What is policymaking? The analyst's answer!

This article is written by Logan Clow, Analyst at Defra, and Francesco Giacomini, Economist at Defra. The views expressed are purely those of the authors and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) or the UK government.

• The problem: The role analysts play in supporting a successful policy is often overlooked as a part of the policymaking process.
• Why it matters: In this article, we aim to show how analysts have a crucial role in creating evidence-based support in the policymaking process.
• The solution: Incorporate analysis throughout the policymaking process, and recognise the potential new data have in improving and measuring new and existing policies

“What is policymaking?” is one of those big reflective questions that we can often forget to ask ourselves. Many people would answer it by calling it a process for affecting change: for example, the 5p charge on plastic bags introduced in the UK in 2015 had a positive impact on consumers’ behaviour. In some cases, policymaking is a way of keeping something the same when the world around it is changing; for example, by declaring an area a natural reserve so that it can keep on providing ecoservices to citizens. In the end, the answer really depends on who you are asking the question to; legislators might consider policymaking the writing and passing of new rules, while executive agencies might consider it the changing of how an operation functions. As environmental analysts, who both worked in policy roles in the past, we have a somewhat different answer to this question… 

Having spent time as the final user of analyses, as well as the person that creates analyses, policymaking can be perceived by outsiders as if it was the policy teams who decide what the options are and which path to take, while analysts are the ones who just “crunch the numbers” behind each of the options. In fact, sometimes analysts may be asked only for numbers and graphs and not included in the decision-making process, assuming that this is something outside their remit. Meaning that they let policy teams worry about what decision to make. 

Analysts have a bigger role in policymaking, beyond just estimating impacts, and they can help articulate and define the policy problem at the outset so that policy is specifically aimed at the right problem.

From an external view, it may seem that this could be the case in most circumstances, especially when providing facts and figures for government ministers to quote in public or inform their decisions during policy briefings. The general perception is that analysts may have little say in what eventually happens to our ‘numbers’. However, actually, this is not often the case. For example, some of the work we carried out in Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) as analysts after the Brexit referendum has significantly shaped UK negotiating mandates and strategies in the UK’s new free trade agreements.

Weighting of different factors

Analysts are requested to produce information that combines multiple factors. As environmental analysts, we often must think about the relative importance of different environmental factors. For example, let us consider this dashboard by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) which looks at the environmental impact of UK imports. Would you say that the carbon footprint is more important than the water footprint? Or are they equally important?

‘Big picture’ questions like these often must be factored into analysis from the outset and could make a big difference in the analytical outputs produced. Although some statistical techniques can help standardise these factors, analysts may need to assess some other differences using qualitative analysis, for example by deciding the priority of each variable by using a RAG (red, amber and green) rating. For instance, one could wonder how the scores in Yale’s Environmental Performance Index are constructed; if we investigate the methodology, we discover that the countries’ sustainability indices are made up of other indices themselves. For example, if we look at how the fisheries index is composed, we notice that it is made of three sub-indices and that its final score depends slightly more on ‘fish stock status’ and a ‘marine trophy index’ (both 1.8%) than ‘fish caught by trawling and dredging’ (which accounts for 1.4%). Furthermore, fisheries make up 5% of countries’ overall environmental performance score, a decision that very much affects their overall rankings. Nonetheless, analysis of evidence and data will help inform the relative weighting assigned to each variable in an index.

Why data matters

There are lots of changes that we would like to make as a society but without evidence, data and tools to measure success, it is much harder to make those changes significant and successful. Therefore, analysts have a bigger role in policymaking, beyond just estimating impacts, and they can help articulate and define the policy problem at the outset so that policy is specifically aimed at the right problem.

As analysts in Defra, we are acutely aware that this is the first hurdle to overcome. The recent increase in environmental data, academic interest, and public awareness regarding environmental issues have been hugely beneficial for us. For example, the new experimental statistic by the JNCC that shows data on the environmental impacts embedded in commodity consumption in the UK has been a step forward in assessing the interaction between trade and environment. 

Choosing how to best form your evidence base and making sure it is used correctly is a key part of making sure a policy achieves its objectives, to strengthen the government’s decisions with logical justifications. This affects every stage of policymaking, from the decision an analyst needs to make on whether a statistic is reliable enough to be used, to a policy professional thinking about their precise phrasing during a briefing, or a minister weighing up whether to sign off on a new policy. Evidence-based policymaking is something that could be forgotten, but it is important for everybody involved in developing policy to remember.

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