In doing this work, as Rachael mentioned, we ask if the public can find the evidence behind policy decisions. We used the transparency framework that was developed in the United Kingdom by Sense About Science. It includes different categories, such as asking what information we know about the issue itself, how and when we will know if the policy has worked, and why the specific intervention was chosen. Can we find the evidence behind these questions?
What we ended up doing was collecting a total of 100 random federal policies from 10 different federal departments and agencies. All of these policies were announced between January 2021 and June 2021. We applied the transparency framework and we gave them scores between zero and three. In each case, could we find the evidence behind the issue at hand or the intervention that was proposed? When would we know if the policies worked?
What we found, sadly, was that, overall, the transparency of evidence usage across federal policies scored very low. They scored either zeros or ones. This means that it's very difficult for members of the public to find evidence behind policies. They're left questioning. If this policy announcement is made, how will we know when the results of this policy will be shown? How will we know why this was made? For example, why was a ban proposed, rather than a tax refund, a rebate, an eviction notice or something like that?
We found that there were different transparency scores across different federal departments and agencies. In general, we were left wanting. Yes, there was evidence mentioned, but there was no source or reference provided, or we noticed that there were pieces of evidence on different parts of websites, but they weren't included in the policy announcement in the first place.
In short, we found that it's very difficult for members of the public to find evidence, but we see promising signals. In conversations that we've had with federal departments and agencies, we've seen that folks are surprised by the findings. They didn't realize how big an issue it was, and they are thinking about how they can make these pieces of evidence more accessible for the public.