Ten Videos on Evidence and Policy

Off

Here are a few of our favourite videos featuring researchers, policymakers and practitioners all over the world discussing key issues in evidence-informed policy: what it is, what the challenges are, and how to address them.

Got more to share? Please tell us in the comments!

1 What is EIPM?

Here Louise Shaxson of the Overseas Development Institute’s Research and Policy in Development programme draws on her experience with the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to explain the concept of evidence-informed policy making, highlighting the role of processes within public institutions: “you can have the best evidence in the world but if you put it through poor processes you won’t get good evidence informed policy making”. At INASP we see these processes as a complex set of structures, relationships and behaviours within public institutions that shape how evidence is gathered, synthesised, appraised and communicated to inform policy.

2) Getting research into policy in Nigeria

This short interview with a staff member from the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor in Nigeria gives a concise overview of some of the most common challenges we hear about working in evidence-informed policy making in developing countries. Gaps in data, lack of access to expensive international journals, and lack of engagement between researchers and policymakers are all mentioned.

3) Research Week at Parliament of Uganda

This video shows one of the most successful approaches we’ve seen to stimulating demand for evidence from policymakers. Hosted by Parliament of Uganda’s Department of Research Services in collaboration with the Uganda National Academy of Sciences, Research Week consisted of a multi-day exhibition bringing Uganda’s leading research institutions to Parliament to showcase their work, a series of expert briefings on key issues of policy relevance, and a symposium on the role of evidence in parliament. Impact so far has included a sharp and sustained increase in demand for research from MPs as well as new partnerships and relationships between Parliament and research institutions. The approach has also since been adapted and replicated at Parliament of Ghana.

4) Evidence and Policy Making in Zimbabwe

This short documentary produced by our partners at ZeipNET explores the use of evidence in policy making in Zimbabwe. Weaving together insights from leading researchers, policymakers and civil society practitioners in a wide range of sectors, the video paints a frank picture of some of the challenges as well as opportunities of using evidence in the Zimbabwean context, tackling difficult questions from the inclusivity of Zimbabwean policy making to the gaps between policy making and implementation and the challenges of resource allocation.

5) Research and Policy in Indonesia

This video looks at some of the key themes of evidence and policy in the Indonesian context, considering how to strengthen relationships across the national research to policy system to ensure that more of the research being conducted in Indonesia’s thriving research sector is used in national policy making. As in other contexts, strong and strategic communications approaches are needed from the research sector to support fruitful relationships with policy makers and support research use.

6) Evidence Informed Policy Making in Ghana—Interview with Mina Okuru, Communications Coordinator, Centre for Democratic Development -Ghana

Communications is a fundamental part of strengthening the use of evidence in policy making. Researchers need to be able to communicate their work strategically, and policymakers need to be able to communicate their evidence needs as well. But researchers and policymakers work in very different ways, and fostering meaningful engagement is a huge challenge. Here Mina Okuru, of leading think tank the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development, talks through some of the key issues in communicating research to policymakers, from building relationships to strategically targeting your audience to build demand for research.

7) What drives use of evidence in a government department?

This panel discussion was recently held at the Overseas Development Institute, drawing on experience from the Research and Policy in Development team’s work under the VakaYiko programme with the Department for Environmental Affairs in South Africa. Featuring perspectives from the UK, South Africa and Indonesia, the panel begins by focusing on evaluations, moving on to consider how to ‘institutionalise’ an approach to evidence with a public institution. Key themes include the values and aspects of organisational culture that shape evidence use as well as the politics both of evidence itself and of the policymaking process.

8) How does context affect evidence use? Politics & Ideas explain

This is a series of webinars, not one video, but we’re sneaking it in here nonetheless as the new framework from Latin American ‘think net’ Politics and Ideas has been so influential to our work. Covering a wide range of interrelated internal and external factors, from the national media landscape to internal organisational culture, the framework and accompanying practical paper aim to assist in detecting and understanding critical entry points to support the use of knowledge in public institutions. The webinar series explores each of these factors in discussion with policymakers from a wide range of countries including Uruguay, Peru, South Africa and Ghana.

9) Introducing the Evidence Informed Policy Making Toolkit

Interested in the VakaYiko Evidence Informed Policy Making Toolkit? This video introduces the Toolkit, explaining each of the resources and how they can support civil servants and parliamentary staff to access, appraise and communicate evidence more effectively. Our partners Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS) in Ghana explain how they used the Toolkit in partnership with Ghana’s Civil Service Training Centre to train researchers, policy analysts and other staff from across a wide cross-section of Ghana’s Civil Service.

10) Interview with Ed Barney

The UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) interest in evidence informed policy making has enabled INASP, its partners and other sister consortia in the BCURE programme to test approaches to building capacity for evidence use in policy contexts all over the world. This frank interview with Ed Barney of DFID’s Evidence Into Action team explains DFID’s internal approach to evidence, including some of the challenges experienced around attitudinal change and organisational culture.

Want more?

Our Evidence Informed Policy Making Toolkit contains lots of examples of videos we’ve used to explain key concepts around evidence and policy, and you can sign up to our newsletter to get the latest videos as they come out. Watch out for our upcoming series on strengthening evidence in Parliaments!

Emily Hayter
Emily Hayter is Senior Programme Specialist, Evidence for Policy at INASP.

Comments are closed.