A briefing paper should provide you with the basic information about the subject.  It should describe it in plain English.  It should contextualise it and provide a framework for making decisions.  This means that having read the paper you should be able to understand the impact of the subject on your organisation and make decisions about it (such as deploy it, reject it, hold off at the moment).

Whatever documents are put here, they may not be exactly what you want.  For a fee of £50 you can request a briefing paper on any subject. Virtual Riders will find someone to either prepare the paper directly or to compile the relevant information from research source.  This can prove to be a cost effective way to making decisions which could be costly.

Briefing papers enable informed decision making.  When developing strategy, planning budgets and looking at how to develop your organisation briefing papers are a cheap and effective way to vindicate your decisions.  They can be used to back up funding applications and stop valuable resources being spent on red herrings.  It is important that decision makers be given the tools which enable them to make correct decisions.  Briefing papers are one of those tools.