“There’s a frustrating gap there so policy makers need skills to enable them to listen to the science and probe it for reliability.\” Here an interesting article published some time ago in The Guardian but still very relevant: Top 20 things politicians need to know about science
The illusion of controlling the future has always been with us designing and implementing development projects and programmes. Tool after tool we have had an uncomfortable relationship with the idea that development is very messy, risky, prone to failure as well as success. Forecast and planning are key activities in our work: theories of change, logframes, the old zopp, outputs, outcomes, goal. All this to maintain some control
Superforecasters exist: they are people who are ready to challenge their own ideas Read More »
Here is the 10 minutes video that summarizes the key points of the Data Innovation for Policy Making conference held in Bali in November 2014. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6r811R_JlE&w=560&h=315]
Video of the Data Innovation for Policy Making Conference (Nov 2014) Read More »
Lately I have been thinking that when one works, like I do, in the area of policy processes and how they can be better informed by knowledge and research evidence it is easy to think that the demand for evidence comes mainly (or only) from one side: government institutions. Government institutions at national and
Media and politics: what is the space for research evidence? Read More »
In 2004 the Overseas Development Institute organized a seminar in London to discuss the following question: Does Evidence Matter? One of the speakers was Vince Cable, at that time the shadow minister for trade and industry with the Lib Dem party. Cable spoke at that workshop about some of the gaps that separate the political and
I published this blog post on ODI\’s website: The writer Elizabeth Pisani recently told an anecdote about asking 50 random people in Covent Garden, London, to point to Indonesia on a small plastic globe. Only a few pointed to the right spot. This confirmed, she said, that a country as vast, populated and diverse as
Big data, big decisions: the Indonesian way Read More »
Can a politicians resign from public office because of insufficient use of evidence in policy making? Apparently yes. This is what Norman Baker has done by leaving his Home Office minister post in early November: Norman Baker resigns as Home Office minister with parting shot at May. Norman Baker is a Liberal Democrat. His party
The unbearable lightness of research evidence Read More »
Indonesia\’s 7th President, Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, was inaugurated just two weeks ago. Last weekend he presented his new cabinet, which includes eight women in the post—the highest representation of women in the cabinet so far in Indonesia’s history. This is a time of fast change. There is a positive mood and many expectations. I watched some of the the images broadcasted