King's College London

This is the fifth instalment of the School for Government’s comment series on the future of evidence-based policy. Look out for more contributions to the series in the coming weeks.

What a difference a year makes. The What Works Centre for Wellbeing was a very ambitious idea. The Centre was founded by Prime Minister David Cameron following the recommendation of the Commission for Wellbeing and Policy; both followed the consultation and introduction of the ONS UK Measures of National Wellbeing in 2010. When the Centre was founded in 2014, we aimed to leverage and build upon the data from the UK National Wellbeing Measurement Programme, making these insights available and accessible as a public good. 10 years on, when the Centre was closed in 2024, we were able to look back on a legacy of shaping policy across sectors.

Wellbeing is about “subjective wellbeing”, yes, the overall outcome of policy and decision-making, and it’s also about a full picture of decision-making covering economic, social and environment outcomes together, for all different groups of people, now and for the future. An example of this is the collation of evidence of the impact of Covid in Covid:WIRED that uses the multi-dimensional UK measures of national wellbeing as the framework for understanding impact.

Wellbeing is the “glue” of decision-making across government, yes, and it’s the glue also across sector and disciplines. There is no obvious functional leader for wellbeing, no department, profession, sector, and funder. It is relevant to all as the overall outcome and all play a part in achieving it. And funding is necessary for a centre; a little funding went a very long way in part due to clever use of evidence and in part to the dedication of the team and partners in doing something very different.

What Works is about “robust evidence” (eg through RCTs) yes, and it’s about growing an evidence base in a wide range of contexts. We pioneered robust inclusive and early-stage (sometimes called pipeline) evidence synthesis approaches and focused very keenly on cost-effective knowledge mobilisation. I also guess, given the breadth of what the Centre covered and how people engaged with and reported on the Centre’s work, most people only saw a facet of the work of the Centre and not the whole.

The evidence-informed decision-making movement is global and I have been surprised by the international interest in the Centre’s work given our very ruthless focus on the UK. The Centre’s website was taken on by the Observatoire Bien-Etre in Paris, and the Centre received the Award for the Betterment of the Human Condition from the International Society for Quality of Life Studies in Indonesia in June this past year.

There are now global attempts to synthesise knowledge across the Sustainable Development Goals – itself a wellbeing framework and by far the biggest one – by the SDG Synthesis Coalition. This is like what we were aiming for across the UK’s Wellbeing Framework and related frameworks in Wales, Scotland and local public health (see Covid:WIRED above) There is also a living evidence synthesis on the art and science of promoting evidence use by the WHO. This builds on the Centre’s founding “What Works for Research Use” review; this formed the basis of our, and other Centre’s, Theories of Change. It is exciting and gratifying to see this methodological thought leadership live on. But it does continue to puzzle me that the UK can reach so strongly internationally, yet not support the same innovation domestically. This is, in my view, reflective of some of the big policymaking challenges that the UK has; the pinnacle of policy work in many areas is international work, and it does not pay the same respect to delivering nationally with miserable consequences for people in the UK.

There are known real challenges with initiatives sticking and making it across to new governments and leaders. What Works is no exception – will it, and the institutions created through the years, last? NICE and EEF have shown that evidence-based institution-building can be independent and lasting. The impact and timing of people changes in many partner organisations over the last 10 years made sustainability very challenging ,as it is in many policy areas. This change in people is one of the very big reasons to have evidence centres as the external “hard drive”. But there is no reason to believe that a focus on effectiveness, using public and charitable funding wisely, and learning from doing, need be party political. However, the strength of being close to and influencing government policy, or in other sectors, has a downside – one that What Works Centre for Wellbeing also experienced – where independence can mean you are everyone’s friend, but no one’s best buddy. Learning from New Zealand saw Social Investment cast aside when Wellbeing Budgets came in, and yet both combined is where you see outcome-based change.

While some very familiar with the What Works Centres are among the new intake of MPs, that there is widespread interest in and knowledge of the work of the network is not clear. What Works is not the exciting bit of politics or policymaking. The Policy Profession Standards set out that the job is to bring together Democratic decision making, Strategy with evidence, and Delivery to make decisions about what the public sector does and doesn’t do and how it does it – this is what public policymaking is. What Works is the evidence about the delivery bit – the least exciting bit of policymaking but essential for effective government.

I have argued before the What Works Centres could and should be able to operate as the “institutional hard drive” of policymaking. In their 2013 report Twelve Actions to Professionalise Policy Making, the Policy Profession Board identified knowledge management as a key action. What Works can provide that knowledge management, especially if it works with professions, which is also, quite handily, one of the most effective routes to research use; professions push and pull evidence from the shelf, both using and growing it. This approach also creates different career routes for professionals, enhancing their job satisfaction and wellbeing; it’s the knowledge rather than partner/permanent secretary/manager route.

I am now setting up a global evidence centre – on safety of life and property from accidental preventable harm. The innovations in evidence are genuinely exciting from a global perspective, as seen at the Global Evidence Summit earlier this year. The possibilities include not only the use of evidence, but also:

• Living Evidence Reviews and Living Evidence Partnerships are now achievable. Their value and methodology have been accelerated by the pandemic, working with evidence users, so that research is as relevant and timely as possible. The pace of research – and journal retractions – makes this an essential development. A genuinely global capacity for learning rapidly at scale is developing as are the multi-language possibilities.
• Areas of Research Interest have grown, and AI has helped uncover that a surprising number of answers already exist (although perhaps far less so on wellbeing). Whether they are called “problem statements” or collaborative research agendas, especially if they include PINE – practice in need of evidence – we know, from loneliness for example, these can really work.
• The capacity to do and use appropriate robust evaluation methodology now has a good size field and more practical approaches; global qualifications beckon.

In the new Global Safety Evidence Centre, set to launch on 15 May of this year, we have been testing the use of AI for evidence synthesis, and while it's not there yet, there is real potential for the future. Language technology, though, may take us further faster, as will thinking around mental models. Evidence is at its heart about learning, and not learning is a risk to safety and to wellbeing itself. Building properly learning systems is very possible and has the potential to accelerate innovation to outcomes, in the very near future, on a revolutionary scale. The real win here is evidence that crosses the economic, social and environmental domains (Prosperity, People & Planet), which is how people run their businesses and live their lives.

Nancy Hey is Director of Evidence & Insight at Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the former Executive Director of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing.