By Apoorva Chhabra, Principal Analyst at Gartner
Over the past 10 years, some government institutions around the world have successfully applied and matured the use of behavioral science (BeSci) to design their policies and programs. Today, with an increasing number of public-sector organizations seeking BeSci insights, government leaders are exploring ways to integrate and scale BeSci practices into government operations.
Governments have been using BeSci to improve policy outcomes by making small changes in the ways that citizens obtain information, register for services and pay taxes. There is an opportunity for CIOs to learn from early adopters in the public sector, especially how to scale up BeSci practices within their organization.
Adopting neurocentric models for policy making
Not every government agency applies BeSci the same way. CIOs can collaborate with organization leaders to leverage one of the following neurocentric models:
- Project: Apply BeSci for specific projects and initiatives through specialized teams.
- Diffuse: Integrate BeSci in existing units within a department or specialized agency at the local or central level.
- Partnership: Partner with either an internal BeSci unit or an external organization and form centralized competence.
- Central Steering: Create specialized units within the center of government that focuses entirely and in part on applying behavioral insights across governments.
Using BeSci to drive decision making through ethical design
The key to designing ethically is to first define the organization’s ethical principles and processes, as well as to define all interventions beforehand.
There are several steps that can help CIOs develop successful ethical design:
- Create an ethics advisory board composed of essential business executives and legal to assess risks and make required design changes to intervene ethically. Be mindful that any type of research that involves human subjects may also be subject to special protections in the country that is running the research. External experts can also be a good add to the review board to review and approve interventions.
- Verify the relevance of BeSci to this policy design by establishing clear criteria and measurable indicators that support why the proposed behavioral technique will improve public welfare. In addition, monitor any potential negative side effects it may cause. Challenge your assumptions by considering other approaches in designing the policy.
- Design for validity. To ensure you obtain accurate results, replicate trials to ensure that the results are reliable. This is called internal validity.
- Protect data, privacy and confidentiality through policy and a data protection officer. Discuss privacy and confidentiality with the CISCO and legal, for every intervention and assume that informed consent is necessary. Design a policy to determine how data is collected, stored and used. To ensure each and every intervention respects the policy, appoint a data protection officer to safeguard the policy.
- Conduct short- and long-term monitoring of both intended and unintended consequences. Monitoring and evaluating the results of interventions are needed over a period of time, ensuring ethical continuity and impact.
- Publish work before and after the study, for transparency and accountability for both planned and unanticipated impacts. While publishing the work beforehand may dilute the intervention’s impacts, participants are fully aware of the aims of the research they are signing up for. The procedure will retain the legitimacy and high standards in the application of BeSci in terms of ethics and trust.
- Disclose costs and gains associated with applying BeSci. Some institutions are hesitant to share costs considering it could be commercially sensitive data, yet for accountability purposes measuring both gains and costs are critical to creating a solid base of trust.
Once the organization is prepared for ethical design, a dedicated infrastructure and space to run experiments is necessary. Implement a beta site to conduct experiments and ensure that data and analytics are integrated into the infrastructure-building process.
Ultimately, CIOs should ensure they have the right tools in place when the organization embraces the BeSci approach. They should collaborate with organizational leaders to ensure the organization has the right funding, adherence to ethical standards and a well-trained organization.
