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Guest blog: The What Works Network - a Lunar Society for the 21st century

How to bring together 21st century experts.

Jonathan Shepherd

Two and a half centuries ago, the Lunar Society – it met during the full moon when Birmingham streets were safer – was at its most imaginative and experimental. Among its prominent members Matthew Boulton was revolutionising manufacturing, Erasmus Darwin was transforming education, Josiah Wedgewood was innovating in pottery and James Watt was exploiting steam power.

The excitement of discovery, sharing know-how across disparate disciplines and international co-operation – witness the visit of Benjamin Franklin in 1760 – exemplifies the enlightenment spirit. We are all the beneficiaries. On 25th November 2014, at the Institute for Government, the What Works Network held its first event and launched a report to showcase the findings of its equally disparate members. It attracted a full house. Never before, perhaps, have crime prevention experts, educationalists, authorities on local growth, medics, children’s services professionals and experts on better aging shared a platform. Comparisons have their limits of course. The Lunar Society was an informal association of inventor-scientists, to the extent that its membership is still argued over. In contrast, the Network and its constituent Centres have been designed by government to improve public services through use of the best evidence for "what works". The network has its origins in the realisation that public services have much to learn from each other about evidence – including how to fund its production and how best to get things that work adopted promptly. Jon Baron, the president of the US Coalition for Evidence Based Policy emphasised at the What Works event that randomised trials of policies and practice interventions have become a gold standard in the global evidence movement. The new Centres have most in common with Matthew Boulton’s world leading Birmingham manufactory. They make and market new guidelines and better policies for end users. Some, like the Education Endowment Foundation, which has funded 88 randomised trials involving 600,000 children in 4,500 schools, also scale up evidence production. Evidence producers – innovators and trialists in service settings – have most in common with James Watt, Boulton’s source of revolutionary new products. The evidence movement has much to learn from the combination of skills represented by this historic partnership. To gain traction in their sectors, the Centres must engage both with the business of evidence production and with service commissioners and practitioners. This was the subject of my report to the Cabinet Office, How to achieve more effective services: the evidence ecosystem (PDF). Based on my research, it identifies and links the elements of the “what works” supply chain and provides practical recommendations on the basis of which the system can be improved. Not only must each stage of the process be operational but stages must also be connected. No amount of evidence synthesis will achieve anything if the relevant evidence has not been generated. Neither will the best evidence informed guidance achieve its purpose, if the means to promote and adopt it are missing. Independent, standard setting institutions at the centre of the professions, like the medical Royal Colleges in healthcare, make important contributions to evidence adoption. They incorporate the evidence which has been generated in the schools, hospitals, police forces and communities in which their members work. This professional ownership makes it much more likely that evidence will be acted on. These institutions motivate practitioners to act on evidence, facilitate group learning, and raise practitioner status through their knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Like the Lunar Society, the What Works Network will be sustained not only through the service improvements it inspires but also through its culture of discovery and shared methods. A large dose of informality also seems to be an essential ingredient.
Publisher
Institute for Government

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