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Research at HWU in collaboration with economists at UCL, Toulouse and international financial institutions led to the development of a framework for analysing the relationship between company performance and the business environment in developing countries. The framework has been and is being used by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to analyse survey data on tens of thousands of firms. In the words of the Office of the Chief Economist of EBRD, the framework has enabled them to "identify interventions that policy makers should prioritize to improve the public infrastructure with which firms operate."
Professor Patrick Dunleavy, as Director of the LSE Public Policy Group (PPG), has led a research programme on digital era governance. The results of this programme, through published research, evidence to Parliament and direct consulting to government agencies (including the National Audit Office), have had a significant impact on the UK government's approach to the delivery of government services online. Specifically, the research has allowed the government to develop policies that have facilitated speedier and more effective digital changes, and increased the breadth and quality of public service delivery online.
LSE research played a key role in shaping the political and public debate around unpopular and ill-founded plans to introduce identity cards in the UK, showing the proposals to be unsafe, ineffective and costly. Plans for national biometric identity cards were scrapped by the coalition government in May 2010.
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett described the detailed, cross-disciplinary report from academics at LSE as having "changed the culture and atmosphere around, and attitudes towards, the scheme and its intention". An alternative, privacy-friendly identity policy is being developed in its place with LSE researchers playing a significant role in its development. Lessons from the UK continue to influence government identity policy in other countries including India, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Anglia Ruskin University's Professor Bourne leads the Vision Loss Experts Group (VLEG) which is part of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD. Comprising 79 leading ophthalmic epidemiologists from around the world, and carried out in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), VLEG compiled the most up-to-date statistics ever generated on the prevalence of global blindness, facilitating the analysis of trends and risk factors, and producing detailed future projections.
VLEG data have been described as "a critical contribution to our understanding of present and future health priorities for countries and the global community" (Editor-in-Chief, The Lancet, Dec 2012). The findings have directly impacted on healthcare policymakers and professionals, charities and economic analysts, both in the UK and overseas, increasing their awareness of global eye care issues. These users have applied this increased awareness at a:
a. Global level where the data have become a significant resource in health analyses by economists and healthcare planners such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Economic Forum (WEF), enabling these organisations to provide recommendations for eye-health policies and practices. These reports predict the socio-economic impact of visual impairment in the world and provide an insight into the economic return from investments in eye-health treatment programmes. These in turn have informed the development of healthcare planning nationally and internationally, including the Eye Health Strategy by Vision2020 Australia. In addition, the research findings were used by NGOs and opinion leaders in ophthalmology at the Congress of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), informing discussion of blindness prevention strategies. This led directly to the development of an Action Plan for the Prevention of Avoidable Blindness and Visual Impairment (2014-2019) by the WHO, which was endorsed by the 66th World Health Assembly. Furthermore, the World Bank, as part of its mission to alleviate poverty, has adopted the data to inform funding priorities for health care projects in developing countries.
b. National level where VLEG findings drew attention to the absence of reliable data, subsequently leading to the commissioning of a detailed countrywide National Eye Survey of Trinidad and Tobago (NESTT), worth £350,000, in order to identify and address eye-health priorities.
Research by Professor Iain McLean and his team has demonstrated that for more than 30 years, the process of distributing public expenditure to the regions of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales was hampered by inadequate data and inappropriate policy targets. Since 2008, this work has had two principal impacts: (1) it has informed a change in the Treasury's methods of collecting and calculating regional expenditure data, information which is used to guide policy across all government departments; and (2) it has contributed to the acceptance of needs-based regional funding as an appropriate policy target, and has laid the basis for a fundamental reform of the funding arrangements for Scotland and Wales.
Because corruption involves illegal activities of public officials, data about the scale and objects of bribery is not readily available. Without such evidence, policymakers are handicapped in identifying points for effective intervention. Rose's survey research on post-Communist countries developed innovative measures to monitor the payment of bribes by citizens for public services. Transparency International (TI) is the world's leading non-governmental organisation campaigning against corruption, and it has incorporated the survey methodology in its key research tool, the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB). From 2008 to 2013 Transparency International has conducted three major rounds of Global Corruption Barometer surveys that interviewed upwards of 450,000 people in more than 110 countries on every continent. Results have been disseminated worldwide through the 90 national chapters of Transparency International. Rose's expertise in sampling has also been used to improve value-for-money expenditure on GCB surveys in the many developing countries it covers.
Both the introduction of legislation in England and Wales and the mandatory recording of interviews with criminal suspects has led to an increased examination and understanding of what happens in such interviews. Such studies have led to a prescribed framework, which following its implementation, has led to further study concerning its efficacy in gathering a reliable account. This case study, demonstrates how (through dissemination of the research and through working with practitioners) particular research findings concerning approaches to the investigative interviewing of suspects have influenced the practices of those users of the research both in this country and overseas.
The British Household Panel Study (BHPS) is a longitudinal survey that has followed a representative sample of individuals since the early 1990s. The resource is used routinely by government departments (e.g. DWP, HMRC, Cabinet Office) and third-sector bodies (e.g. Children's Society) for their research and for monitoring progress towards policy targets. The data's longitudinal character has helped to transform government departments' understanding of the goals of social policies, and allowed them to redefine targets in ways not possible without the BHPS. Examples include DWP's monitoring of persistent poverty, which uses BHPS data to estimate the probability of an individual living in poverty for several successive years.
Open Data has lowered barriers to data access, increased government transparency and delivered significant economic, social and environmental benefits. Southampton research and leadership has led to the UK Public Data Principles, which were enshrined in the UK Government Open Data White Paper, and has led to data.gov.uk, which provides access to 10,000 government datasets. The open datasets are proving means for strong citizen engagement and are delivering economic benefit through the £10 million Open Data Institute. These in turn have placed the UK at the forefront of the global data revolution: the UK experience has informed open data initiatives in the USA, EU and G8.
UEL's International Centre for the Study of the Mixed Economy of Childcare (ICMEC) researches service costs and equity risks associated with the marketisation and privatisation of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Its interdisciplinary research, which is frequently cited in national and international policy documents, has contributed to policy debate within the European Union, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and other supra-national bodies, and informed the UK Government's development of ECEC and child poverty policies.