Strengthening National Evidence‑Informed Policymaking Ecosystems

Annex A. Building capacity and mutual learning

Creating capacity for action: Lessons from the Capacity Building workshops

To strengthen individual capacities, the project involved a set of ‘Capacity Building workshops’ respectively for scientists, policymakers and knowledge brokers, which were based on the competence frameworks of the JRC on Science for Policy (for scientists) (Schwendinger, Topp and Kovacs, 2022[1]) and Innovative Policy Making (for policymakers), as well as the OECD work on Building Capacity for Evidence Informed Policymaking (OECD, 2020[2]). These frameworks helped to identify the competences, attitudes and skills that are needed in a science-for-policy ecosystem. For countries that do not yet have fully developed educational programmes, such as Estonia, the Czech Republic and Belgium, these frameworks were an important source of inspiration. Other countries, such as Latvia, Lithuania, Greece and the Netherlands, are advised to incorporate elements of the frameworks into existing programmes and trainings.

The capacity building workshop annexdeveloped for knowledge brokers highlighted good practices for creating impact and for synthesising evidence, while also showing that there is no single optimal organisational set up and process to perform knowledge brokering. Still many knowledge brokering organisations and entities face similar challenges and have similar needs. This includes, for instance, the need for a common understanding of what is meant by “evidence” and which roles different types of evidence can and should play in the policymaking process. Given its historic roots in evidence-based medicine, the “evidence” in EIPM is often understood as synonymous to rigorous scientific evidence, such as randomised controlled trials or econometric analyses (Baron, 2018[3]). In practice, however, policymaking builds on much more diverse mix of evidence, including also but not limited to, opinion polls, conclusions of deliberative democracy exercises, weak signal from horizon scanning analyses, possible future scenarios from foresight processes, results from a wide range of different modelling tools, etc. Hence, there is a clear need for clarifying which role each of these types of evidence plays in EIPM and how their robustness and trustworthiness should be assessed (see also (OECD[4]) 2020). This workshop and the project showed the need to further support the growth and institutionalisation of knowledge brokers in the future.

Expanding the frontiers of knowledge: Overview of mutual learning exercises

The mutual learning and capacity building exercises delivered during this EIPM project demonstrated the value of bringing participating countries together around topics of common interest. The participating countries could not only learn from each other and experts in the fields but also build cross-sectorial and cross-country relationships. A first mutual learning exercise did focus on the contribution of foresight to evidence informed policymaking, drawing on respective expertise at the JRC and at the OECD on the topic. A second mutual learning exercise focused on policy evaluation, drawing on JRC analytical capabilities as well as on OECD tools and methods. Finally, the workshop on mobilising Artificial Intelligence as part of evidence informed policymaking benefitted from the corporate investments of the European commission on AI tools, as well as on emerging practices in the participating countries, and OECD preliminary work undertaken as part of the project on “governing with AI”. In the immediate future, the ongoing series of mutual learning exercises on “bridging the gap between science and policy” organised by the European Commission’s Directorate for Research and Innovation.

References

[3] Baron, J. (2018), “A Brief History of Evidence-Based Policy”, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 678/1, pp. 40-50, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716218763128.

[2] OECD (2020), Building Capacity for Evidence-Informed Policy-Making: Lessons from Country Experiences, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/86331250-en.

[4] OECD (2020), Mobilising Evidence for Good Governance: Taking Stock of Principles and Standards for Policy Design, Implementation and Evaluation, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3f6f736b-en.

[1] Schwendinger, F., L. Topp and V. Kovacs (2022), Competences for policymaking, JRC Publications Repository, https://doi.org/10.2760/642121.