Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. The implementation of public policy is known as public administration. Public policy can be considered to be the sum of a government's direct and indirect activities and has been conceptualized in a variety of ways.
A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to other known alternatives because it often produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things, e.g., a standard way of complying with legal or ethical requirements.
Mental accounting is a model of consumer behaviour developed by Richard Thaler that attempts to describe the process whereby people code, categorize and evaluate economic outcomes. Mental accounting incorporates the economic concepts of prospect theory and transactional utility theory to evaluate how people create distinctions between their financial resources in the form of mental accounts, which in turn impacts the buyer decision process and reaction to economic outcomes. People are presumed to make mental accounts as a self control strategy to manage and keep track of their spending and resources. People budget money into mental accounts for savings or expense categories. People also are assumed to make mental accounts to facilitate savings for larger purposes. Mental accounting can result in people demonstrating greater loss aversion for certain mental accounts, resulting in cognitive bias that incentivizes systematic departures from consumer rationality. Through increased understanding of mental accounting differences in decision making based on different resources, and different reactions based on similar outcomes can be greater understood.
Service design is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between the service provider and its users. Service design may function as a way to inform changes to an existing service or create a new service entirely.
Evidence-based policy is a concept in public policy that advocates for policy decisions to be grounded on, or influenced by, rigorously established objective evidence. This concept presents a stark contrast to policymaking predicated on ideology, 'common sense,' anecdotes, or personal intuitions. The approach mirrors the effective altruism movement's philosophy within governmental circles. The methodology employed in evidence-based policy often includes comprehensive research methods such as randomized controlled trials (RCT). Good data, analytical skills, and political support to the use of scientific information are typically seen as the crucial elements of an evidence-based approach.
Mathematica Inc., formerly Mathematica Policy Research, is an American research organization and consulting company headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. The company provides data science, social science, and technological services for social policy initiatives. Mathematica employs approximately 1,600 researchers, analysts, technologists, and practitioners in nine offices across the United States: Princeton, New Jersey; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Washington, DC; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Seattle, Washington; Woodlawn, Maryland; Tucson, Arizona and Oakland, California. In 2018, the company acquired EDI Global, a data research company based in the United Kingdom and Africa. Mathematica's clients include federal agencies, state and local governments, foundations, universities, private-sector companies, and international organizations.
The Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy is the public policy school of the University of Virginia.
Beth Simone Noveck is New Jersey's first chief innovation officer, at Northeastern University where she directs the Burnes Center for Social Change, the Governance Lab and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. She is also affiliated faculty with the Institute for Experiential AI. She is the author of Solving Public Problems: How to Fix our Government and Change Our World, Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Government, Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful, and co-editor of the State of Play: Law and Virtual Worlds.
Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, MSW, MA, is the Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis where she is also serves as the Associate Dean for Policy Initiatives, the director of the university-wide Social Policy Institute, and the founding director of the Centene Center for Health Transformation. She serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She previously held positions as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she established the Asset-Building Research Group.
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), also known unofficially as the "Nudge Unit", is a UK-based global social purpose organisation that generates and applies behavioural insights to inform policy and improve public services, following nudge theory. Using social engineering, as well as techniques in psychology, behavioral economics, and marketing, the purpose of the organisation is to influence public thinking and decision making in order to improve compliance with government policy and thereby decrease social and government costs related to inaction and poor compliance with policy and regulation. The Behavioural Insights Team has been headed by British psychologist David Halpern since its formation.
Nick Sinai is a venture capitalist, adjunct faculty at Harvard Kennedy School, author, and a former senior official in the Obama Administration.
Civic technology, or civic tech, enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process. It includes information and communications technology supporting government with software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits, consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working within government.
A conscious city is a large built environment that is aware of the needs and activities of its inhabitants and responds to them. Research in conscious cities explores how architecture and urban design can better consider and respond to human needs through data analysis, artificial intelligence, and the application of cognitive sciences in design.
Justine Hastings is an American economist, academic, and policy advisor. She is currently a vice president and chief of people-centered science at Amazon and an affiliate professor of economics at the University of Washington. Previously, she served as professor of economics and international and public affairs at Brown University, and as an associate professor of economics at Yale University. Her research focuses on combining economics and big data to solve social problems, spanning topics across education policy, retirement policy, household finance, marketing, competition, antitrust, and environmental regulation.
A learning agenda is a set of questions, assembled by an organization or team, that identifies what needs to be learned before a project can be planned and implemented.
The U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking was a 15-member agency in the federal government charged by the US Congress and the President with examining how government could better use its existing data to provide evidence for future government decisions.
Leah R. Gerber is a conservation biologist and environmental scientist most known for her contributions to the field of biodiversity conservation. She has conducted research on population ecology, conservation decision-making, and the application of innovative quantitative methods in conservation biology.
Quincy K. Brown is an American computer scientist and former Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is a published academic and co-founder of blackcomputeHER.org, NationOfMakers.org and Black In Computing.
Andrea Siodmok is a British industrial designer and social innovator. She is a Professor and Dean of the School of Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She is currently also visiting Professor for impact at Northumbria University. Andrea received an OBE for public service in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Public policy research is a multidisciplinary field that delves into the systematic examination and comprehensive analysis of policy matters and their far-reaching implications on society as a whole. The subject matter pertains to the exploration of diverse facets of public policy, encompassing its conception, execution, and assessment. This dynamic subject matter encompasses a wide range of dimensions, spanning from the inception and conceptualization of policies to their actual implementation and subsequent evaluation. The study of public policy involves a nuanced exploration of the intricate interplay between various stakeholders, including policymakers, interest groups, and the general public, as well as an examination of the societal, economic, and political factors that shape policy decision-making processes. By employing a rigorous and evidence-based approach, researchers in this field aim to shed light on the complexities of policy formulation, identify potential challenges and opportunities, and contribute to the enhancement of public policy effectiveness and societal well-being. Through their scholarly endeavors, public policy researchers play a vital role in informing decision-makers, advocating for evidence-informed policy approaches, and fostering more informed and participatory democratic governance.
