Policy Lab is bringing new policy techniques to the departments across the civil service, helping design services around people’s experience, using data analytics and new digital tools.
Last year the Geospatial Commission launched a Call for Evidence to inform the development of the National Geospatial Strategy. Policy Lab worked with the Commission to support an open discussion of the evidence with the policy team and their Partner Bodies.
This year Policy Lab has been working on a project with the United Nations (UN) to bring the voices of people in a geographically distributed organisation into early stage policy design and development. We wanted to share some of what …
This blog is available on the What Works and Policy Lab platforms. It is by Edward Orlik of the What Works team.
As a child, my mum used to tell me that I always learnt the ‘hard way’. By that she meant I learnt by doing - sometimes in spite of what I might have been told. It follows that I ended up studying 3D design, using tangible objects and experiences to develop and communicate ideas. But back then I don’t think I ever imagined this could be relevant to government.
In my view one of the most exciting things about Policy Lab has been its ability to work both in and outside the Whitehall system at the same time. When people asked me about the reasons for its success, I’d …
The Policy Lab was created to bring experimental thinking into the UK Government. This has included using design techniques to think about the future, such as in our recent project with the Department for Transport on maritime autonomy. We have …
This is the last in a series of three blogs looking at how Policy Lab methods can help address some of the common biases of policy-makers. It is based on the Behavioural Insight Team’s (BIT) latest report, Behavioural Government, which …
Policy makers are as subject to behavioural biases as everyone else according to the Behavioural Insight Team’s (BIT) latest report, Behavioural Government (P7). In fact, when making decisions we may be more biased given that the subject of our work …
The Behavioural Insight Team’s latest report, Behavioural Government, argues that decisions of policy-makers are affected by cognitive bias (p.7). BIT identify eight of the most common cognitive biases in government which they categorise into three areas: noticing, deliberating, and executing. …
By Harsha Parmar, Disability Employment and Support Strategy, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
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