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Frank Bongers, together with Dries Verlet (Statistic Flanders), has published an article in the Flemish Journal of Public Management (VTOM, 2020, no. 1, p. 25-34) about the flow of information from research and society to policy in a broader sense. There is a rise in a more critical public opinion that increasingly relies on alternative sources (such as social media) and the struggle of governments to deal with this. Additionally, there is a declining faith in experts, as well as the equalisation of lay and expert knowledge. This prompted a discussion within a working group of the Political Science Conference 2019 on how information and policy intersect. The article provides an overview of key factors that influence the use (or lack thereof) of information in policy. We discuss challenges related to the changing types of data emerging and the need for a data ecosystem through which they can reach policy makers.
You can request the article from Frank Bongers.