This manual includes information about Open Policy Making as well as the tools and techniques policy makers can use to create more open and user led policy.

The new toolkit crosses local, central and international government action. It has many of the elements of the previous framework but also covers new ground. The most obvious is that we have changed the horizontal axis to better reflect the way government works in practice. This has meant including a number of new areas namely, influencing, engaging, designing, developing, resourcing, delivering and controlling (or managing). The vertical axis still follows the same logic from ‘softer’ more collaborative power at the top, down to more formal government power at the bottom of the axis. The update includes many familiar things from nudging behaviour to convening power and also adds new areas like deliberative approaches such as citizen juries. This is the framework for Policy Lab's new Government as a System toolkit. The new Government as a System toolkit framework. When looking across the whole system, it now has 56 distinct actions. Of course this isn’t an exhaustive set of options, you could create more and more detail as there is always more complexity and nuance that can be found in government. Importantly, we want policymakers to be considering how multiple levers are used together to address complex problems.

Resources to help you address frictions in your government services, improving customer experience.

Life experiences are significant events or transitions that often require interactions and touchpoints with multiple Federal agencies and even levels of government. Too often, people have to navigate a tangled web of government websites, offices, and phone numbers to access the services they depend on. Government needs to better meet people where they are and be responsive to how they navigate these moments. The “life experience” organizing framework requires a new model of the Federal delivery system working together—within agencies, across agencies, even across levels of government — driven by customer (“human-centered design”) research, rather than within bureaucratic silos and pre-conceived solutions, to solve problems. Below are the Life Experiences that have been designated for collective government-wide improvement efforts.

We present four strategies, informed by behavioural science, that government and researchers can deploy to improve the use of evidence in policy decisions.

poster making it hard for Ukraine refugees to get government assistance

for urban planning - improving the quality of public space, countering crime and anti-social behaviour, or improving traffic safety

Effective communication between academics and policy makers plays an important role in informing political decision making and creating impact for researchers. Policy briefs are short evidence summaries written by researchers to inform the development or implementation of policy. This guide has been developed to support researchers to write effective policy briefs. It is jointly produced by the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Behavioural Science (BehSciPRU) and the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change (CBC). It has been written in consultation with policy advisers and synthesises current evidence and expert opinion on what makes an effective policy brief. It is for any researcher who wishes to increase the impact of their work by activity that may influence the process of policy formation, implementation or evaluation. Whilst the guide has been written primarily for a UK audience, it is hoped that it will be useful to researchers in other countries.

Guidance for Communicating Critical Information and Updates to Your Local Population through Social Media

Commissioned by Public Health England's Behavioural Insights team (PHEBI), the CBC is excited to announce the completion of user-friendly guides to using the Behaviour Change Wheel, aimed at national and local government. The new guide provides a structured approach and can be used to help: develop behaviour change interventions, build on modify existing interventions, and choose from existing or planned interventions.

Want to learn more about applying behavioural insights to public policy? Take our free online course—Behavioural insights for public policy. There’s six learning modules, each with a quiz, to measure learning and understanding. It should help you understand the basics of BI, the mission and work of BETA, as well as the ethical application of the field. It takes about two hours – but you can save your progress and do it at your own pace.

Behavioral Design Teams: A Model for Integrating Behavioral Design in City Government - open source playbook

BETA hosted Australia’s first ever Form-a-Palooza on 28 June 2019. It was a one-day festival of forms, designed to share the latest in form design with public servants from across the Australian Government. Forms are the most common interaction between people and the government, and there are thousands of them—most still in paper. Improving forms is a simple but important way to improve service delivery and increase public satisfaction with government. Over 200 participants from 38 agencies came along to Form-a-Palooza to learn new techniques and put them into practice. We also launched a brand new framework to guide the development of good forms—the WISER framework. It’s based on the latest research, as well as our own experience working with government agencies on forms, letters and communication.

Based on benefit-cost analysis, increased productivity and employment may have substantial economic benefits over several decades: $1,251 to the state as a whole for each $1 invested in the SDR social marketing campaign. $36 in benefits to the state government for each $1 invested.

Three of the best-known health messages are eating five portions a day of fruit and vegetables, getting 150 minutes of exercise a week and quitting smoking. But what evidence is there that these have worked?

This report discusses the use and reach of behavioural insights, drawing on a comprehensive collection of over 100 applications across the world and policy sectors.

But to be effective, nudges should be calibrated; “one size fits all” approaches tend to fall short of expectations. Instead, policymakers can tailor their nudges to align with these three dimensions: Spectrums of acceptability (and deviance). How strictly must targets adhere to the rule? While driving a couple of miles over the speed limit is unlikely to result in a traffic violation, attempting to bring a weapon onto an airplane requires zero-tolerance enforcement. Frequency of action. How often must the target group provide input? It may be easier to have targets make a single decision to contribute or obey, as opposed to encouraging them to repeatedly make the same decision over time. For example, people usually only need to choose to be an organ donor once, but drivers put their seat belt on every time they get into a car. Target group diversity. How heterogeneous is your target group? People may come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, have different interests, or may speak another language, all of which makes it challenging to apply a blanket rule with universal success. Moreover, targets can be geographically scattered or online, making it difficult for policymakers to surveil the target group. For example, all vehicle owners must register their cars, but not everyone should seek the same preventative medical treatments. And even those that do require similar treatments may have different motivations for doing so.

Our work published this week analyses all 111 cases studies of behavioral techniques used by governments compiled by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Our analysis demonstrates that none of the techniques used have scientific proven effectiveness.