How science meets policy
From Wikiprogress.org
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How Science meets Policy
This workstream will pull together ideas on how indicator projects can influence policy.
GRPNet work streams are run by core GPRNet members. Members are invited to each work stream (there are four) with a nominated stream leader. The work of each member is posted directly onto this page, thus developing the knowledge by process. Relevant topics and directions of information will develop under the supervision of the leader.
Stream leader:
Stream leader email:
Stream Members (add your name):
The idea of developing a Journal of Progress Studies is a valuable one and should be planned for over several years, but not as an immediate priority. The journal (hopefully with a more modern and arresting title) is likely to emerge naturally out of a Working Paper series and the organic growth of a global progress research network itself, which should create a natural pool of contributors and increasing global interest in the issues.
Benefits for Contributors:
i) Provide a vehicle for researchers in this area to have their work published and access a broader audience.
ii) As contributors they would have their name associated with the Project, either as part of the academic consortium or a broader online community of “contributors” that could be given space on the website.
iii) Contributors could share their work with this online community for review or comment prior to publication.
iv) As a working paper series, the peer review process is shortened and the articles are published in a timely manner. It is also clear that the views published are that of the author and not the Project.
v) In the long‐term, articles could be commissioned by experts in this field on topics that (MPS) would like to explore in further depth (trust, vulnerability etc).
Advice from Oregon's Indicators Project:
• having all incoming state legislators go through an orientation process to familiarize them with the benchmarks and thereby help them start thinking about policy ideas that could address problems identified by the indicators.
• having the benchmarks be linked to the governor’s state of the state address. (“Imagine a State of the State address that wasn’t merely a few generalized plaudits and troubles and then an announcement of the governor’s favorite next initiatives,” Smith said. “What if it also included an evaluation of where we are?”)
• having a required impact statement that would show how the proposed legislation would influence benchmarks. (Smith gave the example in the context of an appropriations bill: “If we defund higher education by another 10 percent, that’s going to reduce the number of college-educated people we have by blank percent.”)[1]
One effective way to immediately expand awareness of the GPRNet project and its ideas in the research and intellectual community is to identify influential conferences in key global regions on related themes and ensure that the project either co‐hosts them or has a major theme or segment in the conference. This is a strategy that the OECD has already used very effectively, and it now should be pursued more methodically, starting with a systematic review of key conferences and workshops over (say) the next five years, including those organised by relevant research networks and on theme areas related to the GPRnet, such as health, education, housing, human rights, futures studies etc
Climate change and the Global Financial Crisis: It is strategically important that the GPRNet should strongly engage with these two current critical global issues. We should not allow MPS to be dismissed as subordinate to, or be postponed because of, these two issues. Instead, we should aim to show directly how a better (i.e., more balanced and widely accepted) concept of progress and better ways to measure it, is an important solution to these problems and that the lack of it was one of the key causes of those problems. Thus it will be desirable that the earliest working papers should directly confront this issues and show how MPS night help to resolve them.
See also
A very interesting article on why indicators projects fail (July 15, 2011), The Nitty Gritty of Going Beyond GDP
