School of Programs

Cohort-based, case-method courses for mid-career and senior officials.

The School of Programs is where civil servants learn to manage. The curriculum is built on the case method: each case presents a realistic scenario drawn from the Polity's institutional world, supported by a bundle of fifteen to twenty-five separate documents — scenario briefs, ministerial directives, internal emails, legal memoranda, budget worksheets, risk registers, and evaluation rubrics.

Learners work through the case file, produce a deliverable (a memo, a process map, a staffing proposal), and receive faculty assessment against a published rubric. The six middle-management cases stair-step in difficulty from the Manager-Doer Trap (Case 1) through to the Capstone: Building a New Unit (Case 6).

Cases will be published here once the PM Cohort opens for enrollment.

The six cases are designed to be taken in sequence. Each case introduces one new management muscle, and each builds on the lessons of the previous cases. Cross-references between cases are deliberate: a learner who has worked through Case 1 will recognise the CSVT rollout when it reappears in Case 5, and a learner who has worked through Case 5 will recognise the permit backlog when it appears as context in Case 6.

1. Case 1 — CSVT Rollout. The Manager-Doer Trap. Don't be the bottleneck.
2. Case 2 — Budget Cut. Delegate decisions under resource constraints.
3. Case 3 — Northern Road. Design coordination capacity for cross-ministry projects.
4. Case 4 — Personnel Crisis. Manage through disruption.
5. Case 5 — Permit Backlog. Design processes that scale under volume pressure.
6. Case 6 — Building a New Unit (Capstone). Synthesise all five lessons in a unit-design exercise.