Evidence to Policy Blog
黑料社 from the Evidence to Policy blog
LaunchPad: Engaging the afterburners on meteoric rise into the heart of government decision making
Part I: From PhD to policy researcher in a week
It started with a brief interview towards the end of September. A week later I was part of a new Cabinet Office team working-up polices to create an 鈥渆conomy that works for everyone鈥. In the three months since, I鈥檝e worked with top officials, academics and charities to scope out policies on mental health, young people, women and work and problem debt. The switch in pace from PhD student to policy researcher could hardly have been more rapid, and it鈥檚 proved a great introduction to policy-making in the heart of government.
My three month placement has been with the Cabinet Office鈥檚 Launchpad team, a new unit created to accelerate innovation across Whitehall by helping civil servants collaborate more intensively with academics and other experts. In an unusual move, the team is sponsored by Research Councils UK and the universities of Southampton, Bath, Lancaster and Warwick.
One of the benefits Southampton gets for sponsoring the project is a series of Whitehall placements. I was the first person from any of the sponsoring organisations to take up one of these placements, so you might say I鈥檝e been testing the ground for others who鈥檒l follow in my footsteps.
I arrived with the usual set of prejudices about what working in government must be like: inefficient, hierarchical and bureaucratic, with barriers to innovation, creativity, and collaboration.
I鈥檓 sure there鈥檚 truth in some of that, but my time in the Cabinet Office has left me with the opposite impression. Our team has been working at a pace and doing everything it can to maximise openness, creativity and innovation. We鈥檝e engaged intensively with researchers from universities, think tanks and charities, pressing them to collaborate with us and feed us their insights and ideas. I鈥檝e participated in some fantastic meetings and workshops, hearing from Nobel Prize winning economists and speaking to business leaders, top professors, charity chief execs, Lords and Baronesses. I鈥檝e even been encouraged to follow my interests and work-up policy ideas myself, a task which is much harder than most people assume.
Part II: Three months into Launchpad 鈥 What has been achieved?
For the project of an 鈥渆conomy that works for everyone鈥 we scope out a detailed picture of the issues of disadvantaged people as for example financial exclusion, progression in work, child care or housing.
Based on this analysis, Launchpad is developing policies tackling specific issues in order to improve the situation of disadvantage people. The policies aim to involve corporates and social enterprises. Thereby, government acts as mediator between companies and public interests. The rationale behind this approach is that not all social responsibility lays in the hands of government. Companies are integral part of society and in order to create a successful economy, they need to act in a social way. The major challenge in this approach lays in balancing the variety of interests between government and companies in order to achieve an outcome that is beneficial for all sides.
Overall, it鈥檚 been a great experience and I鈥檓 really disappointed to be leaving just as the work I鈥檝e been doing is beginning to make an impact. It鈥檚 an amazing chance for researchers to understand more about how policy-making works and figure out how they can make their work more policy-relevant. If you get the chance to participate, I鈥檇 recommend that you do.
Marius Strittmatter
Marius is a second year PhD candidate at the 黑料社 working within the Economics department in the faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences. The working title of his thesis is 'Risk Aversion Measurement in Financial Markets '.