Policies often fail to achieve their intentions. While much has been written about this, and how to avoid it, knowledge and insight is somewhat siloed. The authors of this report undertook a review to understand the latest thinking on the policy-implementation gap and identify how insights from implementation science can be integrated into policy work. They reviewed studies of policy implementation and policy resources that offer guidance for integrating an implementation focus into policy-making and delivery.

This report describes seven implementation support approaches, and their role in reducing policy ambiguity and increasing alignment to context. It outlines how and when these can be employed to mitigate policy failure – and show that it is possible to make up ground or compensate later for approaches that were not employed sufficiently at earlier stages.