In a few days I’ll be participating in “Science advice in time of crisis: the case of COVID” (28 April, 11h35-12h20), a panel at the “Science advice under pressure” conference (live streamed on www.sapea.info), so I’d thought I could already post a few thoughts as I prepare. 

It is, obviously, too big a subject for one post. Connecting an independent scientific community effectively to policymaking is fundamental to our democracies, which cannot work without some consensus on the facts. And never before has the science for policy process faced such a perfect storm: high and fast-moving scientific uncertainty, human suffering, huge political and economic stakes, and weapons-grade misinformation.  

Everyone in this field is still drawing lessons, so this conference is timely. The JRC, for our part, has a lot to share: we’ve been at the heart of this storm since it broke, providing (with others, of course) a wide array of scientific input to Commission policies: epidemiological models, COVID test reference materials, economic analyses, tools for monitoring lock-down effectiveness and detecting hot spots by analysing sewage, and more.  

Being a newcomer to the JRC, I was stunned by the speed and diversity of this output. But as a newcomer I was also able to take the opportunity to take a step back, apply a systems perspective to science for policy, and identify three lessons for the science-policy interface.  

Lesson 1: integrate knowledge through science for policy ecosystems 

The COVID-19 crisis is a perfect multidisciplinary challenge, affecting human health, the economy, media and communications, education systems, the world of work and much more. Moreover, its many consequences in these different sectors feed back on each other: public health measures affected education and economy, for example, while media and communication shaped the effectiveness of public health measures.  

This meant that the science/policy interface needed scientists from very different disciplines, working with different conceptual and methodological frameworks, to integrate their knowledge to inform policy. In the JRC, for example, we were able to assemble a task force of over 100 scientists, driving interdisciplinary collaboration via “virtual research town halls”. But this was an ad-hoc measure, relying heavily on my staff’s personal commitment.  

Knowledge integration should not be ad-hoc: what we managed is not possible for many organisations, particularly at short notice, and in any case no single organisation has all the expertise a multidisciplinary crisis demands. 

Knowledge integration is a skill, and requires pre-existing networks of trust, capacity and experience. These cannot be magicked into existence when the next crisis hits: we need to prepare now by creating science for policy ecosystems, and building capacity between the different knowledge organisations within them. 

Lesson 2: maintain relationships 

Pre-existing networks of trust are not only required between scientists. 

Scientific institutions and policymaking bodies make strange bedfellows, with different organisational cultures, constraints, and interests. During the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, friction emerged around scientific uncertainty, scientific advice which publicly questioned policy choices, and shifting the blame for policy decisions to scientists.   

This can be mitigated in advance by developing relationships, structures and processes to connect scientific staff with policymakers. We already had long-established relations, for example, with our disaster management colleagues in DG ECHO and with economists at DG ECFIN. Combined with anticipatory capacity - surveillance and monitoring systems, foresight exercises – those trusted relations enabled rapid scientific advice under pressure.  

Building and maintaining those relationships is a lot of work, but finding the time, space and resources for regular interactions between scientists and policymakers is a vital part of evidence-informed policymaking. Perhaps there’s a parallel universe somewhere where scientists publish their research and policymakers just pick it up by osmosis, but that’s not the universe we live in: the science-policy interface demands constant attention.  

And if this is true even within a single organisation like the Commission, building those science/policy bridges between organisations, internationally, is even more challenging. Those ecosystems need to be broad in both scope and geography. 

Lesson 3: looking beyond the crisis 

COVID-19 underlined the value of scientific knowledge for policymaking, and spotlighted the many services which organisations like the JRC offer policymakers. While they welcomed our input, however, the question must be asked: is this the new normal, or is it just “crisis mode”? 

How can we institutionalise the impact of scientific knowledge on policymaking, and ensure the same level of interest when it comes to policy challenges which are slower-moving and less dramatic, but no less important?  

The JRC, of course, is lucky. We can integrate knowledge because we are large and diverse. We have strong relationships with policymakers because we are part of the EU’s executive. And we are working in a policy environment, via Better Regulation, where scientific knowledge is integrated into the policymaking cycle.  

But we are not a typical science for policy organisation. More to the point, not even we can do it alone: the policy challenges ahead of us are so complex that no single organisation should even try.

Again, robust and interconnected science for policy ecosystems are the solution, bringing together partners at all levels and from all corners of the science for policy field. Which is why the JRC is working with the Member States and European networks to improve connections between the Member States’ science for policy ecosystems. 

Let’s continue this conversation  

None has all the answers to these questions, so I’m looking forward to what my fellow panellists have to say. I’m also looking forward to seeing a much larger group discussing these questions online in the evidence-informed policymaking knowledge community, launched today on the Knowledge4Policy platform.  

Knowledge4Policy, or K4P, already reflects the above lessons: the 20 or so teams publishing here are all multidisciplinary, are managed with policymakers across the Commission, and have all integrated their knowledge into a single knowledgebase rather than create 20 separate websites (the economies of scale also freed significant resources to do more science, I might add). 

Knowledge communities will amplify this impact. Members will not only contribute science to the knowledgebase, they will discuss and help synthesise it, in the process building networks between scientists and policymakers across Europe. We’ll get more evidence, create a deeper pool of more diverse expertise to call on, and generate better relationships.  

As a public website, K4P also makes a critical contribution to transparency: if we are not open about what science we are using and who we are listening to, conspiracy theorists will happily fill the void. 

The evidence-informed policymaking knowledge community will hopefully help us build an international science for policy ecosystem. It is also K4P’s first knowledge community, so our knowledge management team would very much like your opinion on K4P’s future direction.  

Finally, my comments are open, so please join the community and let me know what you think, and subscribe to the brand-new Science for Policy Bulletin enewsletter to stay up to date. 
 
Stephen Quest, 
Director-General, Joint Research Centre