Cathy Foley spoke last week on the science of advising government.
The former Chief Scientist set out her experience in answering briefs when all the information available did not answer a problem the government wanted. “The real world rarely presents you with a neat folder marked ‘THE EVIDENCE’, containing the answer,” she told the Institute of Public Administration.
And she urged her audience to recognise what is intellectual honesty in policy advice; distinguishing what is known, how well it is known, what is assumed, and what is not known at all. She suggested critical questions for anybody presented with a briefing, including; “is this evidence fit for the decision we actually have to make? You can have excellent science answering the wrong policy question. Even scientists don't always appreciate that.”
Plus, Dr Foley pointed to another problem; “all of this sounds wonderful until a Minister asks for an answer by Friday.”
For which she offered a very Australian answer; the way her predecessor as Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel had established a Rapid Research Information Forum at the start of the COVID outbreak, to advise on questions the government needed to know about, and fast. The Forum included representatives from learned academies, CSIRO, universities and government science advisers.
“The idea was beautifully simple: A minister asks a tightly framed question. The relevant experts are convened. You rapidly review the available evidence. You expose the draft to expert scrutiny. And instead of producing a 200-page report six months later, you produce something short, often around 3,000 words, that says: ‘this is what we know. This is what we don't know. This is how confident we are. And these are the implications.’ ”
Since COVID, the model has been used to advise on the Hormuz-driven AdBlue diesel additive shortage and a really rapid report on Generative AI, requested in February ’23 and delivered that March. “That, to me, is what good evidence advice looks like when knowledge is moving very quickly,” Dr Foley said.
And she wants the model to stay. “It is particularly important now because “the machinery of science advice to government is changing.” Dr Foley means the new peak advisory body, the National Resilience and Science Council, which has “a stated purpose of better coordinating public-sector R&D and innovation investment with national priorities, economic objectives and resilience.”
While it will report to the Prime Minister, she wants to keep what has worked well; “the ability of any minister, facing a difficult question, to get rapid, independent, multidisciplinary synthesis of the evidence. “
Including, “when the evidence is not what people want to hear (when) a program isn't working as expected. A favoured intervention is not supported as strongly as people believed. New evidence has emerged. Or your analysis challenges an established policy direction or ministerial priority.”
“I don't think the answer is to weaponise science. ‘The science says you are wrong’ is rarely a very useful briefing strategy. But it's not our job to make inconvenient evidence disappear. A public servant's job is to make the decision-maker better informed,” she said.