Innovation and the productivity challenge in the public sector

Evidence-based policymaking needs to be counter-balanced with intelligence-based policymaking, the Executive Director of the HC Coombs Policy Forum told an audience of senior public servants today. Dr Mark Matthews used an address to the inaugural Policy Reflections Forum at the Department of Communications to suggest that the public service consider the concept of intelligence-based policymaking as a means of crafting quicker policy responses when information is partial or incomplete. Intelligence-based policymaking involves tests of competing hypotheses and is used widely by the intelligence community to inform decision-making when a shortage of time means that the accumulation of robust evidence is a challenge. Matthews stressed that governments frequently had to make fast decisions on issues with considerable uncertainty over cause and effect, so in some circumstances the steady accumulation of information associated with evidence-based policymaking needs to be complemented with a faster approach. He added that there are a many public policy challenges that stand to benefit from the use of intelligence-based policymaking. “Intelligence-based policymaking has been explicitly designed to handle decision-making under conditions of substantive uncertainty, ambiguity and risk – situations in which there may be no option to wait before more evidence is available before deciding what to do about a possible threat. “I think there’s a compelling argument [to use intelligence-based policymaking] because it may be a faster, cheaper and a more ‘fit for purpose’ approach to formulating policy. “A transition to intelligence-based policymaking may be the step change in public sector productivity that we are searching for – simply because it involves much lower levels of wasted person-hours…and lower risks of wasted spending on intervention designs and the monitoring and evaluation of this spending that does not align with the reality that governments are the uncertainty and risk managers of last resort,” he said. He added that another advantage of intelligence-based policymaking is that it is better positioned to handle the possible unhelpful reactions of those groups a piece of policy is aimed at. “If I release an evidence-based assessment of a policy challenge – such as social policy or business regulation – it is likely that the behavior of the actors and entities whose behaviors constitute the policy challenge may change in response to their improved understanding of what government plans to do in the future. There are many examples of this.” Matthews leads the HC Coombs Policy Forum at Crawford School. The Forum is a collaboration between the Australian Government and The Australian National University with a mission to support innovative and experimental work at the interface between the public service and academia. His speech builds on an earlier keynote address calling for policymakers and academics to move beyond evidence-based policymaking: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/news/1637/building-better-partnerships Matthews’ speech to the Department of Communications, Innovation and the productivity challenge in the public sector is available for download on his website: http://marklmatthews.com/2014/03/05/talk-on-innovation-and-the-productiv..

Giving preparedness a central role in science and innovation policy

Over the last few decades public policy and public management methods have been very much concerned with the management of risk. Risk by definition is quantifiable, or if not quantifiable, something that can be ‘managed’. In contrast, the preparedness perspective places far more emphasis on the need to deal with uncertainty – challenges that cannot be easily quantified, accurately forecasted or managed. Although the distinction between risk and uncertainty is not clear-cut (and is often the troubled area where policy-makers find themselves working), a strong bias towards framing the challenge as ‘manageable’ risk can, in practice, be distinguished from the more important challenge of handling substantive uncertainty. The preparedness perspective stresses the key role of governments in managing the economic, social, environmental and national security consequences of this substantive uncertainty. Preparedness also clarifies why government funding for basic research is so important: basic research, in essence, translates ignorance into risk. We explore the unknown because we want to find out more about it – human beings prefer to face risks than uncertainties because we can (attempt at least) to act rationally in response to measurable risks. Consequently, giving preparedness a central role in science policy would counter-balance and address shortcomings in current science and innovation policy frameworks. Such a shift in emphasis would also make it easier to defend spending on capacity building in public science. In an uncertain world, the ability to respond quickly and effectively to the unforeseen is critical. Indeed, preparedness capacity is critical to setting the innovation objectives that allow us to respond to unforeseen threats. The paper recommends five complementary principles for giving preparedness a more central role in science and innovation policy. (1) Being more realistic and honest about limitations to forecasts and predictions, particularly in complex systems environments where simple Newtonian dynamics of linear cause and effect do not apply. (2) Making a more explicit distinction between risk and uncertainty, and doing more to understand the ‘fuzzy’ grey area between the two, again giving due recognition to the inherent unpredictability of complex systems. (3) Putting more effort into demonstrating how science translates uncertainty into risk and in so doing increases our levels of preparedness. (4) Adopting ‘preparedness friendly’ guidelines for research funding and performance evaluation that utilise ‘risk-facilitating’ portfolio-based investment methods. (5) Doing more to specify how preparedness outcomes are reflected (in the short term) in greater accuracy in the estimated Net Present Value of economic assets and also (in the very long term) the challenge of being fairer to future generations

The Role of Self-affirmation and Self-expansion on State Self-esteem

Ohio State Mansfield Research Frenzy PresentationOhio State Denman Forum PresentationAmerican Psychological Society National Convention PresentationThere is a wide variety of research that has examined the extent to which humans use others for self-enhancement. Previous work has shown that people can expand their sense of self by using close others to boost self-esteem. Additionally, self-affirmation theory is a large part of the human psychological immune system, holding the power to boost the self and potentially protect self-esteem. Recent research has found that when facing negative feedback, people have a tendency to inflate their views of significant others in terms of positive characteristics, possibly to make themselves feel better (Brown & Han, 2012). The present research involves a 2 (self-affirmation) x 2 (success vs. failure feedback) x 2 (friend vs. college student rating) factorial design. A significant three-way interaction revealed effects for state self-esteem, but not for partner ratings or task performance. Non-self-affirming participants who received failure feedback had higher self-esteem ratings versus non-self-affirming participants who received failure feedback and rated a college student.No embargoAcademic Major: Psycholog

Evidence for an Earth-Centered Universe

Three lines of cosmological evidence which indicate that earth is at, or very near, the center of the universe, are surveyed: (1) The apparent, linear arrangement of some galaxies, which on a large scale vaguely resembles a 3-D spoked-wheel with the galaxies in linear spoke-like arrays pointing towards the earth at the hub. These spokes have been known since the 1970s (but not talked much about) and have been given the intriguing name fingers of God by the astronomical community. (2) The linear arrangement of gamma ray bursts and galaxies such that, again, there is a linear alignment with Earth at the hub. (3) The large-scale patterns embedded in the cosmic microwave background radiation which are correlated with the orientation of the earth, and with the earth-sun orbital plane. Some non-earth-centered interpretations of these observations are critiqued

Needed skills versus available skills: an assessment tool is launched

Economic development often founders on a mismatch between available workforce skills and companies’ needs. A tool that analyzes critical sets of labor market data not previously considered in tandem can help local governments improve planning.Labor market ; Labor market - Massachusetts ; Occupational training ; Occupational training - Massachusetts