Keywords

6.1 Introduction

With around 6000 members from more than 100 countries, the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA) provides a forum for policymakers, practitioners, national academies, and academics to share experience, build capacity and develop theoretical and practical approaches to the use of scientific evidence in informing policy at all levels of government (for more information, see https://www.ingsa.org). INGSA is supported primarily by the Wellcome Trust and the International Development Research Centre. It operates under the auspices of the International Science Council and is managed through a secretariat based at the University of Auckland.

The INGSA case study provided here is an example of an existing, informal, network of key actors who play a role in building evidence and providing advice for the formation of public policy. INGSA membership is far wider than science advisors working in government ministries. It draws together a range of roles and experiences, which highlights an important fact of the contemporary dynamics behind policy advice and how the knowledge and policy production environment is changing fast. In a context of mission-oriented research and multi-stakeholder actors in knowledge creation, the evidence used to inform public opinion, civil servants and policies, and in general our society, is no longer generated just in academia and translated via a small number of controlled channels. Trusted sources of knowledge have traditionally been via academic publications in journals and monographs. In this knowledge society, evidence is generated in several different ways and translated through a plethora of new channels made up of think tanks, advisors, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), and formal and informal infrastructures. The expression ‘good evidence’ can be limited and unclear. In fact, given the multiple pathways available to generate scientific evidence, what matters is being able to identify how transparent the process is and how straightforward the mechanism is to assess the liability of the evidence. This highlights the key role that science advisors play in this context to be able to source knowledge that has been constructed according to rigorous scientific methods and through research which has applied appropriate ethical standards.

The aim of this chapter tries to assess the science advisors’ understandings and insights about the nature of the research they access to inform policymaking and how they establish that the feedback they communicate as evidence, originates from methodologically robust and ethically grounded research. Most of the literature on science advice is based on the capacity and the opportunity for experts to be able to “translate” science into policy and most importantly to be effective communicators, so that their advice has an impact on policymaking (Andrews 2017; Selin et al. 2017).

One of the important roles for a network like INGSA is to help prepare new scientific advisers. Many who take up these roles will have careers as full-time academics in universities and research institutes. The world of policymaking may remove them from their comfort zone. Policymaking moves quickly, and certainly more quickly than the conduct of most research. The modern scientific advisor may be asked to work beyond the boundaries of their scientific field, drawing together evidence for policymaking in complex multidimensional challenges, which require input from multiple disciplines. A network like INGSA can help to prepare scientists to work in very different ways to gather scientifically grounded evidence from across disciplines as evidence for policymaking.

INGSA provides such a platform for training and also to encourage the exchange of best practice between members of this community. At the core, INGSA has created an environment which recognises both international standards and is sensitive of geographical differences. Regular training is delivered to support academics who choose to become government advisors and to share understanding about how science advisors are trained and learn to identify scientific evidence which is fundamentally robust and ethically sound. The platform also supports critical training via case studies and real-life examples about the understanding of how science advisors must be aware of their own inherent biases and implicit political agendas that lie beyond the evidence and the research they access for policymaking advice.

It is not only those with the scientific backgrounds who benefit from training and the opportunity for discussions around best practice. The experts who advise policymakers could come from many different sectors and backgrounds. Several may be trained within government departments, civil servants, and policy organisations. Others emerge from the private sector, industry or NGOs and civil society stakeholders, professionals in different areas of knowledge. Another group emerges directly from scholarly research, generally working in academic institutions who may be invited to join expert groups and provide advisory functions after taking short-term roles and positions.

Over the last 10–15 years, and with a certain degree of ‘acceleration’ of influence that has happened more recently with the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen the emergence and proliferation of such mixed profiles. Science advisors have taken key places in supporting actors in legislative assemblies (such as the UK Parliament), shadowing Members of Parliament (MPs) to support their work with their portfolios, and advising officials with statutory powers (e.g., public bodies) when they are tasked with policy design and assessment.

Science advisors’ profiles and their process of learning to become professionals have evolved rapidly, but as attention has mainly focused on how policymakers can access evidence for their work, less attention has been paid to how experts become advisors, or occasionally whether the advisors come from traditional ‘expert’ backgrounds (Owens 2015, 10). More importantly, attention has rarely been paid to how the advisors, particularly those with scientific backgrounds, are changed by the role they play in providing evidence for policymaking. It is unclear how they generate ‘new knowledge’ which is immediately translated in the realities of the political world. Many are required to undergo some transformation, as Obermeister (2020) says “they become ‘policy literate’.” In other words, they must move between the intricacies of political mechanisms and the generation of scientific evidence, while at the same time, they are also inevitably influenced by their own personal experiences, beliefs, values and cultural backgrounds (Spruijt et al. 2014; Porter and Dessai 2017). They may also witness instances of what they would consider ‘policy-based evidence making’ as opposed to evidence-based policymaking.

To further complicate the advising role, it has been observed that the relationship between science and policymaking has changed over time. According to Gluckman and Wilsdon (2016) science advice is an evolving (eco)system in which science advisors tend to constantly adapt. More importantly, this relationship has been made far more complex by the increasing capacity of different entities and organisations to provide evidence for policymaking. All advisors share some commonalities in the challenges they face, including: assuring independence and influence, preserving trust while becoming more transparent, and guaranteeing the quality of the advice they provide (Wilsdon 2014). Today, these ecosystems are more diverse than ever before and yet not quite as resilient as in previous decades.

6.2 Good Evidence and Transparency of Sources—Advisors or Science Advisors, and Does the Distinction Matter?

There is a tacit assumption that responsibility for the production of ethically robust research simply lies in the academic environment and that this assumption provides a level of assurance about the quality of the research itself. Although this is not disputed in principle, it may not be sufficient in a knowledge society and a research system which is now opening up, inviting a much wider range of collaborators working in the ‘knowledge production space’. Some come with very different standards and approaches, and generate academic papers in collaboration with scholars. Without diminishing the importance of this approach, it assumes that all stakeholders share broadly similar fundamental assumptions, including beliefs about the validity of different knowledge sources, the importance of complexity, and the need to engage with the knowledge and values of relevant stakeholders.

What is missing is a framework which could sensitise organisations to evaluate the robustness of the environment in which evidence is generated. As part of the changes of the research system, the gradual inclusion of innovative knowledge generation mechanisms is occurring, particularly in addressing complex challenges and sustainable goals. We also must ensure that there are mechanisms which are widely used and coherently employed to assess any possible intrinsic bias in knowledge generation. As the vice-chair of INGSA and other practitioners in think tanks have underlined in the PRO-RES series of interviews (see PRO-RES deliverable D2.3 https://prores-project.eu/deliverables/), it is crucial to include tools for the assessment of scientific evidence wherever such evidence is generated, especially for research in non-medical science where there are less well established protocols for ethics.

A network like INGSA has a role to “establish protocols that are widely used and policymakers can take into account; have standards to identify when evidence is ethically robust; enforce protocols to discourage policymakers from using more ‘convenient’ evidence” James Wilsdon’s interview (17 June 2020).

The above observation highlights an emerging new challenge for scientific advisors—an emerging marketplace of ideas. New actors play an increasingly important role in providing evidence to political policymakers who may find ‘convenient evidence’ provides a better justification for political policy development, which puts the role of the independent scientific adviser under increasing pressure. In the science-policy relationship there are competing actors, from journalists to think tanks, who play a very crucial role in informing societal changes, processes and procedures while claiming an evidence-based approach. They also generate new knowledge and evidence which are often more easily picked up by ‘lay’ (those not professional researchers) members of society who are in key decision-making roles.

These changes might suggest the need for wider exposure to the kind of training undertaken by academic researchers to identify the investigation underpinning evidence for policymaking which is ethically sound. However, as it is often discussed in academia, you cannot really propose some definitive standards or “do’s and don’ts” when you are engaging with live social contexts and where the simple principle of “do no harm”, for example, has a much larger spectrum of implications. See for example the ongoing discussion about technology and its role in society, or also as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, how scientific advice has been employed to protect society’s health and suppress negative impact on people’s economic welfare or even their mental health. Science-advising for policymakers is not straightforward and cannot offer a pre-determined set of rules but must be based on long- and well-established practices, and flexible and adaptable platforms to identify transparent and ethically sound information, as well as exploiting formally trained and capable individuals with high standards of professional integrity.

6.3 Advising Governments: The International Network for Governmental Science Advisors (INGSA)

INGSA offers a collaborative platform which enables a valuable exchange among policymakers, scientists, and experts in key areas of knowledge at the international level. The platform also aims to support a certain level of capacity building and research networks across diverse global science advisory organisations and national systems. The platform mainly focuses on organising workshops, conferences and a growing catalogue of tools and guidance, which aims at improving the interface between global science-policy actors to enhance the potential for evidence-informed policy formation at sub-national, national and transnational levels. INGSA working groups are developed to take on targeted projects such as workshop planning and the development of publications and other resource materials (see e.g., https://www.ingsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Swamperia.pdf).

INGSA’s mission is to provide a forum for policymakers, practitioners, national academies, and academics to share experiences, build capacity and develop theoretical and practical approaches to the use of scientific evidence in informing policy at all levels of government. However, its primary focus is on the place of science in public policy formation rather than advice on the structure and governance of public science and innovation systems.

As their website (https://www.ingsa.org) claims, INGSA operates through:

  • Exchanging lessons, evidence and new concepts through conferences, workshops and a website;

  • Collaborating with other organisations with common or overlapping interests;

  • Assisting the development of advisory systems through capacity-building workshops;

  • Producing articles and discussion papers based on comparative research into the science and art of scientific advice.

In other words, INGSA is not trying to implement a framework within which science advice must be implemented but rather to create an open dialogue over the practices and the processes in use between different countries and cultures, and at the same time, to identify some overall principles for robust and effective results. INGSA’s operational principles are based on a commitment to diversity and recognising and accepting multiple cultures and structures of governance and policy development. INGSA does not intend to lobby for, or endorse, any particular form or structure of science advice to governments. INGSA’s primary objective is to improve the use of evidence in informing public policy, rather than providing advice on the structure and governance of public science and innovation systems.

Given the mission of an organisation like INGSA, it is recognised that the PRO-RES guidance framework (https://prores-project.eu), made of the Accord, the toolbox (https://prores-project.eu/toolbox-2/) and the resources (https://prores-project.eu/resources/) would be particularly important in supporting the training material developed by INGSA. The guidance framework is a collection of principles, values and standards for right action that is seen as morally binding upon the members of a group. The framework is designed to guide, control, and/or regulate proper and acceptable behaviour as it contains advice and guidance on how one ‘ought’ to behave in producing ethical evidence. More importantly, the toolbox offers a range of ways to operationalise the goals of the Accord and offers a ‘how to’ list for delivering ethical evidence.

Because of its nature, INGSA remains fundamentally a loosely-knit association of individuals and organisations with interests in both the theory and practice of science advice and it is based on a distributed operational model where members do not need to share the same physical location when interacting (see below). In the mind of INGSA’s funders, it is expected that the network will be shaped and reshaped over time according to the arising needs and interests of INGSA affiliates. Such an approach fits very neatly in the ever-evolving nature of the PRO-RES framework which is based not on a rigid normative structure, as for example the Oviedo or Helsinki framework, but capitalises on the collection of case studies and experiences that ethics experts and literature on ethical approaches develop over time.

6.4 Feedback from INGSA

As mentioned above, INGSA is based on an informal, distributed operational model which delivers capacity building and convening through regional chapters. Such a model helps to contextualise the universal message and make it relevant locally. Operating through the global hub based in New Zealand, INGSA has three regional chapters in Latin America, Asia and Africa. This ensures better regional relevance, but also cross-regional and especially South-North/South-South collaboration and lesson sharing, which had previously been lacking at a global scale.

The interviews with senior representatives of INGSA revealed that a fundamental element of their work on science advice was about how to identify good evidence and describe what constitutes good evidence. Consideration of reputable science publications, high reputation scholars and research institutions, and reliable sources providing robust and reproducible results are crucial for identifying such good evidence—although they are sometimes not exhaustive and leave out a range of knowledge producers not coming from the top layer of the academic world but who could, nonetheless, contribute, particularly in niche research areas, or in areas of investigations very closely related to policymaking.

At the same time, senior representatives of INGSA recognised that ethically robust scientific evidence especially in non-medical sciences (including engineering, politics and finance for example) is far more difficult to identify ‘downstream’ when the research results have been translated and integrated into policy recommendations. Furthermore, the integrity of scholars in presenting their results is presumed, in part, to be guaranteed by the reputation of their host institution or the reputation of the scholars themselves. Yet, there are two related problems with such assumptions: firstly, does ‘reputation’ apply as a mark of quality to all the work undertaken by scholars in an institution or for each publication produced by an individual academic? In reality the quality of work underpinning ‘reputation’ will fall somewhere on a curve, with reputation in a research field based on a perceived mean created over decades. Peer review publications and other forms of academic engagement over a sustained period grant the due acknowledgement. However, this is no guarantee of work of consistent scientific quality across all research fields and peer review practices are sometimes criticised as considered non-standard practice (Smith 2006). The second is related to the proliferation of league tables produced by the higher education ‘trade press’. These exercises are based on metrics selected according to what can be measured by the particular publication or publisher and not necessarily based on which metric provides a better insight into the quality of research underpinning a publication used as evidence for policymaking. Needless to say, whereas well developed and universal mechanisms exist to scrutinise and assess research results via peer review, when results are transformed into policy relevant ‘evidence’, especially where multiple studies are integrated and synthesised by non-academically trained contributors, little guidance exists to date to identify if the studies used were valid and reliable. Practical guidance is needed to assess whether reports have drawn on evidence according to high standards and formal guidance, or whether it has been collected for fast communication and dissemination. This is particularly challenging in certain research areas where such assessment is beyond the capacity of single advisors. This should not emerge as a surprise given that we are aware that ethics of research and integrity of scholars is increasingly implemented in scholars’ training and that training in science advice has only emerged in recent years, not least through the efforts of INGSA.

As has been stated, INGSA does not provide evidence to policymakers directly. INGSA has the role of facilitator and promoter among academics to encourage them to engage in a career which includes advising policymakers, and among policymakers on seeking expert advice. Given this purpose for the organisation, INGSA focuses on encouraging those who advise policymakers to only use ethically robust evidence and more importantly to have a very high integrity of working methods especially in gathering and presenting information.

Finally, the INGSA distributed model confronts the difficulties that many platforms face. INGSA is a voluntary association of members and as such is a coordinated bottom-up effort to connect researchers with policymakers. It is also very sensitive of geographical and cultural differences, and preserves diversity of approaches and other multicultural and intellectual ventures. However, INGSA has not yet implemented a formal published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views which is recognised and endorsed by all members. Therefore, it still lacks a driving force which has enough authority across different constituencies to implement a set of projects fast enough to address the ever-changing relations between science and policy. Especially in the twenty-first century, international organisations seem to have a weakening position, whereas national governments have reasserted their sovereignty. The next step in INGSA’s development will be to see how often researchers trained via INGSA’s approaches will successfully engage and take positions as formal government advisors. At the moment, such positions remain strongly related to personal contacts and are subject to the changing of political parties in governments. Besides, we must bear in mind that part of the independence of researchers supporting policymakers is often guaranteed by their roles as advisors. Researchers and scientific advisors provide what they assess as the best possible scientific evidence, whereas the liability of the decision taken following such advice and sometimes multiple sources of advice, remains with the policymakers, the political appointees. INGSA is developing a strong platform and is a resource for strengthening evidence based policy, yet remains a fragile multifaceted platform.

6.5 Institutional Capacities: Improving Research Systems for Ethical Advice

In addition to building the capacity of individual researchers and policymakers to provide and request robust evidence, INGSA’s work has an institutional layer regarding the integrity of the research ecosystem to allow the circulation of the best possible research evidence. Conversations with INGSA senior management have shown that their attention is focused on the importance of having in place a much stronger mechanism of incentives and rewards for those engaged in research and those that use research for their work. In fact, research ethics issues are often linked to moral choices. If we look at the debate around Open Science, reproducibility of data and assessments, all have some kind of normative frameworks, but it is not easy to just follow guidelines and instructions. For example, the FAIR (Findable Accessible Interoperable Re-Usable) principles could not simply be addressed from one single perspective (GO FAIR 2016). There are reasons why such principles emerge, and they do have an ethical dimension, but there are also other motives underlying research. In fact, the problem with the research system is that it does not offer enough incentives to hold ethics in high regard.

From INGSA’s perspective, the core issue is the overall research system which starts with the researchers’ training but moves along the complex picture of research methods, reward mechanisms and Open Science. Ethics is a keyhole to observe a much larger phenomenon around knowledge production. Those advocating for Open Science target the emergence of a fragmentation in knowledge production and science communicators who miss a strict academic training. Also, a strong trend towards open access publishing (OAP) of journals and books has encouraged the practice of peer-review post-publication as being a more transparent process. As many public funding agencies require OAP of results of funded research projects, publishers try to take advantage by offering OA platforms and a shift to article processing cost (APC) financing. Scientists themselves witness a rapidly changing landscape of established and recently emerging journals of mixed quality, ethics and aims.

TransDisciplinary Research (TDR) is the preferred pathway for mission-driven research and invites a multi-stakeholder engagement. The question is also how to assess TDR before, during and after the analysis. As mentioned in a very recent OECD paper “the science and policy communities need criteria to assess whether TDR proposals are likely to yield desired results, indicators to weigh the progress and sustainability of existing research efforts and ensure continued application of the principles of TD, and standards—practical, scientific, and ethical—for appraising the value of completed research” (OECD 2020, 16).

Although ethics remains a fundamental requirement for robust evidence, it is hard – and we could probably say—increasingly harder to assess robustness of the evidence generated and, more importantly, of any translation of such knowledge  made available for the purpose of policymaking.

6.6 Science Advice in Emergencies—A Unique and Pressing Case for Ethics and Integrity

Beyond its training for individual scientists and policy professionals and its institutional advocacy to improve research systems, INGSA develops specific thematic projects from time to time. One such project is directly relevant to and complements the PRO-RES framework. In collaboration with its parent body, the International Science Council (ISC), INGSA has engaged in a project with ISC’s Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in Science (https://council.science/about-us/governance/committees/committee-for-freedom-and-responsibility-in-science/) to support the development of specific guidance for expert advising in emergency and crisis situations.

In addition to adding a layer of urgency to the advice given, the speed and high stakes of crisis situations increases the potential for uncertainty and contestation of evidence. For this reason, applying an ethics- and integrity-based framework to the role of advising in emergencies is of critical importance. INGSA is engaged in thoroughly analysing the situation across multiple global regions, placing the organisation in an ideal position to ground the framework in local and crisis contexts.

6.7 Conclusions

The outcome of this INGSA case study demonstrates three main points:

  1. (a)

    There is a proven market internationally, for learning the skills of robust and trustworthy knowledge brokerage, which INGSA’s capacity building and convening activities have both responded to and have been working to develop further.

  2. (b)

    INSGA’s devolved model of program delivery and governance through regional chapters is key to putting issues of ethics and integrity into local context. At the same time, its work within the International Science Council and the Committee on Freedom and Responsibility of Scientists places these issues into the specific context of emergency and crisis situations.

  3. (c)

    The PRO-RES framework is an important tool which can complement INGSA’s work to help sensitise evidence-commissioning and provisioning organisations to work in ethically sound and methodologically robust ways.

At the same time the case study shows some weaknesses in the approach:

  1. (a)

    The INGSA distributed model confronts the difficulties that many platforms face, with the lack of a driving force which has enough authority across different constituencies to implement a set of projects fast enough to address the ever-changing relations between science and policy.

  2. (b)

    Understanding the implementation of ethically robust evidence cannot be based on a rigid normative framework with a simple list of rights and wrongs, but the advice must be adjusted to the diversity of culture and society, to the rapidly changing dynamics of scientific discoveries and endless policy demands which emerge at very different speeds with various implications for time lags.

Apart from INGSA, there are some more recent national and international mechanisms seeking to fill this space. This means that together with the fragmentation of knowledge producers we may soon have to face the proliferation of standards for knowledge translators and advisors who find the ears of policymakers. In reality, this is already the case.