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The past decade has seen a rapid rise in the number of policy innovation labs (PILs). PILs that are found both inside and outside of government address a wide range of social issues. Many PILs share a few distinct common characteristics: a commitment to the design-thinking methodology, a focus on applying experimental approaches to testing and measuring the efficacy of comprehensive public policy and intervention program prototypes, and the use of user-centric techniques to stakeholders in the design process. In this introduction to the special issue on PILs, we begin by taking stock of the policy lab literature published to date by providing an overview of 70 related publications (peer review articles,book chapters, theses, reports, and catalogs) and the extent that they engage the policy literature. This review demonstrates the underexplored practitioner perspective, which serves as the theme for this special issue. Next, the six articles that comprise this special issue are introduced. They are written from a practitioner perspective and include contributions from Brazil, Canada, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Finally, suggestions for future research are highlighted, including the role of PILs in policy work, PILs as street-level policy entrepreneurship settings, and the need for more rigorous inferential methods.
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Policy capacity and rise of data‐based policy innovation labs
In scarcely a decade, a “labification” phenomenon has taken hold globally. The search for innovative policy solutions for social problems is embedded within scientific experimental-like structures often referred to as policy innovation labs (PILs). With the rapid technological changes (e.g., big data, artificial intelligence), data-based PILs have emerged. Despite the growing importance of these PILs in the policy process, very little is known about them and how they contribute to policy outcomes. This study analyzes 133 data-based PILs and examines their contribution to policy capacity. We adopt a policy capacity framework to investigate how data-based PILs contribute to enhancing analytical, organization, and political policy capacity. Many data-based PILs are located in Western Europe and North America, initiated by governments, and employ multi-domain administrative data with advanced technologies. Our analysis finds that data-based PILs enhance analytical and operational policy capacity at the individual, organizational and systemic levels but do little to enhance political capacity. It is this deficit that we suggest possible strategies for data-based PILs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1911453
- PAR ID:
- 10343941
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Review of Policy Research
- ISSN:
- 1541-132X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1111/ropr.12494
