Special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis
Cosmo Howard and Bernadette Hyland-Wood
COVID-19 showed the world that statistical data are indispensable for government decision making, especially in times of crisis. Yet, data systems to support public policy were often found wanting during the pandemic.
In our recent article in Policy & Politics, we argue that contemporary data sharing systems often behave like natural ecosystems for several reasons. They can grow and adapt organically, their members are highly interdependent, they are steered by powerful ‘keystone actors’ like government agencies and big tech companies, and they can be harnessed to provide benefits for society. This makes modern data systems different from older models, which relied on a single official statistical agency or a tight network of data providers to supply statistics for policy making. To test the operation of data ecosystems in practice, we investigated how Australia’s infectious disease data ecosystem functioned during COVID-19. We found strong evidence for organic growth and adaptation, but we also saw that keystone actors like government departments sometimes restricted access to data, which hampered the work of some data analysts within the ecosystem. Furthermore, there was often insufficient leadership by keystone actors to ensure that data ecosystems functioned coherently, resulting in disagreements over interpreting the data, as well as gaps in data coverage.
Finally, we found that policy makers had a short-term focus on immediate data needs, which discouraged ecosystem members from anticipating and preparing for future information requirements. We conclude that the ecosystem metaphor is useful for highlighting the benefits and challenges of contemporary data sharing arrangements. While data ecosystems are defined by their capacity for spontaneous adaptation, in practice governments must consciously foster data ecosystem health by ‘seeding and feeding’ the ecosystem if they are to serve policy making during crises and in peacetime.
Table of contents for special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis
Policy expertise in times of crisis
Peter Aagaard, Marleen Easton, and Brian W. Head
Analysing expert advice on political decisions in times of crisis
Peter Aagaard, Sevasti Chatzopoulou, and Birgitte Poulsen
Mapping the changing role of expertise in COVID-19 politics in Europe
Kennet Lynggaard, Theofanis Exadaktylos, Mads Dagnis Jensen, and Michael Kluth
Expert perspectives on the changing dynamics of policy advisory systems: the COVID-19 crisis and policy learning in Belgium and Australia
Marleen Easton, Jennifer Yarnold, Valerie Vervaenen, Jasper De Paepe, and Brian W. Head
Investigating the scientific knowledge–policy interface in EU climate policy [Open access]
Claire Dupont, Jeffrey Rosamond, and Bishoy L. Zaki
The promise and performance of data ecosystems: Australia’s COVID-19 response [Open access]
Cosmo Howard and Bernadette Hyland-Wood
The challenges experts face during creeping crises: the curse of complacency
Ahmad Wesal Zaman, Olivier Rubin, and Reidar Staupe-Delgado
