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Information
How governments collect and share information, as well as co-create knowledge, shapes both policy design and societal trust.
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Collaboration
Climate change, inequality, and ecological collapse are some of the biggest challenges we face today. They demand collaboration not only across governments but with communities, citizens, and businesses.
Assessment
Governments use assessment methods to design and evaluate policies and public services.
Why redesign assessments?
Nurturing human nature: move beyond transactional approaches
Policies that rely on quantifiable metrics (such as the number of patients treated, or trees planted) treat people as isolated individuals rather than community members connected with the living world. A more relational approach nurtures collective action, partnerships, and stewardship.
Thinking in systems: enable learning and adaptive approaches
Rigid metrics that assess the performance of civil servants and agencies can stifle real-world outcomes, discourage adaptation, and overlook how interconnected policies affect each other.
Being distributive and regenerative by design: integrate social and ecological considerations
Methods like cost-benefit analysis often aggregate impacts, hiding disparities across gender, class, or ethnicity. Most assessment methods also neglect cross-border impacts — how policies in one country affect others.
Quantitative methods favour short-term benefits over long-term social and ecological ones, overvaluing monetisable benefits like job numbers and GDP growth. They omit harder-to-measure ecological costs such as biodiversity loss, and underestimate benefits like land restoration.
Emerging alternatives: redesigning assessments
The examples below show how different assessment methods can be designed. Use them as inspiration to find the approach that works best for you.
Wellbeing economy policy impact assessment
Policies for a wellbeing economy are systemic, inclusive, and forward-looking. Assessment of these policies considers the impact on root causes of wellbeing, as well as the impact on current wellbeing, wellbeing inequality, future wellbeing, and wellbeing elsewhere.
Learn more: The Wellbeing Economy Policy Design Course Module 9 explores ways to assess policies against these five considerations.
Human learning systems
Human learning systems replace static metrics with continuous learning and adaptation.
Learn more: Human Learning Systems offers useful resources and case studies to help design public services that are centred on continuous learning and adaptation. Explode on Impact, a blog by Toby Lowe, Visiting Professor in Public Management at the Centre for Public Impact, highlights the rationale for moving towards such learning approaches in public services.
Future design
Future design uses a combination of role-play and collective decision making to incorporate considerations for future generations.
Learn more:
- The School of International Futures’ report The Promise of Future Design provides an overview of future design and learning from its practical applications.
- The Research Base for Future Design collated by Osaka University presents 32 use cases to inform policy design in Japan.
Source: Osaka University
Share your ideas and tools
Do you have any other ideas on how governments can redesign assessment? We would welcome your feedback and suggestions.
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