This feature diagrams policy making as a five stage process. The first stage, agenda setting, is when public attention is focused on some public problem or issue, frequently with considerable guidance from officials' words and actions. In the second stage, policy makers in the legislature and the bureaucracy formulate legislative, regulatory, or programmatic strategies to address the problem. Given policy proposals, policy makers then in the third stage move to formally adopt a particular solution in the form of laws or bureaucratic rules. Once adopted, government agencies in the fourth stage begin the task of making the policy work. They establish procedures in accord with the policy, write guidance documents, and issue grants-in-aid to other government bodies. In the fifth stage, analysts in the implementing agency, the legislature, and outside government evaluate a policy to determine whether it is addressing the problem and whether implementation is proceeding well. Evaluation may reveal a need for revisions in policy, a need for changes in implementation, or even a whole new policies. It may also reveal new problems in need of policy solutions.