Innovation at the heart of public policy support
Supporting public-sector players is a major innovation challenge, made all the more necessary by the specific nature and complexity of the challenges of transition.
These actions are also sources of innovative findings and experimentation with concepts and ways of doing things. They identify new questions for research or help it to evolve, and often lead to scientific and technical publications.
An incentive scheme to support innovative, finalised projects in public policy support
Since 2020, the Public Policy Support Division has been offering scientists an incentive scheme to support innovative, ground-breaking projects in public policy support.
The aim is to steer research and mobilise its findings for the benefit of public policy, to nurture research and give it meaning.
A seminar to share experiences
Working at the interface between scientific disciplines is not always straightforward, and the same applies to the interface between science and the public sector. Around twenty project leaders from the 2020 and 2021 editions shared their experiences, difficulties and successes in autumn 2022.
Topics covered included: How to communicate with government departments? How to promote projects? How can targeted studies be extended to other areas? How can we work together with different partners, disciplines and cultures?
Internal survey: scientists’ views on innovation in public policy support
The term ‘innovation’ in public policy support calls for a change of outlook, a change of position and a change of ways of doing things. Reconciling individual interests and collective efficiency, personal interest and public interest, and environmental and economic objectives, requires new ways of designing, building and implementing action.
Following the incentive scheme launched by the Public Policy Support Division in 2020, which was designed to support so-called “innovative” projects, a survey was carried out in 2021 and 2022 of project sponsors who had submitted projects under this scheme, in order to gather their views on innovation in public policy support.
Around thirty interviews were analysed to draw up a portrait of innovation in public policy support as experienced by scientists, its driving forces, its obstacles and the solutions that scientists provide.
Six key elements emerged, demonstrating both a genuine motivation and capacity for innovation, but also the existence of structural obstacles capable of limiting this capacity:
- Serious motivation to support public policy, reinforced by social utility,
- a continuum between research and public policy support,
- innovation in terms of partners, subjects and methods,
- an activity that requires new skills,
- obstacles relating to the way science itself works (scientific performance criteria, evaluation of researchers, etc.),
- possible confusion between innovation in policy support and the innovative nature of the act itself of supporting public policy.
Table of Contents
Review of the 2020 Incentive Action mid-term seminar
Copyright: Inrae
Innovating in support of public policy: scientists’ views
Copyright : Inrae
Innovative schemes in public policy support at INRAE
The projects submitted since 2020 for the incentive scheme have already shown that INRAE scientists are heavily involved in this aspect of innovation in public policy support.
How can we incorporate feedback from the field to improve joint action? How can we mobilise stakeholders around public policies? What is the Institute’s role in this? The Public Policy Support Division is driven by the ambition to build responses to the needs of public players and society by mobilising scientific and technical skills in innovative professional practices. One of its activities is to assist innovative public policy support processes. At INRAE, several research teams apply these techniques to a variety of projects: the Agrobioscience mission, the Ideas network, and Living Lab programmes such as Occitanum and Ouesterel.
Innovation in public action for the ecological transition
Based on exploratory research carried out by four students at Sciences Po Paris and summarised in an online document, a webinar provided an opportunity to cross-reference stakeholders’ different perspectives on what is currently happening in innovation in public action for the ecological transition.
The webinar offered an opportunity for in-house discussion on the specific challenges for public action posed by the ecological transition, various innovations identified as possible responses to certain environmental issues, and the implications of these developments for the interface between research and public action.
Webinar speakers:
- Hélène GARNER, coordinator of the France Stratégie Sustainability Report, Director of the Labour, Employment and Skills Department at France Stratégie
- Gabrielle BOULEAU, socio-political scientist at INRAE, Head of Adaptation and Public Policy, EcoSocio Department.
