Origins Seminar

    May 20, 2010: Origins and CSPO will co-sponsor a lunchtime lecture on Effective Communication and Relationship Management in the Science-Policy Interface, by the assistant director of Australia’s Department of the Environment Office of Strategic Information and Environmental Reporting

Getting noticed! (for all the right reasons) Effective communication and relationship management in the science-policy interface.

    Abstract
    Among the typical results from workshops on evidence-based policy making and adaptive management, is the inevitable plea that communications and collaboration between scientists and policy makers need to improve in order to achieve more effective decisions about environmental management and sustainable use. Also inevitable, and unfortunately chronic, are two very different interpretations of what needs to change in order to improve relations. Policy makers tend to want scientists to change their ways and, for example, communicate results in more accessible terms. Likewise, scientists tend to want policy makers to change their ways and, for example, express their information needs in the form of testable hypotheses. The list of incongruities is long. For those who work with both scientists and policy makers toward application of information in decision making contexts, the intractable differences between the two perspectives are simply part of the daily grind; and as such are better acknowledged than ignored. Some very legitimate divides can be found in: operational and peer group contexts, planning and operational time frames, origins of problems, career structures and reward systems, cultural and intellectual perspectives, and the balance of knowledge vs. power in the workplace. In this seminar, Nancy Dahl-Tacconi provides colorful illustrations of these disparities from real world situations, and a summary of lessons and reflections on them drawn from years of working across the cultural divides that characterise the science-policy interface. There will also be opportunity to discuss strategies for overcoming a wide range of challenges in improving the utility and application of scientific information in bureaucratic and political decision processes.

    Nancy Dahl-Tacconi works with the Strategic Information and Environmental Reporting section of the Australian Government’s Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. In this seminar she reflects on experiences from years of working in the areas of science management and liaison, risk assessment, decision support, and program design and evaluation in academic and government settings.