From insight network to open policy practice: practical experiences release_njk7tjdta5bwzpytpiqkthgd7q

by Jouni T. Tuomisto, Mikko V. Pohjola, Teemu J. Rintala

Published in Health Research Policy and Systems by Springer Science and Business Media LLC.

2020   Volume 18, Issue 1, p36

Abstract

Evidence-informed decision-making and better use of scientific information in societal decisions has been an area of development for decades but is still topical. Decision support work can be viewed from the perspective of information collection, synthesis and flow between decision-makers, experts and stakeholders. Open policy practice is a coherent set of methods for such work. It has been developed and utilised mostly in Finnish and European contexts. An overview of open policy practice is given, and theoretical and practical properties are evaluated based on properties of good policy support. The evaluation is based on information from several assessments and research projects developing and applying open policy practice and the authors' practical experiences. The methods are evaluated against their capability of producing quality of content, applicability and efficiency in policy support as well as how well they support close interaction among participants and understanding of each other's views. The evaluation revealed that methods and online tools work as expected, as demonstrated by the assessments and policy support processes conducted. The approach improves the availability of information and especially of relevant details. Experts are ambivalent about the acceptability of openness - it is an important scientific principle, but it goes against many current research and decision-making practices. However, co-creation and openness are megatrends that are changing science, decision-making and the society at large. Against many experts' fears, open participation has not caused problems in performing high-quality assessments. On the contrary, a key challenge is to motivate and help more experts, decision-makers and citizens to participate and share their views. Many methods within open policy practice have also been widely used in other contexts. Open policy practice proved to be a useful and coherent set of methods. It guided policy processes toward a more collaborative approach, whose purpose was wider understanding rather than winning a debate. There is potential for merging open policy practice with other open science and open decision process tools. Active facilitation, community building and improving the user-friendliness of the tools were identified as key solutions for improving the usability of the method in the future.
In text/plain format

Archived Files and Locations

application/pdf  1.5 MB
file_6uq5s3ladrb6bgjdy7si7i3ysi
health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com (publisher)
web.archive.org (webarchive)
Read Archived PDF
Preserved and Accessible
Type  article-journal
Stage   published
Date   2020-04-03
Language   en ?
Container Metadata
Open Access Publication
In DOAJ
In ISSN ROAD
In Keepers Registry
ISSN-L:  1478-4505
Work Entity
access all versions, variants, and formats of this works (eg, pre-prints)
Catalog Record
Revision: 9cba2f10-a91f-4f7b-a1bd-f64b7146c99a
API URL: JSON