice working for Catalyst Housing Limited. As part of the Policy Officer apprenticeship standard, the students have a module on Project Management. During Kate’s research, she was reviewing the book The Projectification of the Public Sector and noted that one of the book authors, Dr Simon Bailey, is a lecturer at the University of Kent. Kate decided to take her research to the next level and made contact with Dr Bailey through her Director of Studies, Dr Lavinia Mitton.
Kate recounts how, as a practising project manager and policy officer student, she was excited by the prospect of learning more about a subject she is so passionate about, “I was surfing Amazon for additional reading to find out more about policy implementation taught on the Policy course at the University of Kent. When I came across the book “Projectification of Public Sector” it immediately captured my attention as I have been working in project management roles for years, but never came across academic studies on the subject. I bought the book and to my surprise I discovered that one of the co-writers of the book – Simon Bailey – was a lecturer and a research fellow at the University of Kent!
I reached out to my course programme director – Lavinia Mitton – and asked if there were any opportunities to learn more about the research behind the book via university. I was thrilled when Lavinia spoke to Simon about my interest and proposed that I could interview Simon as part of my assignment on the Project Management module. Needless to say that I jumped at this opportunity! I spent a long time thinking up questions I could ask Simon and it was inspiring to watch Simon effortlessly engage with them.
Meeting Simon at the Canterbury campus was the first time I was able to visit the university – due to pandemic all face-to-face teachings had to be stopped, and 2 years programme was being taught entirely remotely. I enjoyed the hum at the library whilst we filmed!
I hope that our short conversation will provide thinking material for policy and project management professionals and anyone interested in the subject!”
View Kate’s video interview with Dr Simon Bailey on our YouTube channel.
The Projectification of the Public Sector. Hodgson, D., Fred, M., Bailey, S. and Hall, P. (eds.) (2019) is available on the Kent Academic Repository (KAR).