The recent study we carried out for JRC-IPTS (see previous posts) concluded in the final report with (amongst others) a list of 10 (therefore a Decalogue) of policy recommendations that might get incorporated in the future roadmap for Policy Making 2.0.
This set of recommendations, which was directly extracted by our analysis in 4 representative policy maing 2.0 cases (2050 Pathways Analysis, GLEAM, Opinion Space 3.0 and UrbanSim), is addressed towards not only policy makers, but also modellers, practitioners, researchers and policy making 2.0 case development teams, which should all work together in a collaborative manner towards delivering effective and added value applications and methodologies to advance policy making.
So these are the main policy recommendations as issued by @skous, @fenareti and @takiant
Policy Recommendation 1. Build your case in Policy Making 2.0 in an agile manner.
Capitalizing on the experiences gained in the Web 2.0 era, cases in Policy Making 2.0 should follow the agile pattern for implementing light-applications with constant, iterative cycles of design, development and testing. Since building a generic model to cover all aspects is impossible and specialization in certain domains and application of already established knowledge is the most recommended way to go, platforms/ apps and their accompanying policy models should be gradually developed incorporating feedback received by the users in each major and minor release.
Policy Recommendation 2. Continuously embed high-quality (open) data into your policy models.
No matter how well-defined or detailed a policy model is, high-quality data represent the holy grail of policy making. Particular attention thus needs to be given to collect, filter, curate and intelligently tap bottom-up data, available from multiple sources, i.e. through open data initiatives, social media and participatory sensing tools, or even destined for commercial purposes. As current policy making cases typically struggle to cope with too much or too little data of the appropriate level (i.e. in terms of dimensionality and time-variance), reliable data sources need to be foreseen from the very beginning and incorporated in policy models in a real-time manner to allow for pragmatically informed decisions.
Policy Recommendation 3. Tap the power of visualization and social networks to effectively communicate policy outcomes.
Policy models typically hinder such a high level of complexity that tends to discourage stakeholders from contributing or even trying to understand the policy issue at stake. In essence, visualization holds the promise of providing valuable insights to non-specialists and explaining the more complex principles that drive and influence policies, while social networks provide an unprecedented opportunity for spreading knowledge. By taking the best of breed out of both research streams, a case is by-design more tuned to solicit concrete inputs from its stakeholders.
Policy Recommendation 4. Invest on real-time simulation technologies.
In a rapidly moving world, the importance of real-time data and simulation for quick decisions gains more and more momentum. To this end, it is necessary for a case not only to gather real-time data, but to allow for the direct experimentation with the policy models to anticipate the outcomes of various policy alternatives. Only through advanced simulation capabilities, different models can be calibrated at a satisfactory degree and eventually converge to best policy options.
Policy Recommendation 5. Create intuitive, yet diverse interfaces depending on the profile of the stakeholders.
Policy models by their nature depict part of the reality as conceived by policy makers and interpreted by policy modellers. In order to bridge the gap of modeling literacy, though, all stakeholders irrespectively of their background need to understand the effect of their own actions on the models. Finding the balance between complexity which is required for the policy making purposes and simplicity to ensure high engagement is always a challenging task. To this direction, intuitive interfaces (which are also accessible from multiple devices and platforms) in order to engage a wide range of stakeholders (policy modellers, policy makers and citizens) seem a crucial success factor.
Policy Recommendation 6. Bring together multi-disciplinary expertise.
The need for multi-disciplinary approaches in policy making has been long debated during the last years. With policy challenges that are both global in nature and local in required action, it is more necessary that ever to bring in a wide range of expertise that will not only construct a solid and close to reality model, but also interpret the results correctly and catch the realm of citizens.
It needs to be noted that such expertise should emerge from researchers, practitioners, policy makers, NGOs and other stakeholders who are motivated to be heavily involved. Significant added value is attached to a case in Policy Making 2.0 by establishing a balance between research activities and real-life applications to constantly improve the actual impact of the ICT tools.
Policy Recommendation 7. Engage stakeholders from the very beginning.
In order to consider a case in Policy Making 2.0 as successful, a wide range of innumerable stakeholders needs to be involved at various engagement levels: from active, everyday participation to merely briefing. Opening up dialogue with all stakeholders is a time consuming task that should not be underestimated. To this end, an engagement strategy with targeted activities for each stakeholder group needs to be outlined and put into effect from the very beginning, although it might seem difficult when dealing with pure research concepts. Successful cases get known one way or another via word of mouth/ Web2.0 and satisfied users are the best ambassadors of a case.
Policy Recommendation 8. Incubate your case into the interested public organization.
Typically, research is conducted in more “sterilized” laboratory environments with little interaction with the end-users. In the case of Policy Making 2.0, research needs to go hand-in-hand with practice in order to allow for quick implementation of ideas in real-life settings. Along these lines, research teams should incubate in public organizations with a policy agenda in order to ensure smooth communication and seamless advancement of research through its direct application.
Such an approach will also help research teams to validate their assumptions based on real-life data while policy makers will be able to propose requirements, as captured during operation, that will help to further optimise the offered solutions. Public organisations should thus build specialised teams within their structure that will consist of both policy experts and researchers that have developed the offered solutions in order to exploit the full potential of the offered tools and to connect practice with research.
Policy Recommendation 9. Treat your case as a product/ service to ensure sustainability and further development.
Following the paradigm of enterprise software (i.e. ERP or CRM) and services, cases in Policy Making 2.0 should be viewed under a long-term perspective for their target audience and potential clients who are typically no others than policy makers. They should not represent an one-off effort that may become obsolete and deprecated, but rather represent the commitment of the corresponding public organization to keep the initiative live through periodic funding injections.
By treating a case as a service/product, the interest of the research and stakeholder community can be more effectively maintained, the underlying models can be further elaborated and optimised and the sustainability of the offered solution can be maintained in a more proper and effective manner. Of course, alternative sources of funding may be also discovered and utilised. At the bottom line, policy makers should realise that Policy Making 2.0 cases, in other ICT domain (such as Social Media), possess a ROI that cannot be measured and witnessed directly, however benefits do exist and they can only be sustained by the proper funding instruments.
Policy Recommendation 10. Think out-of-the box for the deployment of your case in other settings and contexts.
The team responsible for a case in Policy Making 2.0 should keep its horizons open and ensure its maximum outreach both within and beyond the organization for which it was originally developed. Interaction with stakeholders from different domains may pave new directions for the application of a case and cover diverse needs of policy makers that had not been originally foreseen. As such it is important to spread the knowledge and the overall experience of a case with as many stakeholders as possible in order to trigger their eagerness and explore new horizons that may lie ahead.
The recommendations that are presented above can be also classified:
- Based on the stakeholder groups they refer to, which are:
- Policy Makers
- Modellers
- Researchers
- Based on their scope regarding the overall case development that can be divided in the following steps/phases
- Business Model and Strategy definition of the case
- Implementation and Technology Aspects
- Engagement of Stakeholders
The following figure presents this classification.
It has been a quite “silent” time for this blog and the main reason behind this is that during this past year I was heavily involved in the design and development of some pretty cool projects (as part of larger projects, some of them co-funded by the EC) that will deliver Open Source code.
Sotiris Koussouris 