Why evidence-informed decision making?

There is a growing need for more evidence-informed policy-making. When political responses, laws and the implementation of policy programmes do not match the perceived reality on the ground, disappointment and dissatisfaction among citizens and companies increases (Ludewig in NKR 2019).

Research on evidence-based policy-making shows (Sager et al 2021) that integrating more evidence into political decisions improves the effectiveness and efficiency of initiatives and can help regain citizens’ trust. However, a recent survey by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (Riphahn and Schnitzer 2022) found that political decision-makers in the Bundestag do not use as much scientific evidence as they would like, and as the OECD (2021) and other national audits (NKR 2019) suggest.

There are many obstacles to the use of evidence:

• Habit or tradition of using personal expertise instead of data (Hadorn et al 2022); stakeholder engagement of social partners and experts is well established, but there is no equivalent for other audiences such as involving citizens (OECD 2021)
• Lack of ease of access, e. evidence provision is dominated by long-standing institutionalised knowledge transfers with outdated procedures
• Lack of good communication of scientific evidence between providers and decisionmakers, e.g. lack of short and comprehensible summaries and visualisations, transparent methodologies, unbiased approaches, clear differentiation of recommendations that fit into the context of the decision-making process (Seidel et al 2021)
• Lack of time, i.e. political decision-makers are often pressed by faster media cycles to quickly commit to seemingly obvious solutions that may not even be fully developed yet, and this leads to an unfortunate habit of defining solutions too quickly and in too much detail (NKR 2019) 

Political decision-makers have access to evidence in principle, but many cannot make use of it appropriately. In practice, political decision-makers use values, personal experience, and political necessity as well as evidence to inform decisions, so they apply a limited or ‘bounded rationality’. Despite the rhetoric around the importance of evidence, the proper use of evidence for policy remains challenging and somewhat elusive.

Therefore, there is a need for better toolboxes to make it easy and feasible for political decision-makers to use evidence in their daily work in Germany. As a first step, this paper aims to provide inspiration on how to overcome these barriers and how to use evidence in various stages of the policy cycle.

The benefits of good evidence

• Optimising resource allocation
• Enhancing public services delivery
• Achieving better outcome for society

 Download the full report, ‘Best Practice in Evidence-Informed Policymaking’ a policy brief developed by Verian in Germany, sponsored by Robert-Bosch Foundation.