Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN)

为能够应对社会面临的问题的公共政策的设计做出贡献是具有挑战性的。不仅政策很难设计好，而且通常也很难知道政策是否成功。评估变化是由政策还是其他原因引起的很难确定。当社会和环境问题交织在一起时，政策规划和评估尤其具有挑战性。例如，设计和评估一项关于洪水风险的政策需要在诸如海岸侵蚀、排水、农业、住房、交通等问题上与专家、地方当局和公民保持密切联系，而且该政策需要在这些领域既灵活又有力。复杂的问题需要新的解决方案，需要特殊的研究方法和途径。但是，我们如何设计政策，才能跟上从根本上来说是动态的环境和社会问题？当一项政策经过精心设计，可以随着时间的推移进行调整时，我们如何评估该政策是否有效？我们需要什么样的新方法来设计和评估跨部门的复杂政策？我们如何迅速采取行动应对不断变化的政策问题？我们如何汇集和调动许多不同学科领域的专业知识来解决一个共同的问题并产生新的解决方案？我们如何确保政策制定者、评估人员、从业人员和学生具备设计和评估需要不断更新的政策的技能？这些是这个新中心将开始回答的一些问题。为了做到这一点，该中心将培育一种“开放研究”的知识交流文化，这种文化建立在一个不断增长的决策者、实践者和研究人员网络的基础上。其核心是一群强大的学术和非学术专家，他们在这类问题上有多年的工作经验。中心在解决一些重大的政策挑战方面具有独特的地位，因为：*中心核心团队的每位成员都是其特定研究领域的全球人物，曾与政策制定者或政策相关领域合作，并且是方法论的先驱，他们以自己的方式贡献并创造了理解这些复杂问题的前沿方法论方法；*除中心核心团队外，一个由学术和非学术研究员和助理组成的网络将加入中心，为期数周或数月。他们将在需要为特定政策举措和创新提供专家意见的领域提供专家意见。中心的工作将包括发展新的和加强现有的方法来评价复杂环境下的政策；在一系列评价项目中试用这些方法；为从业人员、学者和政策制定者举办教育活动；并为评估人员、那些委托评估人员和政策受众发布指南和工具包。在第一年，我们将：*与正在进行和即将进行的政策评估相联系，以便我们可以就可能采用的更先进或更具成本效益的方法提供建议。*组织研讨会，汇集证据团队、政策制定者和学者，与我们合作，了解政策挑战，并开发新的方法来构建政策评估问题；*主办关于评价复杂性的最新技术的跨部门讨论会；*为评估专员、从业人员和学者举办培训活动，迅速传播新经验；*发表关于复杂环境下政策设计和评价的简短摘要和议程制定简报；*发布一份指南，说明对复杂性敏感的评估工具包可能是什么样子。这将成为一份“活文件”，随着知识的发展而更新。总的来说，这个令人兴奋的新中心将使复杂的系统办法能够纳入政策评价过程，从而有助于更有效的决策。

Contributing to the design of public policy that can respond to the problems facing society is challenging. Not only are policies difficult to design well, but it can also often be difficult to know whether the policy was successful. Evaluating whether changes have been caused by the policy or for other reasons can be hard to determine. Policy planning and evaluation are especially challenging when social and environmental problems are intertwined. For example, designing and evaluating a policy on the risk of flooding needs close liaison with experts, local authorities and citizens on issues such as coastal erosion, drainage, farming, housing, transport - and the policy needs to be both flexible and robust across these areas. Complex problems require new solutions with special kinds of methods and approaches to study them.But how do we design policies that can keep up with environmental and social issues that are fundamentally dynamic? How do we evaluate whether a policy has been effective when the policy has been deliberately designed to adapt over time? What kinds of new methods do we need to be able to design and evaluate complex policies that cross sectors? How do we act quickly to respond to changing policy problems? How do we bring together and mobilise expertise across many different subject areas to work on a common problem and produce new solutions? How can we ensure that policymakers, evaluators, practitioners and students have the skills to design and evaluate policies that need constant updating? These are some of the questions this new Centre will begin to answer.To do this, the Centre will foster an 'open research' culture of knowledge exchange founded on a growing network of policy-makers, practitioners and researchers. At its core is a strong group of academic and non-academic experts with many years' experience of working on these kinds of problems. The Centre is uniquely positioned to address some of the big policy challenges because:* each member of the core Centre team is a global figure in their particular research area, has worked with or for policy makers or in policy relevant areas, and is a methodological pioneer who in his or her own way has contributed and created cutting-edge methodological approaches to understanding these complex problems;* supplementing the core Centre team, a network of academic and non-academic Fellows and Associates will join the Centre for weeks or months. They will offer expert advice on areas that need specialist input for particular policy initiatives and innovations.The Centre's work will include developing new and enhancing existing methods for the evaluation of policies in complex settings; piloting these methods on a range of evaluation projects; organising educational programmes for practitioners, academics and policymakers; and publishing guides and toolkits for evaluators, those commissioning evaluations, and policy audiences.In the first year, we will:* Link to on-going and forthcoming policy evaluations, so that we can advise on more advanced or cost-effectiveapproaches that might be used.* Organise workshops that bring together evidence teams, policy makers and academics to work with us to understand the policy challenge and develop new ways to frame policy evaluation problems;* Host cross-sectoral seminars on the state of the art of evaluating complexity;* Initiate training events for evaluation commissioners, practitioners and academics to disseminate emerging lessons quickly;* Publish short summary and agenda setting briefings on policy design and evaluation in complex settings;* Publish a guide to what a complexity-sensitive evaluation toolkit might look like. This will become a 'living document', updated as knowledge develops.Overall, this new and exciting Centre will enable the integration of a complex systems approach into the policy evaluation process and hence contribute to more effective policy-making.