부산대학교 도서관

This chapter is written by Jonathan Breckon and Professor Annette Boaz. The authors share their personal reflections on the What Works movement as two people who have been intimately involved in it for more than a decade, Breckon as the director of the Alliance for Useful Evidence at Nesta, the UK’s innovation charity, and Boaz as a professor and founder of the journal of Evidence & Policy. They consider what they think are the important elements and events that shaped the network as it currently stands; the important role of leadership; investment and infrastructure (and where this is lacking); the difficulty – and differences – in how centres define evidence; the use of carrots and sticks; and the way that the UK’s devolution journey has also shaped its evidence landscape.
In 1997 the UK government created the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence – an independent body charged with collating evidence on medical treatments, and making decisions about which should be used by the country’s National Health Service. This bold experiment – prioritising “what works” – and promoting and producing the evidence that looks to find this out – won many admirers around the world, It also led to the creation of a dozen more what works centres in the UK, covering areas as diverse as homelessness, education, ageing, and policing. This book provides an oral history of the what works network, written by the leaders of many centres, as well as a view of where the network has so far failed to live up to its promise; the challenges of scale, and tackling inequality, and perspectives on the movement’s future.The last decade has seen a growing focus on producing evidence-based policy and practice in governments around the world – with a specific focus on causal evidence of the impacts of a particular policy on outcomes for citizens. The UK is a key example of this, with the establishment of 14 What Works Centres which collate, create and translate evidence in different policy and practice domains.In this book, leaders, researchers and practitioners from these institutions share insights to help understand what has worked so far in the Centres, and what could be done better in future. It offers guidance to policy makers and funders looking to establish new centres, and for academics looking to create similar institutions that can have a practical impact on the improvement of the world around us.Leaders, researchers and practitioners from the UK “What Works Network” share their insights on the successes, failures, and future of the What Works Centres, which have proven successful and popular across a number of policy settings.