What Works Scotland is a new initiative to improve the way local areas in Scotland use evidence to make decisions about public service development and reform. What Works Scotland is a partnership project working with specific Community Planning Partnerships involved in the design and delivery of public services to:
- learn what is and what isn’t working in their local area
- encourage collaborative learning with a range of local authority, business, public sector and community partners
- better understand what effective policy interventions and effective services look like
- promote the use of evidence in planning and service delivery
- help organisations get the skills and knowledge they need to use and interpret evidence
- create case studies for wider sharing and sustainability
In addition other local and national partnerships will be developed within the case study areas and as priority topics are identified.
The Workplan 2014-2017 document outlines how WWS will achieve its aim of improving the way agencies in Scotland use evidence to make decisions about public service development, delivery and reform.
Laria in Scotland will be working directly with What Works Scotland on the Evidence into Action workstream: supporting the use of evidence in planning, delivering and developing public services during the life of the project, and developing a sustainable evidence ‘ecosystem’ beyond it.
This will involve creating methods to ensure evidence from published research local and national data and information, the voices of local communities and other sources, can be effectively used in planning and developing public services, and delivering evidence to support What Works Scotland collaborative action research projects. An Evidence Bank, and a Knowledge Broker Network will also be developed.
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