Citizen Science & Policy Making Liz Richardson, University of Manchester New Forms of Discovery for Policy Making 19 -20 February 2015, University of Canberra
Warm up… • Write down up to three words that first spring to mind when you think about the policy approaches of: – academics – civil servants – practitioners – citizens
Doing Citizen Science - exercise 1. Tweet general reactions #newtools 4 policy 2. By yourself, write down (on giant post-it notes): - an area where public opinion seems to be contradictory and you want to open up debate - what circumstances, if any, Citizen Science might be preferable to conventional research - a policy area or policy issue which might benefit from crowd-sourced data 3. Share your answers, and decide on your group favourite 4. Rapid fire on ‘our favourite’ to plenary group 5. Collect in post-its
Citizen science has grabbed imaginations across the world
There is potential for wider application to public policy
Problem solving is undermined when we put different policy expertise into boxes
There additional challenges doing Citizen Science in the social sciences
Imaginative ways to open up the tools of social science to the public
High quality data from a light-touch approach “Nobody is going to make changes without some facts and figures. ”