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Working with Government Dr Ine Steenmans
Applying systems thinking, which gains an overarching picture of inter-related, complex policy systems, enables you to make sense of how to address a mission and deliver it.
22 June 2019
The UK鈥檚 industrial strategy outlines four grand challenges, which signpost to policy missions. Each mission has a specific delivery team, including a mixture of analysts and policy strategists. Operationalising detailed delivery and implementation plans to meet the challenges is very difficult.
Applying systems thinking, which gains an overarching picture of inter-related, complex policy systems, enable you to make sense of how to address a mission and deliver it. This is where my project, Systems Mapping for Missions, comes in.
The UK has hubs of expertise, such as the Cabinet Office鈥檚 Policy Lab. Policy Lab were asked by the BEIS Industrial Strategy Team to identify how systems thinking could practically be applied in scoping missions. In parallel, so I could increase my researcher visibility, I was attending events and building my policy network.
As part of Policy Lab鈥檚 background research, they approached me with some questions related to my PhD thesis, and, much is the way with this kind of policy engagement, I became involved in a relatively informal way. What resulted from these interpersonal connections was an invitation to attend a brown bag roundtable where I showcased some of the work I was involved in. After this initial roundtable, I received an invitation to work with the Policy Lab to support the BEIS Industrial Strategy team on working with three of the missions.
I worked 鈥榖ehind the scenes鈥� to coordinate a series of internal and external workshops. Designing the workshop series, I worked with the partners and colleagues to establish a clear set of expected outcomes from the meetings. I also proposed a way for us to collaborate on mapping and to analyse the information captured during the meetings.
We held around 12 workshops over a six month period, during which three different maps emerged. We turned these into digital systems maps of the three corresponding industrial strategy missions. Each map has a set of supporting documentation, and the aim is to keep these live and open for anyone to view.
This underscores the need for more open science and brings this evidence into a policy space where it might not have been used before. Throughout this process, I realised that the impact you have depends on the senior stakeholders involved and the different types of questions that they need a response to.
I have had to be flexible, responding to phone calls and emails, but also have been open to new types of work and ideas that inevitably emerge. What has really helped me on this project has been taking a step back and not being as personally invested in my research agenda, which may seem counter-intuitive.
However, by adopting the perspective that my role as an academic is to impart my research with the wider community and act as a facilitator, I have been able to benefit from some great opportunities.
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