PPIW - 2016 English with Hyperlinks

Emerging themes
Although our work has covered a diverse range of topics, there have
been a number of recurrent themes:
The quality of the evidence base
Evidence about the effectiveness (and particularly the
cost-effectiveness) of government interventions is
underdeveloped. This is true internationally, not just in
Wales, and the development of the What Works Network
and other similar initiatives is a response to this. The scope
for large-scale, costly, independent evaluations is limited in a
time of constrained budgets, but there is a real need to ensure
that data and evidence are generated and used to inform
policy and practice. New forms of data, and new approaches
to developing and implementing policy offer potential, partial
‘solutions’ to this; but governments need to carefully consider
how to deploy limited research and evaluation budgets.
Vertical and horizontal coordination
The question we are asked most often is ‘what works?’
In some instances there is sufficient evidence to suggest
which programmes or interventions are more or less
effective. But it is striking that in almost all cases, the answer
lies in acting simultaneously and in a coordinated manor
across all relevant domains and using all available levers.
This is especially true where a government is seeking to
effect change across a wide range of organisations or seeking
to tackle something complex, such as trying to change
individuals’ behaviour. In such cases, a government needs to
ensure that it is coordinating internally (across departments
and across the levers available to it), but then also seeks
to steer other actors in such a way as to ensure that the
system is coordinated in its efforts. This might also mean, for
example, devolving responsibility for choosing programmes or
interventions to local actors, but thinking carefully about its role
in, for example, developing networks, ensuring consistency in
data gathering, and fostering peer-to-peer learning.
Improving practice
Although our work is directed at the policy development
process, it frequently highlights the importance of ‘practice’.
Successful policy often depends upon successful practice.
Practitioners – teachers, doctors, social workers – need to be
intelligent users of evidence, learning from each other and
from developments elsewhere. More than this, they need to be
engaging in a process of continuous learning; reflecting and
learning from their own practice. This is already happening in
some cases, but not in a consistent way. More focus is needed
on how to foster this.
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