Handbook

Today’s most important policy problems are complex and highly contested. Now more than ever we need to be bold and innovative in our policy solutions and our approaches to implementation must be monitored and adapted to changing circumstances. But how do we do this effectively? And how can we ensure public institutions are learning organisations? In this topic we argue that evidence is the key to changing the world and knowing when your interventions have been effective or when they need to change course. In this topic students will learn how to incorporate evidence in the policy cycle – this means evidence informed policy and program formulation, implementation, adaptation and evaluation. We draw on models informed by complexity theory and systems understandings to help students build evidence frameworks for wrapping evidence around innovative and adaptive policy and programs.