This report is focused on four countries: the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Canada and provides a series of practical ideas for investments to improve the quality and use of evidence in policy design, implementation, and evaluation. It highlights the opportunities and challenges ahead, as the demand for and supply of evidence continue to grow in a world with complex policy challenges. 

It is a call to action for governments to collaborate more closely on evidence generation and utilisation. By pooling resources and expertise, countries can bridge the existing gaps in their evidence ecosystems, ultimately leading to more informed and effective public policies. 

The main recommendation is for countries to collaborate on evidence synthesis. The most promising avenue for evidence synthesis is Living Evidence Reviews (LERs), which are systematic reviews that are continuously updated. The authors propose ‘meta’ LERs are conducted across all areas of social policy to answer the questions that really matter to policymakers.

Recommendations

1. Establish a Shared Evaluation Fund across partner countries to ensure evaluation of promising interventions.
2. Promote standardised reporting and publication protocols to facilitate inter-governmental sharing of evaluated interventions.
3. Conduct evidence gap maps across priority policy areas to obtain an overarching view of the state of the evidence.
4. Prioritise the synthesis of this evidence into high-quality, comprehensive reviews, or meta-Living Evidence Reviews.
5. Streghten international public service professional networks to accelerate the transfer and adoption of best practices across countries.
6. Conduct research into effective translation and adoption, or ‘metascience’, to accelerate the transfer of evidence into policy and practice.