MAKING BETTER DECISIONS TO IMPROVE PUBLIC SERVICE

• Our work on evidence is informed policy making focuses on governments at national and local levels using evidence to make better decisions to improve public services.
  
  
• Governing better through evidence-informed policy making requires building capacity for the effective use and demand of evidence at all levels of government.
  
  
• Evidence has a critical role to play in improving the quality, responsiveness and accessibility of public services and is pertinent throughout the policy cycle. Yet there remain many challenges with connecting evidence and decision making.
  
  
• The OECD has an ambitious programme of work that aims to offer a site for facilitating the exchange of experience, methods and successful approaches.
  
  

KEY BUILDING BLOCKS

Key building blocks to an evidence-informed policy making agenda

• Capacity Building: What are the skills, capacity and institutional set-up necessary for evidence-informed policy making?
• Showcasing examples: How are countries leveraging evidence informed policy making to deliver on performance?
• Standards of evidence: What standards of evidence are needed for policy design, implementation and evaluation?
• Networking and mapping: what institutions exist in OECD countries to support evidence-informed policy making?

• Implementing early intervention:  What works in implementing early childhood intervention at scale?

EVIDENCE IN A "POST TRUTH" WORLD

• "Post truth" world: the speed of reaction is dictated by social media and facts are not always verified
  
  
•  Overwhelming amount and increasingly complex information must be be considered by the policy makers
  
  
• Individual capacity to process information can be restricted and skewed by biases
  
  
• The challenge is to be able to foster informed judgement and to ensure that the public sector is equipped with the right skill-set to nurture evidence-informed policy making (EIPM). 

THE ROLE OF THE OECD

At the 2015 OECD Public Governance Ministerial Meeting, Ministers emphasised the importance of evidence as a critical underpinning of public policies. They also recognised the need for a continuous effort to develop policy-relevant evidence, including processes within government that allow for the use of evidence, and importantly evidence on the efficiency and effectiveness of policy interventions.

The OECD supports this agenda by helping to provide capacity to support decision makers’ use of evidence, mapping evidence systems, offering standards and good practice guidelines for sharing and comparing evidence. The OECD brings governments, researchers, and scientists together to work on this common agenda.