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Evidence plays a central role in strategy development
by helping to establish a factual understanding of the issues
in hand, and by informing the selection of possible solutions with the
reality check of what is likely to work.
Evidence can take many forms, but for most projects it
will be based on activities including:
- analysing key patterns in sectoral data
- analysing public attitudes, behaviours and expectations
- identifying international best practice examples which can provide
some guide to potential futures for the UK
- developing hypotheses about trends and causal links, and testing
these hypotheses against available data.
Early links should be established with government
specialists to identify the full range of data
types and sources available and
the extent of work already done on related issues. Data that is not
already available may need to be collected using methods such as surveys
or interviews and focus groups.
Analysing the data that has been collected in order to
generate understanding and insights will form the core of the project's
analytical effort. Various forms of modelling
can be used to understand the relationships between variables, while market
analysis and organisational
analysis can be used to provide context for the emerging
strategy.
Further context, in the form of international
comparisons and benchmarking,
that provides a comparison with similar policy areas or other countries,
is often another useful way to identify new approaches.
Finally, the evidence base on which strategy is developed needs to not
only cover the present day, but also likely future developments. Forecasting
can be used to extrapolate current trends, scenario
development can help identify a number of possible alternative
futures, and counterfactual analysis
can help predict what is likely to happen without change to government
policy and with a continuation of expected drivers of change.
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