Pre-conference A or Post-Conference B
Tuesday 27th October 2009
2:00 – 5:00
Pre-conference Workshop A
How to improve the interface between research and policy design
It is often said there is a large divide between the world of policy-makers and the world of researchers. This workshop will allow participants to explore options for building better bridges between these sectors. The workshop will analyse:
• The importance of improving mutual understanding between policy-makers and researchers in regards to their respective needs, skills and required outcomes
• How partnerships and informal relationships are developed within large public sector agencies between the policy and research functional units
• How agencies commission policy-relevant research, including program reviews, on specific topics from external or independent researchers
• How broader partnerships and forums can be established to share ideas, insights and approaches to important policy topics
Brian Head is Professor of Policy Analysis and Evaluation, Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland.
Brian has had a dual career as a policy academic and as a senior public servant in Queensland. He was also the inaugural CEO of the Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth in Canberra. He has published widely on policy development, evidence-based policy, and governance issues. He is an advocate of closer links between the governmental, NGO and research sectors. For more information on Brian visit www.issr.uq.edu.au/ professor-brian-head
Friday 30th October 2009
9.00 – 4.00
Post-Conference Workshop B
How to reconcile conflicting evidence
The notion that policy should be ‘evidence based’ has
become widely accepted in recent years, with the Prime
Minister making clear, early in his term, that he intended to
rely heavily on such an approach. While there is little debate
that the pursuit of evidence based policy is a desirable goal,
there is little evidence to support the claim that all policy is
now evidence based.
The purpose of this workshop is to consider why it is that
evidence is sometimes so central to the policy process while
in other instances there appears to be little effort to even
collect evidence.
The workshop will use specific policy debates to help
participants consider questions such as:
• What is evidence?
• How can conflicting evidence be reconciled?
• If evidence is so important how come we invest so little
in ongoing policy evaluation?
• What should democracies do when the public and the
evidence disagree?
Participants in the workshop will develop a framework to help
them better understand the various forms of evidence that
can be used to inform the policy process, the various weights
that can be attached to those different forms of evidence and,
in turn, gain a broad understanding of the application of the
theory of evidence based policy to real world policy decisions.
Dr Richard Denniss is the Executive Director
of The Australia Institute, a Canberra based
public policy think tank, and an Adjunct
Associate Professor at the Crawford School
of Economics and Government, ANU. As
an economist with a particular interest in the
role of regulation he has worked in a wide range of academic
and policy roles including Chief of Staff to the then Leader
of the Australian Democrats, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja
and Strategy Adviser to the Leader of the Australian Greens,
Senator Bob Brown. Richard has published extensively
in academic journals and is the co-author of the recently
released Australian Policy in Theory and Practice.
