NGOs play a better game when harnessing the opportunities to contribute to the Commission’s Better Regulation input.
I’ve looked at three Have Your Say Public Consultations on areas I know about but don’t work on.
I may have picked three odd examples. Some had mass public template submissions. I did not look at them as they tend to be ignored by policymakers and are evidence-barren.
The information NGOs brought to the table was of a higher quality and more persuasively presented.
In those three cases, they tended to use:
- Authoritative and independent studies
- Up-to-date data and trend analysis
- Data and evidence are visually well-presented
- Public evidence
- Far less anecdotal evidence
- Presentation of workable solutions
This does not surprise me.
I’ve worked for IFAW and WWF (although both a long time ago). IFAW was set up to bring about policy and political change. WWF is a conservation organisation that realized that it could only achieve its conservation goals by fixing public policy issues.
In both organisations, I realised that:
- Nothing could go out the door without the sign-off of the chief scientific advisor.
- The scientists called the shots.
- Considerable time and resources went into preparing state-of-the-art scientific research to plug gaps to help public policy making.
- They took the time to turn scientific research into clearly presented and visually compelling reports and studies.
- Plain English executive summaries for policymakers were mandatory.
- Scientific and technical experts were coached before they met officials and politicians.
- If the science and evidence did not support the preferred policy solution, that solution would have been dropped.
- Workable solutions were highlighted.
I checked with some officials who have received more feed-in from industry and NGOs. They agreed.