One of the more welcome announcements to come out of the UK government recently was the creation of a new “school of government” to enhance the training and skills of senior civil servants.
Long intimated, it now looks set to become a reality, enhancing governance skills in leadership and management; AI, data and digital; project and wider delivery; and in economics, finance and policy. In a government with a primary focus on STEM, it’s heartening to see this programme recognising the importance of social science skills and insights.
The announcement aligns with one of the recommendations in the Academy of Social Sciences’ latest report on enhancing the evidence ecosystem. The desk-based and qualitative research behind the report identified the need, among others, for policy professionals in Whitehall to be more fully equipped with the skills to commission and evaluate relevant evidence from across the social sciences. That is, including but beyond well-established foci of economics and cost-benefit analyses.
How policy lands on the ground
While tech and innovation driven economic growth take the limelight in the current UK government’s policy agenda and are well represented in UKRI’s new research funding framework, there remain substantial societal, education, and place-based issues and inequalities to be addressed. Only by addressing those issues, and adequately funding research to aid that endeavour, will the full and sustained benefits of innovation and science-driven economic growth be realised.
Innovation itself does not thrive in a vacuum; the people, place and environment dimensions are a fourth pillar that sit alongside infrastructure, technology and capital. I await with interest the level of research funding allocation for “people and societal elements” across the UKRI portfolio as the funding details clarify.
It is this issue that sits fundamentally at the heart of the academy’s recent report and its 12 recommendations. Our key finding was that social science evidence, often referred to as “societal evidence” and the “people dimension” in Whitehall, falls between the cracks of the current evidence infrastructure and outside some of the current processes. Or, to put it more positively, there is so much more that could be gained by greater embedding of the breadth of robust social science evidence and methodologies in the existing Whitehall evidence infrastructure and processes ‒ and by clearer leadership of it at senior levels in government.
The equivalent evidence and advice leadership enjoyed by STEM and the medical sciences, including the UK government Office for Life Sciences, are fundamentally needed and simply missing for the social science dimension. Instead of the small unit of social scientists established during the Covid pandemic within the UK Government Office for Science (GO-Science), imagine how much more could be gained from a – decently funded and separately established – Government Office for Social and Behavioural Science that would champion research, innovation and the use of technology to address societal issues and inequalities? Or a clearly identified leadership of social science evidence – Chief Evidence Advisor maybe – within the Government Office for Science (which remains very heavily orientated towards science and technology)?
These suggestions matter not as an end in themselves but in fundamentally integrating people and societal matters firmly at the heart of the UK government’s evidence and advice infrastructure. As we point out in the report, this will enable better use of social science evidence, better policy formulation, and a better understanding of how policy will land with people on the ground.
Beyond pockets
The demand for that evidence is clearly shown in the most recently published ARI Database of self-identified departmental areas of research interest, which details the main research questions facing the UK Government. Around 80 per cent of the over 3,000 topic areas on which information, evidence and advice is being sought relate either wholly or largely to social science.
Make no mistake, there are some excellent pockets of social science expertise both within Whitehall and in use of experts beyond, and some great initiatives in the new fellowship schemes that pair academics with departments. DEFRA, for example, is one of a very few departments that has a specialist social science advisory group alongside a science advisory group. In addition, the analyst community within government also brings analytical competencies in statistics, geography and GIS, economics, social research, and operation research to bear across most departments, overseen by chief analysts who largely comprise economists.
There is currently a small subset (three out of 24) of the departmental Chief Scientific Advisors (CSAs) who bring academic expertise in social science research and evidence into GO-Science, the heart of the UK government’s science (including social science) evidence and advice system. Given the scale, diversity and complexity of expert advice needed, our report recommends increasing the capacity of social and behavioural expertise in GO-Science, in both the CSAs and the secretariat, and in relevant departments.
But these remain parts, without a cohesive function, strategy, identity and sense of purpose in fulfilling and championing the people and society dimension. And, most importantly, without clear leadership. We are not suggesting it is easy to achieve change in a large, historic, highly complex and, as reported to us, “often siloed” system – but openness to considering it would be a very good start. That is why it was so heartening to see the announcement about the school of government. Equally as heartening, albeit on a smaller scale and in a closer-knit community, is the impact that the Chief Policy Advisor and the Chief Social Researcher have achieved within the Scottish government in bringing social and behavioural dimensions to bear on policy formulation.
The value of evidence
All the above concerns evidence supply and its infrastructure and processes across Whitehall, but it is just one side of the equation. There are many that would argue that the evidence demand side from decision makers is equally as important.
In our research we often heard the refrain that decision makers know they need to have expert science evidence as they do not understand science. Yet, as social science often concerns “everyday life”, decision makers feel more comfortable and less in need of expert evidence. Nothing could be further from the truth!
I hope that one day we will see not only a more rigorous training programme for senior civil servants, as is now in the pipeline, but also training for newly elected MPs to enhance the demand side of the evidence equation. Meanwhile the Academy of Social Sciences will continue to advocate the need for a structural shift in the way people, societal and social science evidence is valued, led, championed and embedded across Whitehall, for the benefit of government and, above all, for the people of the UK.
