Evidence based policy making is the holy grail in government circles, with the desire for it growing seemingly every week as governments around the world engage in seemingly gut-based decision making.

A recent paper published by Results for Development (RFD) explores the role evidence translators can play in ensuring that policy makers use evidence to underpin their decisions.

These evidence translators can come from a variety of domains, be it evidence producers, policy makers or even intermediaries such as journalists and consultants.  Their role is to identify, filter, interpret, adapt, contextualize and communicate data and evidence to make informed policy making easier.

The paper sheds some light on just who these translators are, and could be, and the various factors that influence their ability to promote the use of robust evidence in policy making.  It goes on to reveal that the work is increasingly vital, and without such translators, organizations often fail to engage in any kind of evidence based decision making.

“We began this research assuming that translators’ technical skills and analytical prowess would prove to be among the most important factors in predicting when and how evidence made its way into public sector decision making,” the authors say. “Surprisingly, that turned out not to be the case, and other ‘soft’ skills play a far larger role in translators’ efficacy than we had imagined.”

Key findings include:

• Translator credibility and reputation are crucial to the ability to gain access to policymakers and to promote the uptake of evidence.
• Political savvy and stakeholder engagement are among the most critical skills for effective translators.
• Conversely, analytical skills and the ability to adapt, transform and communicate evidence were identified as being less important stand-alone translator skills.
• Evidence translation is most effective when initiated by those in power or when translators place those in power at the center of their efforts.