WIREDGOV

Blog posted By: Juliet Michaelson (October 8, 2013)

The Beyond GDP agenda – the idea that we need to correct the current bias in policymaking towards pursuing growth above all else – has gathered considerable pace in the last few years. Since the publication of the final report of the Stiglitz Commission in 2009, there has been a wave of activity, by governments and civil society, to develop better ways means of headline measurement.

The UK has been at the forefront with the Office for National Statistics’ Measuring National Well-being Programme, first launched in 2010, while the OECD – the organisation which brings together the world’s richest nations – has developed its Better Life Index. Numerous other countries have similar alternative measurement plans in development.

All this leads to the question – what real difference is this all making? The answer: probably not enough, yet. Certainly in the UK, as we reported this summer to the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry on the use of well-being evidence in policy-making:

“Current government action on the well-being agenda is best characterised as ‘pockets of activity’, with mainstreaming the use of well-being evidence across all policy-making representing a considerable challenge.”

That’s why we were delighted to get the opportunity to work on a tool explicitly designed to address this issue.

Oxfam Scotland launched their alternative headline measure of progress – the Humankind Index (HKI) – in 2011, which nef played a small role in helping to develop. The Index was based on an exercise which asked people from different communities across Scotland what mattered most to them. It has achieved considerable attention across different sectors of Scottish society and sparked a host of conversations about what genuine prosperity in Scotland would look like.

But Oxfam were determined to ensure its impact went further, to fundamentally change the way policy-makers thought about the decisions which are the focus of their working lives.

So they asked nef and Happiness Works to help develop the Oxfam Humankind Index policy assessment tool, which is being launched today. It is designed to encourage policy makers to consider a broader range of issues during policy design and development than they otherwise might, allowing them to rate their policies on whether they have a net positive, negative or neutral effect on the full set of factors measured by the HKI.

The tool is based on a simple website that guides users through a series of prompts about the policy they are working on. The results which the tool produces are not intended as a precise analysis or definitive screening assessment – instead the tool is simply designed to  expand thinking about the range of impacts a policy may have on people’s ability to live well in their communities.

While a primary audience for the tool is policy makers within and outside government, we expect that many others will also find it useful, including campaigners and community organisers. And while it’s designed for the Scottish policy context, it’s definitely worth a look for people based elsewhere.

Why not try it out now to find out how your top policy idea would contribute to the things that really matter?

Issues

Well-being