www.youngfoundation.org

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Shaping and measuring progress new directions in
using knowledge to achieve social goals Geoff
Mulgan
OECD, Istanbul June 2007
www.youngfoundation.org
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• Mobilising collective intelligence
• Evidence what do we know?
• New approaches to gathering the right facts
• New approaches to policy and fast learning
• New approaches to policy discovery

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What weve learned about evidence?

• Growing experience of how to use
• Systematic processes to scan evidence, literature
  reviews
• Global benchmarking and learning
• Open methods of discovery and analysis
• Pilots, pathfinders, experiments
• Strategy teams able to use full range of
  disciplines and methods
• Systems models to clarify causation, knowledge
  levels and use all relevant disciplines

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• But
• Still relatively few fields where policy can be
  literally evidence based
• Many fields where key facts are missing (from
  measurement of innovation in services to people
  flows to social capital)

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Key caveats

• Most policy evidence is uneven, ambiguous
• RCTs as gold standard but example of GAIN and
  welfare to work showed 9 years later opposite
  results
• Non-experimental survey data invaluable but
  need awareness of bias, confounding etc and
  premium on multiple exercises pointing in similar
  direction
• Formal evaluations sometimes problematic early
  years investments poor results for first decade
  in US, possibly UK
• Need for sophisticated judgement not mechanistic,
  and smart customers in governments

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Three examples of innovation in fostering and
measuring progress
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Michael Young Thinker and writer (the Rise of
the Meritocracy, Family and Kinship in East
London, Life after Work) Creator of over 60
organisations Open University, Which,
International Alert, UK Economic and Social
Research Council Seen by many as the worlds
most successful social entrepreneur
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Studio schools Asylum Justice Leaders Maslaha
Neighbourhood Fixit Resilience programme c
Publishing Events SIX
Accelerators Health Learning Launchpad Offenders C
arbon reduction
Collaboratives Neighbourhoods Well-being
Local projects Demonstrations
Launchpad New enterprises
Research Ideas/strategies Networks Daily life
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1. Mapping Needs getting the right facts

• Response to inequality, failure to reach most
  excluded
• Revisiting great 19th and 20th century traditions
  of measurement and mapping and drawing on many
  methods used globally
• Responding to distortions in current mainstream
  definitions/metrics bias in favour of material
  over psychological weaknesses at capturing
  mobile, off-register, very excluded
• Combining statistics, qualitative, ethnographic,
  voices of the poor, analysing gaps and
  intensifying needs
• Consortium of leading foundations, chief adviser
  is former head statistician (Lord Claus Moser)
• Developing new transferable methodologies

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Identifying the gaps
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Investigating reality of support informal as
well as formal

• If the following situations arose, which of the
  people and types of help on this list would you
  turn to?

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2. Local well-being programme collaborative
policy learning

• Initiative with 4 government departments, 3 local
  authorities, LSE (Richard Layard) and others
• Prompted by widespread perception of need for
  policy action on well-being, considerable
  evidence on patterns national, age, class,
  gender, but weak evidence base on efficacy of
  policies

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• Focused on three areas (Tyneside in north-east,
  Manchester, and Hertfordshire in south-east) as
  laboratories of change
• Testing a series of interventions focused on
  11-13 year olds, transitions to adulthood,
  elderly isolation, neighbourhood effects, and
  links between sustainability and well-being
• Developing new metrics synthetic, domain-based,
  developmental to measure impact working with
  Audit Commission, and advising on options for
  mandated local indicators

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3. Social innovation as discovery process

• Traditional policy model analytic, abstract,
  linear, formal testing (not good at creativity)
• Alternative model discovery, entrepreneurial,
  experimental, learning by doing, traditions of
  social enterprise and social innovation (not good
  at measurement and learning)

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• building on past traditions of research-based
  social entrepreneurship
• funds and teams focused on practical social
  innovation, creating new organisations and
  programmes, quick implementation and learning
• focused on areas of rising importance, uncertain
  data long-term conditions/ageing (Health
  Innovation Accelerator), non-cognitive skills
  (Studio Schools)
• using social science, policy research, work in
  partnership with public agencies, business, NGOs
• three evaluation tools investment model, peer
  learning, health outcomes

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• Aim of speeding up adaptation to major
  challenges and faster scaling of successful
  models mobilising collective intelligence
  more effectively

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Evidence and knowledge as constant discovery
process

• Discovery of new facts interrogating limits of
  existing definitions
• Discovery of new policy knowledge through
  collaboratives linking tiers of government,
  universities, NGOs, global networks
• Discovering new models through systematic
  experimental social innovation

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• Countries most engaged in social innovation
  networks also most effective governments and
  happiest

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Government Effectiveness
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www.youngfoundation.org
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The Young Foundation18 Victoria Park
SquareBethnal GreenLondon E2 9PFUnited Kingdom