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	<title>Blog &#187; Better policy making</title>
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	<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog</link>
	<description>Institute for Government Blog</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 11 May 2012 13:23:41 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Doing GOD?: Gus O’Donnell and better policy making</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4438/doing-god-gus-o%e2%80%99donnell-and-better-policy-making/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4438/doing-god-gus-o%e2%80%99donnell-and-better-policy-making/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2012 13:07:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jill Rutter</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Policy-making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4438</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The ten policy making commandments: 1. Thou shalt be clear about the outcomes that you want to achieve Agreed. Policy fundamental number one is to be clear about your objectives. 2. Thou shalt evaluate policy as objectively as possible Agreed. Fundamental no. 7. Evaluation important – but still an area of weakness when Gus left. The Centre could and should have done more to make good independent evaluation standard. 3. Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour’s policies Agreed. But even the weak mechanisms put in place under the last government to enable more cross-cutting policy making (PSAs, the strategy unit) have been dismantled under the current government. 4. Thou shall not assume the government has to solve every problem Makes sense. But need to convince ministers (and the media). 5. Thou shalt not rush to legislate As above. Under Gus a variety of mechanisms were put in place to stop the rush to regulate – but were ineffective and ended up being gamed by the system. Legislation/ regulation remains the default mindset of both ministers and officials. 6. Honour the evidence and use it to make decisions Yes. Policy fundamental No.2 on evidence and 4 on thorough [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>What works in government – lessons from the other Washington</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4394/what-works-in-government-%e2%80%93-lessons-from-the-other-washington/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4394/what-works-in-government-%e2%80%93-lessons-from-the-other-washington/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:50:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jill Rutter</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4394</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As part of its investigation of a possible “What works in social policy” institute for the UK, the Cabinet Office invited Steve Aos, director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) to a roundtable at IFG last week. To many WSIPP is a blueprint for this type of body. It has been around for a relatively long time – set up in the 1980s – and with Steve as its first and so far only director. Where other US states have institutes based in the Governor’s office, WSIPP serves the strong Washington State legislature and is set up with cross-party governance to ensure impartiality and credibility. It’s budget is small &#8211; $1.5m which pays for 11 analysts. For the rest it brings in the people it needs to do the work commissioned by legislators. Steve described the WSIPP’s as an “investment advisor”, informing government about the best uses of its money in core areas such as education, child welfare and criminal justice. But like any investment adviser, it had to recognise that its advice might or might not be taken. A baseball batting average – where batting above 0.3 is good – was a reasonable hit rate. Steve [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Pensioners, pasties and philanthropists: how to avoid further budget fiascos</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4295/pensioners-pasties-and-philanthropists-how-to-avoid-further-budget-fiascos/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4295/pensioners-pasties-and-philanthropists-how-to-avoid-further-budget-fiascos/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:22:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jill Rutter</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4295</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When is avoidance not avoidance? When it’s propping up the Big Society – and a cornerstone of the culture secretary’s strategy to save the arts from the impact of the spending cuts. That is the problem confronting the chancellor and the prime minister as they contemplate the last week’s furore over the impact of capping tax relief for the rich.  What appeared to be a reasonable measure to make sure that the Lord Granthams paid tax at a rate somewhere approaching the rate of the Carsons has now turned into a row about the future of charities. Not surprisingly, when surveyed, they all claim they will be hit very badly (a question to which the answer is an almost inevitable yes). There is a reasonable in principle case to be made for saying that the personal philanthropic choices of individual rich people should not drive where we allocate “tax expenditures” (the other way of looking at tax reliefs). Better for them to pay proper amounts of tax and then let decisions on what charities the taxpayer wants to support be made by accountable politicians. But that is not the argument the chancellor made, and so far only the Guardian in [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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		<title>Health risks</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4255/health-risks/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4255/health-risks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:12:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jill Rutter</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4255</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most civil service risk registers are barely worth the name. When I was at Defra our risk registers made no mention of dangerous climate change, or new evidence suggesting all our environmental policies were unaffordable, or large scale flooding, or the animal health equivalent of the five plagues. Instead the usual risk register focused on minor internal inconveniences – with the classic mitigation of bringing in a consultant or a temp to cover a short term staffing problem. Since a good risk register had to have mitigations we only ever selected risks we had the power to mitigate. To be any use, a risk register needs to think the unthinkable. It needs to make sure that the department is ready to act if there is a breakdown of care in London or Newcastle; if GPs prove incapable of managing budgets or game the system to line their pockets. If it doesn’t have these sorts of risks in it, they are more, not less, likely to happen as no one will have put any effort into thinking about how to counter them. One reason many policies fail is that those taking them forward suffer from “optimism bias” – an assumption that [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<title>The strange death of Budget purdah</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4196/the-strange-death-of-budget-purdah/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4196/the-strange-death-of-budget-purdah/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:29:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jill Rutter</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4196</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mansion tax anyone? Tycoon tax? 50p rate maintained? An end to higher rate relief on pensions? Hiking tax thresholds – boon to the poor or regressive move? Or cutting corporation tax to 20 per cent? The Budget starter list (the usual starting point for the budget process listing all the options potentially on the table) normally carries a Treasury SECRET classification. This time, it is all over the press cuttings. And no one needs to be calling in the police for a leak enquiry. At this time of year, after months of silence, the norm is for the discreet trails to be laid of some of the key themes of the budget. A few second order announcements which will be crowded out on budget day are let loose in advance to make sure they get their day in the sun. This year is very different. Phase two of the Coalition, after the AV referendum, has seen a move to differentiate on the part of the Lib Dems. With no money to been spent, tax has become a key battleground. On budget day only one person can get the credit for the showstopper at the end – so the debate is [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Competitive policy making</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4161/competitive-policy-making/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4161/competitive-policy-making/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:47:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Simon Parker</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[A more effective Whitehall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4161</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Before I explain what some of those might be, let’s be clear on terms. I am not advocating the outsourcing of policy functions and I am not sure Jeremy Heywood was either when he suggested that the Civil Service should lose its policy making monopoly. ‘Outsourcing’ implies that we are going to give Deloitte or KPMG a massive contract to do climate policy for four years. We can all agree that this is probably a bad idea. Contestability of policy making is rather different – it’s the idea that a certain amount of the government’s policy spending might be up for grabs. This is hardly a new idea: consultancies already play a significant if sometimes controversial role in public policy formation. But that role is usually executed away from the public gaze. I think it should be out in the open and that work should go to a wide range of potential policy advisors. For me, contestability is about pluralism, not privatisation. So if what Jeremy Heywood meant is that we should make departments bid for some of their policy budget against social enterprises, consultancies, service providers in the public and voluntary sectors, or consortia comprising a number of these, [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<title>Wouldn’t it be NICE?</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4125/wouldn%e2%80%99t-it-be-nice/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4125/wouldn%e2%80%99t-it-be-nice/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:45:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jill Rutter</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4125</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[First, in a piece of uncharacteristic public kite-flying, new Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood said he was investigating the possibility of a ‘What Works’ institute for the UK to fill a gap. Giving a rare interview to the Guardian in January, he said: &#8220;The question mark is whether, just as NICE has been very effective in giving a view on drugs or pharmaceutical interventions worth supporting, there is a role for a similar sort of entity or entities in the social policy intervention sphere”. Meetings are now being held to discuss what shape that might take. Meanwhile outside government, NESTA and ESRC’s Alliance for Useful Evidence is making the case for better use of good evidence. The message seems to be getting through to opposition parties. Last week, Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg announced that a future Labour government would establish an ‘Office for Educational Improvement’ (OEI), drawing on an analogy with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), though actually NICE is a better analogy, and building on the Educational Endowment Fund already established by the Coalition. Mr Twigg set out the case for the OEI: “The Office would focus on four main areas: promoting high standards, spreading best practice, [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4125/wouldn%e2%80%99t-it-be-nice/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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		<title>Consultation on steroids &#8211; or genuine co-creation?</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4024/consultation-on-steroids-%e2%80%93-or-genuine-co-creation/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4024/consultation-on-steroids-%e2%80%93-or-genuine-co-creation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:42:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chris Yiu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=4024</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Asking the general public for their views isn&#8217;t normally top of the to-do list in Whitehall. Of course it does have to happen, and there is a time-honoured process: green papers, white papers, calls for evidence and 12-week windows to respond. Times are, however, changing. Back in 2006, the then Labour administration launched the first iteration of the government e-petitions portal. Since coming to power the coalition has gone a step further, inviting the public to participate first in Your Freedom, then the Spending Challenge, and now the Red Tape Challenge. People seem willing to have a go: each of these initiatives has generated tens of thousands of responses. So far, so good. A crowd is definitely involved. But are we really crowdsourcing? The classic applications of crowdsourcing are about pulling together distributed knowledge. Sometimes, taking the average of lots of people&#8217;s (unbiased) estimates is a good way to guess an unknown quantity. Other times, lots of people hold different pieces of a puzzle and, with the right collaboration tools, can assemble something wonderful – think Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap. Other times still, it&#8217;s worth giving lots of people the same problem to solve and seeing who does best. Foldit is [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/4024/consultation-on-steroids-%e2%80%93-or-genuine-co-creation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Bank outsourcing</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/3996/bank-outsourcing/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/3996/bank-outsourcing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:54:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sam Sims</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=3996</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In June 2010 the Chancellor set up the Banking Commission, with Sir John Vickers as Chair, to solve the &#8216;too big to fail/too big to save&#8217; conundrum while taking into account the need to maintain economic growth. They were given just over a year to prepare their report. The complex nature of banking regulation and the difficult issue of how to manage future risk, without crippling the banking sector and thus the economy, meant that neither the Liberal Democrat nor the Conservative ministers believed they had a complete answer. Both were genuinely looking to the commission to clarify the issues and provide options for reform. This echoes the experience with the Pensions Commission. Tony Blair really was looking to the commission for answers to some complicated questions, as well as to help navigate around Treasury roadblocks. The second consequence was that it made it impossible for the five commissioners to believe that they had the answer to the question before the process began, despite the commissioners being extremely well informed and having strong opinions. They needed to engage in a genuine common learning process. This allowed the commission to come to a unified view on the way forward. This also [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/3996/bank-outsourcing/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>New Year&#8217;s resolution: Make policy better</title>
		<link>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/3949/new-years-resolution-make-policy-better/?source=rss</link>
		<comments>http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/3949/new-years-resolution-make-policy-better/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:32:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jill Rutter</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Better policy making]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/?p=3949</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An optimistic start for the New Year – policies can work and governments can make a difference. Not a headline you would expect to see – but the subject of our new report. Success means that policies survive changes of government, become part of the status quo and the starting point for new policy. Over the past fifty years, government policy has helped reshape attitudes to smoking – such that in 2007 a ban on smoking in public places could be imposed with widespread popular support. We have seen a decisive shift in the way Scotland and Wales are governed through successful devolution – so successful in fact that the impetus is now for more devolution rather than less. The redrawing of the boundaries of the state under Mrs Thatcher made privatisation into a word and a successful UK export: now the idea that the telephone system would be run by the state and you would have to be on a waiting list for a phone – as opposed to a queue in a mobile phone shop – is unthinkable. There is now broad acceptance from both “sides” of industry that a minimum wage not only protects workers but also [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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