Building the Whitehall Bridgehead

The Centre completed its series of Whitehall Consultations at the Royal Society in London on 4 March, continuing the process of building the bridgehead in the policy community begun in January and February this year.

Challenged by a Permanent Secretary's question - "to what problem is CSaP the solution?" - the meeting considered how the Centre can make a difference by bringing together people across departments and disciplines to create engagement and discussion that could not otherwise happen in Whitehall. Scientific advice is available in many different ways, but some "cross-cutting" issues need expertise which is not available within particular departments. Similarly, some issues require a multi-disciplinary approach from the scientific community.

The Centre has the opportunity to break free from the great botanical legacy of classification, separation and compartmentalisation, and create an innovative environment for talking, listening and sharing stories "in a bubble", away from the political constraints and sensitivities of the daily Whitehall routine. There is a role for a third party hub able to convene the different constituencies - both the most and the least scientifically-driven departments, together with the Treasury, policy-influencers and scientists from industry, and the top researchers from Cambridge and academia worldwide. The most difficult issues, after all, do not sit within the remits of single departments, and it needs to be possible to engage with "unknown unknowns" and determine where uncertainty is of relevance to policy making.

Participants in the meeting emphasised the value of fresh perspectives and independent views, particularly in the early stages of policy formation, and the need to engage with blue sky research into fundamental phenomena. Brian Collins (CSA in BIS and the Department for Transport) cited the example of basic research in quantum optics carried out within the Ministry of Defence; in response, David Cleevely (Founding Director of CSaP) argued that failing to spot the relevance of phenomena such as quantum entanglement and its relevance to encryption could lead not only to missed opportunities for economic exploitation, but also to profound security and other risks.

Whitehall, as the senior civil servants emphasised, is increasingly open to engaging in such discussions - concerns over revealing vulnerabilities would once have kept such debates closed, but the benefits of sharing problems and insights are now recognised. The meeting also welcomed the CSaP's proposals to generate a shortlist of the "25 key questions" about how scientific evidence can and should influence policy, and to play the long game by developing relationships with the young civil servants who will be the leaders in policy making in twenty or thirty years.

The conclusions from the Whitehall consultations will now feed into the design of the Centre's workshop and fellowship programmes in the coming months. Both the Policy Fellows Programme (bringing civil servants to Cambridge for brief intensive visits with long-term follow-on) and the Whitehall placements programme (seconding academics into the civil service for focussed projects) will be designed around the clear demand requirements emerging from these discussions. At the same time, the Centre and its Interest Groups will seek early opportunities to run cross-cutting workshops of the kind which policy makers are clearly keen to engage with.

Related news stories

Building the Bridgehead (Feb 2010)

Building the Bridgehead (Jan 2010)