Final Report Summary - BRAINPOOL (BRinging Alternative INdicators into POLicy)
Executive Summary:
Economic growth, on its own, cannot deliver what society now wants: sustainability, social justice and improved well-being. Institutions such as Eurostat, the OECD, the World Bank, National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and others, are responding to the desire from governments and civil society to consider a more nuanced set of economic policy objectives, that is broader than maximising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and market efficiency. The BRAINPOoL project’s activities have been directed at making sense of the array of actors, aims, indicators and initiatives that have emerged from these efforts with a focus on exploring the barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy making and how these can be overcome. Beyond GDP indicators are defined as: “those indicators and indicator sets that have been proposed as necessary and central to the measurement of societal progress in a broad sense, other than those indicators, such as GDP or the unemployment rate, that are already playing this role.” In terms of their use in policy we do not simply mean their use in parallel with traditional economic indicators but as part of an integrated policy process that also informs a more holistic approach to economic policy making. The BRAINPOoL project explored the question of why some indicators manage to achieve success while others fall short. We identified a clear set of success factors which include the need for:
Salience for decision makers. Indicators are successful when they can demonstrate real relevance for policy or strategy, measuring things that can be influenced by policy.
Salience for a broader audience. Producing a simple, attractive message that links to a meaningful concept while avoiding certain ‘taboo’ words and concepts is key to impacting a broad audience.
Credibility. Data quality and the appearance of neutrality continue to best routes to overcoming resistance and achieving credibility.
Relationships. The importance of relationship-building, including developing indicators in partnership with the audience at whom they are targeted is critical, including in policy where face-to-face channels and active engagement is vital.
The project analysed the key barriers to using new measures of societal progress in a broad sense to guide policy and how these hurdles can be overcome. We found that although there are a number of technical barriers to do with data quality and lack of adequate resources, these are really only symptoms of low current political priority and of more fundamental underlying barriers:
Political barriers, including perceived lack of democratic legitimacy, lack of a clear and compelling narrative underpinning new indicators, and lack of clear political imperative for change (due to low public awareness of new indicators).
Indicator barriers, including disagreements over methodology and a perceived lack of theoretical foundation underpinning new indicators (particularly composite indicators of adjusted GDP).
Process and structural barriers, including organisational and analytical challenges posed by a more holistic, multi-dimensional view of progress; institutional resistance to change, and a failure of indicator producers to connect with the priorities of potential users.
As a result of many interactions between the involved actor groups that were organized during the project’s lifetime, the project produced a joint vision report (A vision on application of Beyond GDP indicators in policy making), a joint action plan or ‘roadmap’ to overcome barriers, a final report and a concise summary report, with the aim to fuel the actor groups as good as possible beyond the lifetime of the project. To maximize the potential impact of Brainpool’s products, a workshop was organised the day after the BRAINPOoL final conference to develop actions for taking forward some of the recommendations. At the workshop working groups were formed, and it was agreed that there was value in coordinating the work of these groups. The new economics foundation (nef), one of the BRAINPOoL partners, undertook to provide the secretariat for the groups.
Project Context and Objectives:
In last years, Beyond GDP indicators have rapidly risen up the political agenda and enjoyed greater public awareness. High profile initiatives have included nef’s Happy Planet Index, launched in 2006, the EU’s Beyond GDP initiative – starting with the Beyond GDP conference in 2007, the OECD’s Measuring the Progress of Societies project, and in 2009, the publication of the recommendations of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, led by economists Stiglitz, Sen & Fitoussi.
Despite a growing number of critiques of GDP, and the emergence of an impressive array of
alternatives, GDP maintains a central place amongst policy makers, planning offices, media and other target groups. Some data on what may be considered Beyond GDP indicators are being collected by official statistics offices, but they appear not to be considered in policy-making, or are given a peripheral role.
The assumption of the project is on the one hand that a lack of fruitful interaction between producers and users of Beyond GDP indicators hampers the creation of a joint context for interpretation of indicators and their meaning. On the other hand, the assumption is that indicators, if effectively embedded in the policy making process, are an effective transmission mechanism to connect research and policy. The central motivation for this project is that indicator users need to be aware of the knowledge that is currently out there. And, vice versa, indicator producers need to be aware of the context(s) in which their indicators will be put to use. Ideally indicators are developed as part of an interactive process with multiple feedbacks. These feedbacks will ensure that user demands are taken up in the production of alternative indicators. All of this needs to be understood as part of a change process, which will need to overcome various barriers which currently prevent the extensive research that exists from being acted on, not only a lack knowledge.
The BRAINPOoL project approaches this problem as a mismatch between demand and supply and aims to solve this via action research and brokerage activities. This is done by:
Objective 1. Structuring the research reservoir on Beyond GDP indicators.
The project will synthesize an overview of Beyond GDP indicators and the research that underpins them.
Objective 2. Increasing the understanding of the user context of Beyond GDP indicators.
The demand side of alternative indicators is less well studied than the supply-side. The demand for Beyond GDP indicators and the factors that influence this demand should be better understood to be able to match demand and supply of beyond GDP indicators in a better way.
Objective 3. Stimulating and improving user-producer interactions.
The BRAINPOoL project will create many opportunities for producers and users of Beyond GDP indicators to meet, discuss and relate to each other at different levels – both in one-off meetings and in more in-depth and purposive engagements. These activities will ensure that joint learning is facilitated between the groups.
Objective 4. Consolidating and structuring a follow-up beyond the duration of BRAINPOoL.
To fully succeed in its aims, the project must lead to developments that continue beyond the duration of its funded activities. Several actions are taken to ensure this continuation, like the preparation of a joint action plan between users and producers of Beyond-GDP indicators. Throughout the project linkages are established with relevant target groups, such as policy makers on different levels, statistical offices, planning agencies, and other stakeholders.
Project Results:
1. Introduction
This report summarises the main findings, results and conclusions of the BRAINPOoL project (Bringing Alternative Indicators into Policy). BRAINPOoL is funded through the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration, and seeks to help accelerate the use of ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators in policy-making. It is primarily a knowledge brokerage project working by helping the producers and promoters of Beyond GDP indicators and the potential users of these indicators come together, understand one another, and identify actions to promote the use of Beyond GDP-indicators in policy making.
The first stage of the project explored the arena through the perspective of indicator producers and promoters – cataloguing the various initiatives, understanding the producers’ intentions, and learning about the indicators’ successes or otherwise in achieving some form of impact in policy, the media and elsewhere.
In the second stage of the project we took up the perspective of the potential users of Beyond GDP indicators – working to understand several selected national and supranational organisational contexts, and identifying the barriers to and opportunities for demand for Beyond GDP indicators.
In the third stage we took a closer look at how different alternative indicators are being used within seven specific organisations and contexts at different geographical levels, from the local to the supranational, bringing producers and potential users together. We worked with the OECD, the Welsh Government, the City of Rotterdam (The Netherlands), the City of Chrudim (Czech Republic), the British Business Bank (United Kingdom), the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU, Germany), and the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. In each of these case studies, we sought to identify a problem that Beyond GDP indicators might help solve, and explored the steps and barriers to be overcome towards them playing such a role.
The fourth stage comprised of knowledge brokerage activities which brought together a diverse group of stakeholders identified as being key to accelerating the use of alternative indicators. A two day workshop was held to verify the drivers and barriers identified in previous BRAINPOoL work, and develop a ‘vision report’ and ‘action plan’ identifying the steps and actions needed to help overcome barriers to the use of indicators that can balance the use of GDP in policy-making.
1.1 Methodology
A wide variety of complementary research tasks and actions provided the basis for the results presented in this report. One of the more experimental aspects of the BRAINPOoL project is that our work has moved from rather classical empirical analysis to encompass more innovative ‘action research’ and brokerage activities and finally the co-development of what could be called ‘policy strategy’ with some of the actors we engaged. In brief this progression of work included:
- Extensive desk research, literature reviews and analysis of institutional documents.
- Widespread structured and non-structured interviews with indicator producers and users across Europe and at international fora.
- Studies on the institutional contexts of Beyond GDP indicators in specific EU-member countries, as well as at the level of selected international and European organizations through ‘road shows’ (in-house workshops).
- Hands-on work with policy agencies (at supra-national, national, regional and local levels) on the issues and barriers they face in using or promoting alternative indicators through tailored case studies and seminars.
- A two-day knowledge-brokerage workshop for policy makers, economists and statisticians to validate the barriers, identify best practice and co-create a vision and agenda for future Beyond GDP work.
- A final conference focusing on how to achieve both a Beyond GDP narrative that can win electoral support, and the integrated, innovative policy-making that is needed for Beyond GDP indicators to influence policy.
1.2 What do we mean by ‘Beyond GDP’?
The term ‘Beyond GDP’ suggests those indicators that are providing some information that GDP currently excludes. But it is necessary to underline that ‘Beyond GDP’ does not simply mean the limited additional use of environmental and social indicators. If this were the case, there would be no issue to investigate, since of course environmental and social indicators are used in environmental and social policy making. If they are to have the impact necessary to define new objectives for society, change our policy goals and result in ‘better’ outcomes, Beyond GDP indicators are going to have to be used in at least some contexts where GDP is currently used, either as integrated or complementary decision-making tools or as replacements.
We emphasise this because during our research we found that many statisticians felt that there was nothing new about Beyond GDP, after all social and environmental variables had been measured for decades. This suggested that they did simply equate ‘Beyond GDP’ with ‘social and environmental’.
Instead, for our purposes, as well as embodying a certain vision about the quality and sustainability of our way of life, ‘Beyond GDP’ refers to a particular way an indicator is or should be used. We therefore defined Beyond GDP indicators as:
“those indicators and indicator sets that have been proposed as necessary and central to the measurement of societal progress in a broad sense, other than those indicators, such as GDP or the unemployment rate, that are already playing this role.”
We believe that creating agreement for a definition such as this, that is less about indicators themselves and more about how, where and why people propose they are used and what measurements are really important for societal progress, will contribute positively to the understanding and diffusion of Beyond GDP indicators.
In this report we will use the term ‘alternative indicators’ to mean ‘Beyond GDP indicators’ and use both terms interchangeably.
1.3 What is this project addressing?
It is now widely agreed that the intermediate objectives that have dominated economic policy for the last 40 years and more – maximizing GDP and market efficiency – are no longer adequate goals for society. Over the last decade it has become clear to a steadily widening group that growth on its own cannot deliver what a broad coalition now wants: sustainability, social justice and improved well-being. Instead, we need to ask how efficient different forms of economic and other societal activity are at delivering these desirable outcomes. To the extent that growth is desirable, it needs to be ‘good growth’.
The question then becomes how to achieve changes to economic policy making consistent with these changed priorities. One part of the answer is new measures of progress that reduce the predominance of GDP: a necessary, although obviously not sufficient, condition.
Increasingly institutions such as Eurostat, the OECD, the World Bank, National Statistics Offices (NSOs) and others are responding to the desire of governments and civil society to at least consider a more nuanced set of economic policy objectives than growth pure and simple. At the same time NGOs – that do not consider the existing official attempts sufficient – are using alternative indicators as an advocacy tool, and seeking more radical societal change that promotes a quality of human life and levels of well-being that is consistent with the carrying capacity of the earth’s ecosystems.
The BRAINPOoL project’s goals are necessarily multi-layered but all our activities have been directed at making sense of the array of actors, aims, indicators and initiatives that have emerged from these activities.
We have therefore attempted to take a broad view of the whole indicator cycle from indicator production towards final use in policy making, as well as the processes that don’t fit this pattern. We have looked at the emergence of new indicators, categorising the diverse types, differing aims and varying levels of success and impact. We have focused on gaining in-depth knowledge of the different types of demand for alternative indicators across different target groups and crucially for a brokerage project investigating the reasons for a ‘lack of demand’.
Some, but not all, of the activity around alternative indicators is effective at having a ‘real world’ impact, that is, helping policy makers, and those influencing policy makers, crystallise their objectives, assess their performance, and as a result change and improve what they do. So we have also spent time assessing what the barriers are to using new measures of societal progress in a broad sense to guide policy and how these hurdles can be overcome.
1.4 Why is this important?
The sixty years since the creation of national accounting systems with gross domestic product (GDP) as the central indicator have revealed a variety of inadequacies in both the metric itself and the ability of GDP and economic growth to tackle fundamental problems in society. While many people correctly argue that GDP was never intended to measure economic welfare, there is widespread ‘maximalist’ (mis)use of GDP (by economists, politicians, and the media) as a proxy for ‘success’ or ‘failure’ at a national level.
The questions BRAINPOoL is tackling are worth addressing to the extent that there is a bias in policy making towards prioritising GDP growth above other objectives, and to the extent that this bias is exacerbated by the prominence of the GDP metric itself. In particular the idea that the ability to maximise GDP growth defines ‘economic competence’, perceptions of which influence economic advice and drive elections, which in turn create strong incentives to maximise GDP.
The bias towards prioritising GDP growth and efficient markets is particularly damaging given the pervasive scale and scope of current market failures and damaging externalities, suggesting two interdependent challenges:
- the need for a new headline measure of progress (or small set of such measures) that can balance GDP and thus help define and guide a more balanced political programme, and
- the need for a more balanced political programme itself; this can be characterised neutrally as one that involves better management of trade-offs than in the past (i.e. less bias in favour of growth) leading to better quality growth (i.e. growth that is equitable, sustainable and results in high levels of well-being).
BRAINPOoL is concerned with both of these – using ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators in policy making means ‘balanced’ policy making. As already noted it is important to emphasise that ‘balanced’ does not just mean the adoption of social and environmental goals in parallel with economic goals (experience tells us that economic objectives tend to trump other ones) but rather a more integrated approach to economic and other policy making.
Beyond GDP indicators appear at two points in this model: as ultimate outcome measures, measures of well-being now and in the future), and as measures of the drivers of these outcomes. This corresponds to the double role that GDP plays: as a proxy for welfare, and as a measure of output. In other words the indicators could play two roles in the policy process: defining the ultimate objectives of policy, and defining the intermediate objectives of policy.
The key point is that what we measure does affect the choices we make and if our measurements are flawed or incomplete, decisions are likely to be distorted. Thus the choice between promoting GDP and tackling income inequality or protecting the environment may be a false choice, once the negative costs to society of environmental degradation or inequality are appropriately included in our measurement of economic performance.
Without successfully merging these currently parallel processes we are in no position to understand whether the continuing commitment to economic growth is, or is not, taking us in the right direction; towards well-being and genuine progress for societies, both for current and future generations.
2. Understanding the supply, influence and success of Beyond GDP indicators
Interest in Beyond GDP indicators has grown rapidly in the last decade, at least partly in reaction to the growing complexity and number of interlinked social and environmental crises that the world is facing. A broad variety of alternative indicators reflecting trends in the state of the social and physical environment have been developed offering new signposts for the orientation of our societies. Ideally, this information expands alternatives, clarifies choices and provides decision makers with important functions such as monitoring progress made towards fulfilling policy goals.
In reality, however, despite their many useful applications in both defining the intermediate objectives of policy (policy drivers) and in measuring ultimate outcomes (e.g. well-being/sustainability), the number and diversity of alternative indicators has made it difficult for their relevance and meaning to be appreciated. Decision makers therefore often still lack the broad-based information needed for ‘good’ decision making. In fact the very diversity or ‘over-abundance’ of Beyond GDP indicators is cited as one of the reasons that has prevented any single alternative indicator to emerge as a serious counterbalance to the dominance of GDP.
This abundance can cause both competition between producers of indicators and confusion from potential users. Concentrating efforts on increasing the supply of scientific data, there is a danger that academics, statisticians and NGOs may not be producing information considered relevant or useful by decision makers, and may simply be producing too much of the ‘wrong’ kind of information. On the other hand, due to a general lack of fruitful interactions between statisticians and democratic representatives, actual and potential users are likely to have specific information needs that go unmet.
During the early phase of the project we therefore considered a number of ways indicators can be usefully classified to increase clarity. These included:
- Level of impact (international, national, local) – Indicator providers should develop and promote indicators for a particular spatial and geopolitical scale. The same indicator may have different meaning in different contexts or when applied on different scales. A national average value or global figure can mask regional disparities or significant inequities between societal groups and patterns evident at one level of resolution can be lost at lower or higher levels. Some issues are affected by regional inputs and require regional action in order to be addressed effectively.
- Indicator domains (environmental, social, economic) – Beyond GDP indicators are often designed to shed light on the development of human, social and economic systems able to be sustained into the future and be kept in harmony with the biophysical systems of the planet. They should thus provide information on one or more of these domains, not neglecting the important links between them.
- Indicator approaches (subjective, objective) – Beyond GDP indicators are supposed to measure characteristics or processes of the human-environment system. Specifying the characteristics of the system or entity can be very subjective (in some cases political, philosophical and/or cultural differences may prevent a wider consensus). It is important to realise that science cannot (always) validate the goals set for the system, but it can validate the ability of the chosen indicators to measure the system characteristics properly.
- Indicator types (single indicator, set/dashboard, aggregated, composite) – Beyond GDP indicators are truly multi-purpose and are thus necessarily multi-structure. We will explore the merits of these different approaches later in this report.
- Envisaged users – politicians/policy makers, the public, specific experts – Indicators are by definition communication tools and it is the capacity of the indicator to reach its target audience that to a large extent determines its use and potential impact. Some users need simple, structured information (voters, non-specialist media, and decision makers), others require an intermediate level of detail (local government, policy implementers, non-government organizations, funding bodies, and industries), while statisticians and academics may need highly technical data.
- Link to GDP (adjusting GDP, “replacing” GDP, supplementing GDP) – the realization that GDP is a measure of economic quantity, not economic quality or welfare has led to (i) indexes that ‘correct’ GDP by incorporating a variety of economic, social or environmental factors which are not included in the conventional measure (e.g. Genuine Progress Indicator); (ii) indexes that do not use GDP (e.g. Ecological Footprint) and (iii) indexes that include GDP (Human Development Index).
2.1 Indicator producers: intentions versus ‘use’ of alternative indicators
Through wide-ranging interviews with indicator promoters the project identified nine key categories that describe their intentions. These included influencing the public, enhancing knowledge, pursuing democratic goals, providing tools for others and encouraging data collection. By far the most important goal, however, was to influence policy, with an important distinction between indicators associated with broad ‘macro-economic’ objectives and indicators aimed at informing specific finer-grained ‘micro’ policy decisions.
Beyond these intentions we also looked at the actual ‘use’ of indicators and as other studies have found, we noted a number of different types:
Thus instrumental use of indicators describes situations where indicators are seen as objective information tools to improve policy-making. Typically, the discourse used in this model is about solving problems and providing information. An indicator has an influence when it is ‘used’ directly by a policy maker and this consciously influences their decisions.
Conceptual use, on the other hand, sees the prime value of the indicator to be more intangible and less about their actual direct use. In this model, indicators influence how policy makers think through a process of ‘enlightenment’. Indicators (or indeed the framework they are placed in) might affect how decision makers define problems, or provide new perspectives on problems.
Finally political use encompasses three interesting sub-categories:
Legitimisation use – where indicators are used to justify or bolster a decision which has already been taken. Where the indicators that are successful tend to be ones that provide the desired message. This is also called strategic use.
Tactical use – quite a specific use of indicators, whereby decisions are postponed or avoided with the excuse that data is being awaited. The content of the indicator is actually of little relevance.
Symbolic use – whereby indicators are being used to convey a message or present an image.
2.2 Influences: What counts as success?
From BRAINPOoL’s interviews and workshops, we can conclude that many policy actors believe that alternative indicators are most liable to achieve ‘success’ (in terms of becoming broadly adopted by a critical mass of mainstream policy actors or catalysing a change public policies) once they meet a set of criteria which many in the Beyond GDP field would regard as lacking any real innovation.
We found persistent perceptions among mainstream policy actors that if alternative indicators are to succeed their methodologies must be consistent with the current economic model and be directly linkable to existing economic instruments and tools (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, resource efficiency).
In the business context, it was suggested that to be adopted alternative indicators should be compatible with traditional managerial and accounting processes, and hence the goals of profit and competitiveness. If indicators are viewed as helping to serve, enhance or support pre-existing growth objectives, they are more likely to be considered as desirable.
2.3 Achieving Impact
Notwithstanding the difficulties, almost all indicator producers we surveyed want to influence or be useful to policy makers and thus ultimately have a real world impact, although we identified a number of other forms of influence that indicators can have. These influences may ultimately contribute to real societal change (or act as stepping stones to achieving that change) and can be summarised as follows:
- Internal influence and external reputation of the organisation
- Influence with the rest of the Beyond GDP movement and on data collection processes
- Influence with opinion formers: media, education, academics
- Influence with the public
- Influence on policy making and assessment processes
- Influence on specific policies; influence on practice
Despite most of the indicator initiatives we studied being less than ten years old, there were a great variety of influences these indicator initiatives believe they have achieved, which demonstrates that Beyond GDP indicators are achieving some traction in policy.
2.4 Media impact
The media attractiveness of an indicator is important, not least for politicians hoping to reach wide audiences and influence public opinion, and was taken in this project to represent one objective proxy for indicator impact. The BRAINPOoL project conducted an extensive media survey of a short list of 16 indicators that spanned all the major indicator categories we had identified.
The main conclusion is that, in the arena of media, it is particularly important that indicators deliver simple and meaningful concepts. The Human Development Index (HDI) and Ecological Footprint (EF) are by some margin the most popular international-level Beyond GDP indicators. What they measure may be complicated, but both indicator sets manage to illustrate a complex reality using a single figure that allows straightforward trend monitoring and comparisons between countries.
3. Understanding demand for Beyond GDP indicators
Given the significant variations in the uptake and impacts that different Beyond GDP indicators achieve, and the relative lack of clarity surrounding how different policy actors perceive and react to the ‘Beyond GDP’ approach one of the project’s key tasks was trying to identify and describe the different aspects of ‘demand’ for Beyond GDP indicators.
The BRAINPOoL project explored how key actual and potential users understand and relate to alternative indicators, the range of success factors and drivers which determine the uptake of indicators into policy and the various institutional and other barriers that need to be overcome for this to happen. Of course ‘demand’, and indeed, ‘supply’ are rather crude concepts compared to the reality of the production, diffusion, use and impact of indicators. Our research quite clearly illustrates that the uptake of indicators depends on a much more complex set of mechanisms than a simple reaction to the state of demand. Furthermore, very few of the actors we interviewed considered themselves to be a “user” or “producer” of alternative indicators. Most of them appear to be somewhere in the middle of the process – as part of demand and supply, production and use – and uncomfortable with a reductive term to describe the whole landscape of processes surrounding new indicators. With this proviso, there are a range of the projects key findings that can be usefully summarised under the title of ‘demand’. Several types of demand were identified.
3.1 Societal demand … for new models
We found little evidence for strong ‘bottom up’ societal demand for indicators themselves, which is not surprising given the complexity of these tools and their almost exclusive construction by experts. What certainly exists in parts of civil society is a strong appetite for a more or less extensive transformation of both our current ‘world vision’ and of the underlying socio-political system itself. The general public, of course, does not think in terms of indicators, but in terms of human dimensions and societal change that impacts their daily lives. Scientists, NGOs and governmental bodies are increasingly basing their work in response to this genuine and often widespread demand for solutions to various environmental, social and economic problems that face society. Their work can therefore be viewed as a technical interpretation of this demand.
The fact that civil society is impacting the debate reveals an important evolution in a field that was once almost the exclusive preserve of statisticians and economists. A certain popular unease about the validity of the economic system, influenced by the economic crisis, an increasing awareness regarding the need for sustainability and the growing influence of the participatory approach has led actors within the debate to progressively take into account the broader needs of society. In this way civil society plays a role as an informal stakeholder that affects broad trends, without being directly involved in the production or promotion of alternative indicators.
So, while ‘bottom up’ demand is rarely for indicators themselves the strong call for societal change that can be identified should be taken into account in the construction of new indicators which can be used to measure and enable the changes that are being demanded. Civil society should certainly play a more central role in future debates about what ‘societal progress’ or a ‘good life’ actually mean and the types of indicators we use to measure these concepts.
3.2 Political demand … for new measures
The transformational vision seen in some parts of civil society is unsurprisingly not common amongst political elites and demand for Beyond GDP indicators tends to come when they are seen to be compatible with the status quo or incremental change (e.g. enhancing well-being at work to support profit maximisation). However, an increasing political demand has been observed for a single, simple, yet multi-dimensional indicator – despite the obstacles faced by the creation of such synthesised tools – and better environmental indicators. Political demand also tends to be strongest at the local and regional levels, due in part to the objectives of sustainable development and the relative proximity of local leaders and civil society amongst other factors. Where political demand does exist it is often either associated with pressure from civil society, or is strongly dependent on the existence of a legal or regulatory framework mandating the use of alternative indicators e.g. as part of obligatory evaluation procedures or national sustainable development strategies in which indicators often have a specific role to play. While some actors we interviewed suggested that the problematic over-supply of alternative indicators should not be an issue for decision makers who are used to a profusion of data, there is still not widespread high-level use of the existing initiatives. While Beyond GDP indicators can be useful both at the macro guiding and micro decision-making levels, we found that they are more likely to serve a conceptual, assessment or communication role rather than a role in decision-making, where they are often applied too late in the process to have real influence. This is consistent with the views of indicator producers we interviewed who doubted that any policies would be implemented as a result of an indicator that weren’t already part of the ideology of the decision maker in question. This is also consistent with various examples we encountered of very specific uses of indicators connected to very particular user requirements, and also to the common belief that politicians are liable to only use indicators that make themselves look good (or make the government look bad in the case of opposition parties). On a more positive note, we found that there is real connection between an indicators ability to transport new concepts and their eventual political impact. Indicators can often first deliver conceptual change without which subsequent instrumental (political) change could not happen.
3.3 Radical vs Status quo
The different types of demand seen at the societal and political level is indicative of a broader divergence about aims in the wider Beyond GDP movement, with the proliferation of new actors involved guaranteeing the existence of a diversity of aims and ambitions. These new actors, while all questioning GDP to some extent, hold very different expectations about the outcomes of the movement, ranging somewhere between two extremes:
- The replacement of GDP with another aggregated indicator, with the goal of reassessing the link between measurement and the evolution of society. Here, calls for ‘beyond GDP’ indicators are essentially calls for a ‘beyond GDP’ society.
- This contrasts with a stance that favours an evolution of the current economic system, rather than the development of an alternative vision, with the addition of new indicators alongside GDP to support the goal of extending the existing statistical system.
3.4 Demand for democratic legitimacy
In many of the discourses that the BRAINPOoL project analysed there was agreement about the lack of adequate democratic legitimacy and public participation, particularly in the construction and development phases of Beyond GDP indicators. We also encountered general demands for wider access to statistical information. The recurrence of such demands strongly contrasts with the actual context in which Beyond GDP indicators are commonly formulated: very technical debates, with the involvement of high-level actors, in frequently costly processes, at events and conferences without media coverage and with poor civil society participation. The contrast between the expectations around democratisation and the current reality needs to be seriously addressed if the public is to have any sense of engagement or ownership of this agenda. We address this point more fully in our ‘recommendations’ section.
3.5 Lack of demand
Generally, however, we found that the use of Beyond GDP indicators remains weak, both within institutions and in the policy making process. This weak demand can be explained in terms of:
- A lack belief in the need to move away from GDP and a lack of knowledge of the alternatives amongst potential users (‘user factors’)
- The difficulties of moving away from GDP in the current political context (‘policy factors’)
- Concerns about the quality, robustness and neutrality Beyond GDP indicators themselves (‘indicator factors’)
We will explore some of these ‘reasons for non-demand’ in detail in the following chapter on ‘Barriers to the use of alternative indicators in policy making’ but it is worth highlighting a range of them here.
No clear belief in the innovation presented by Beyond GDP
On the one hand, while there is a general acknowledgement of GDP’s weaknesses, we observed that many statisticians feel there is nothing new about Beyond GDP indicators and that they do not offer any social or statistical innovation. Furthermore, they point out that GDP is often used to inform areas for which it was not created and was never meant to measure welfare. The problem, as they see it, is not with the metric itself, but how it is used and broadcast to the general public, particularly by the media. As such, there is a perception from statisticians in particular that the Beyond GDP debate has been blown out of all proportion, because they produce all sorts of indicators, not just GDP. The recurrence of debate is often not fully understood by statisticians which explains their reluctance to engage in the issue.
A belief that the well-known defects of GDP can be lived with
While mainstream actors (not linked to the Beyond GDP agenda) in BRAINPOoL’s workshops did mention the lack of correlation between GDP and subjective well-being in rich countries and the negative environmental impacts of growth, in most cases these limitations were perceived quite superficially. If GDP’s methodological defects are questioned at all, the consistency of its use in decision-making is not. Most of these actors are thus in favour of “completing” GDP rather than replacing it as they believe it represents a robust measurement system that can be compatible with many environmental goals and remains a good proxy measure for progress.
A belief growth remains pivotal
Ultimately, even if GDP is not seen as a good proxy for welfare, it is seen to be measuring something that is so central to the current societal model that it needs to remain in a central place. Thus, most mainstream actors we encountered could not entertain the possibility of organising economic and societal activities according to an alternative indicator to GDP. A strong belief remains that quality of life improvements – whether social, human or environmental – are impossible without assuming the pursuit of economic growth. Concepts such as “smart growth”, “green growth” or “inclusive growth” have emerged as ‘Beyond GDP’ responses to this mainstream need for an overriding framework of growth, while steady-state proposals of zero-growth or even de-growth are rejected as unrealistic given the lack of compatibility between such objectives and the effective functioning of the current economic system.
Poor knowledge of alternatives
If the limits of GDP seem to be only weakly identified by mainstream actors, existing indicator alternatives are even less well known. Aside from the ‘Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi’ report, Human Development Index and Ecological Footprint, awareness of international Beyond GDP initiatives, events and indicators is generally poor. For example many workshop attendees had not heard about the OECD’s ‘Better Life’ initiative or the EU’s ‘GDP and Beyond’ initiative showing that even strong institutional support is not sufficient to guarantee mainstream awareness. Even where a clear demand exists, knowledge of the Beyond GDP initiatives can be lacking. In France, for instance, some MPs suggested it would be a good idea to have a dashboard of indicators on sustainable development, without realising that they already existed.
Lack of trust in Beyond GDP indicators
We were able to identify several features of the Beyond GDP agenda that elicit distrust from mainstream actors and appear to exacerbate a lack of demand.
- Distrust of subjective data – we found that many actors question the quality of subjective data. Among the main reasons raised were the lack of verifiability, difficulties with comparability of data, the potential for arbitrary dimensions and their lack of time-consistency.
- Distrust of ulterior motives – of course all indicators carry normative or political values in the very choice of what they measure and exclude, delivering meaning in a much broader sense than their pure statistical nature. However, we found that some mainstream actors find the value-based aspects or political assumptions underlying the methodologies of some Beyond GDP indicators to be particularly problematic.
- Concern about a lack of realism underlying alternative indicators – a third element of distrust lies in the important role of underlying assumptions and models. Many of the participants consider the dependence of indicators on issues that contain high level of uncertainty, such as sustainability, as problematic with suggestions that might lead to arbitrary choices, a lack of transparency or the ‘massaging’ of numbers.
- A very important related issue (which we will deal with in greater detail in the following ‘Barriers’ section) is the lack of an alternative societal model that links clearly with Beyond GDP indicators in the way that the orthodox growth model links with GDP.
- There are also concerns about the longevity of the Beyond GDP movement – some actors expressed a view that Beyond GDP indicators are a ‘flash in the pan’ or transient interest that would be unlikely to endure in the long-term.
Incompatible temporalities
One of GDP’s strong points is that it is published at regular three-monthly intervals and is considered timely, allowing decision makers to use it as a policy making tool. In contrast many alternative indicators are currently published irregularly or with too much of a time lag to impact on policy cycles. Added to this is fact that Beyond GDP indicators often necessarily incorporate long-term issues (such as sustainability) and long-term trends (such as changes in well-being), which struggle to attract the attention of politicians and the media focused on short-term political and news cycles.
A primary factor suppressing demand is thus a lack of political will confronting actors working in this field brought about by a conflict in time scales that alternative indicators often experience within the political sphere. In other words, if measures that are desirable for long-term sustainability also somehow imply short-term ‘pain’, they are less liable to be adopted by those engaged in the short-term focus of political decision making.
Ambivalent effects of the financial crisis
A range of factors influencing demand for Beyond GDP indicators can be linked to the structural (economic and political) context into which they are introduced. The effects of the financial crisis on the Beyond GDP agenda, for example, can be viewed in both positive and negative terms and provides support to multiple – and to a certain extent conflicting – beliefs.
One position tends to assume that the crisis has played a role in weakening the credibility of GDP as a leading indicator and has revealed an increased need for alternative measurement tools, in part to counterbalance low or stagnating GDP figures. This argument sees the old economic model as discredited due to further evidence of its endemic and harmful instability, thus opening the space for new social critique and allowing the positive expansion of the Beyond GDP agenda. We found that in France and elsewhere, this analysis had gained ground and demand for a Beyond GDP approach had increased since the crisis.
In contrast, while many actors agree that the current system’s limitations have been further exposed, they assert that there been no marked increase in the actual use of Beyond GDP indicators to reveal alternative or ‘better’ solutions since the onset of the financial crises. Indeed the pattern seems to match historical precedent whereby when growth levels are high there is concern about its negative side-effects, whilst during periods of low growth there is an almost exclusive obsession with how to increase it again.
3.6 Opportunities and success factors
Alongside these factors identified as negatively influencing the demand for Beyond GDP indicators our work revealed some clear counter examples of opportunities and reasons to be hopeful. These drivers of demand appear at both the political and societal level:
Institutionalisation
While no alternative indicator has come close to the institutionalisation experienced by GDP, the existence of political programmes such as National Sustainable Development Strategies, including those in Germany, France and the UK, in which indicators have a specific role to play has rendered indicators less dependent on the vagaries of political and policy cycles. These and other structural governance mechanisms in which alternative indicators are linked to legally binding frameworks are increasingly allowing them to be used and monitored more systematically.
The influence of the ‘Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report’
One of the most recurrent observations in the interviews and workshops we conducted is the pivotal influence of the ‘Stiglitz Commission’ and the report which followed. The strong political support, eminent scientific contributions and wide media coverage it received played an important role in allowing Beyond GDP indicators to gain access to wider political audiences and agendas, not only in its host country of France but also in the wider EU and OECD.
The clear, readable synthesis of the state-of-the-art that it offers has undeniably contributed in orienting many institutions towards the production and/or use of new indicators. The report not only enhanced the demand for indicators by highlighting the importance of the Beyond GDP agenda, but helped several emerging notions gain greater credibility, legitimacy and salience. Like the ‘Brundtland report’ did for concept of sustainable development, the ‘Stiglitz report’ initiated renewed reflection on the way societies should think about their future and manage their priorities.This time, however, concepts of quality of life, of well-being, and of social progress were placed centre stage and the report catalysed the emergence and popularity of a series of well-being indicators, which are slowly but surely encroaching on domains once inhabited by sustainable development.
A more proactive approach
We were able to identify increasingly proactive moves on the part of statisticians and decision makers towards the production and use of alternative indicators. The most salient example regards the European Union, were a major change of approach has been observed among many Directorates-General (DGs). From an initial relatively passive attitude towards indicators (e.g. waiting for Eurostat proposals), many DGs have progressively gained awareness of the role of measurement in policy making and now actively request the supply of specific types of data and indicators from Eurostat.
Recognition of the interplay between indicators and social change
Several of the actors we interviewed noted the key role that indicators play in defining world visions, striving as they often do to influence existing socio-political conventions and generate support for new societal models. As we have already seen the impact of the financial crisis on the Beyond GDP agenda was mixed, but it is worth reiterating that the crisis has led to stronger calls for social change and further questioning of the current economic model. This observation is supported by a recent international survey (in 11 countries) which shows that since the onset of the crisis 68% of respondents favoured replacing GDP with a broader indicator that also incorporates health, social and environmental statistics.
New actors at the table
One of the main developments that has accompanied the emergence of the Beyond GDP agenda, is the opening up of the measurement debate to a much wider set of actors. Progress is no longer just a topic for economists. The field has broadened from an initially narrow and close-knit group of experts to a wide range of stakeholders including academics, political actors, NGOs, think-tanks, psychologists and civil society groups. While GDP restricted the scope of discussions to economic issues and therefore limited the number of concerned actors to the economic sphere, beyond GDP indicators, in contrast, address a far broader range of issues which inevitably involve new actors. Other disciplines such as psychology and environmental science are now closely involved, while academics are playing an important role in launching critical debates, taking part in official processes and building strong interconnections between the different actors involved in the debate.
The rise of the well-being approach has further catalysed this process with initiatives generated from every type of actor with a desire to reach civil society through the use of an easily grasped concept.
3.7 What factors can contribute to an indicators success?
Given the range of reasons the BRAINPOoL project has identified as contributing to a lack of demand on the one hand and the diverse opportunities and drivers for the Beyond GDP agenda experienced at both the political and societal level on the other, it is worth exploring why some indicators manage to achieve success while others fall short. Based on interviews with the promoters of 17 different Beyond GDP initiatives we were able to identify a clear set of factors which are likely to enhance the success and impact of alternative indicators, both in terms of generating interest and demand but more importantly in terms of influencing policy and allowing indicator promoters and producers to achieve their aims. The main factors are summarised below.
Salience for decision makers
Indicators were successful when they could be demonstrated to have real relevance for policy or strategy. Crucially they need to measure something that policy makers believe they can influence which can be a problem for Beyond GDP indicators given the intention to measure broad overarching concepts such as progress. For example this is one of the biggest hurdles to the uptake of subjective well-being indicators, which explains why several initiatives promoting them are working to build the evidence base on how policy can influence well-being.
A related success factor is the ability of an indicator to show clear links between what it measures and other tangible outcomes (e.g. levels of subjective well-being that are related to reducing obesity, health costs, absenteeism and staff turnover) both for policy makers and business. When an indicator is applied by an organisation or institution, it should also have the ability to fit with its vision or strategy particularly for those initiatives whose goals are around priority-setting or assessing progress. This was relevant for the three sustainable development indicator sets we studied, all of which were born in the context of sustainable development strategies.
Similarly, local level indicator initiatives need to ensure that their outcomes meet the priorities of the community they serve e.g. by inviting community members in to ‘red flag’ indicator results that they feel are important for the organisation to explore further. Typically, the ability to match a vision or strategy works best when the indicator is produced in-house, though we found the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) to be an exception to this rule.
Another factor that is relevant to the political sphere is cost. In the current climate, indicators that provide clues for low cost policies, or indeed those can help save money are of particular interest. On the flipside, we found that indicators that necessitate expensive data collection are either ruled out or seen as a waste of public money.
Salience for a broader audience
We found that having relevance for a broad audience is also crucial to an indicator’s success. Our findings include lessons both about the indicators themselves and how they are communicated.
Indicator initiatives tend to be effective when they allow the production of a ‘simple’ and ‘attractive’ message that links to a meaningful concept. A related issue is that of comprehension. For example, whilst well-being is not a simple concept, many of those we interviewed regarded it as a notion that ordinary people found easy to grasp. A similar point can be made regarding the Ecological Footprint (EF) which is an understandable, appealing concept, despite involving very complex calculations. An interesting lesson emerged from Eurostat which highlighted the importance of working collaboratively and closely with communication experts, rather than simply handing data over to them. Outputs are then developed iteratively to ensure that both communicability and accuracy are maintained. Avoiding the use of ‘taboo’ words was also identified during our interviews as being key to a broad appeal. In the UK the word ‘happiness’ was often perceived as woolly, frivolous or non-scientific. In Germany among other countries, the word ‘welfare’ (‘wohlfahrt’ in German) has negative connotations in its association with financial handouts from the government, while in the USA, alternative indicator producers have avoided talking about ‘climate change’ instead referring to ‘air quality’.
Factors related to credibility and legitimacy
Indicators need credibility and legitimacy to succeed and we found a number of factors that were relevant in this regard. Data quality is a particular concern with some interviewees reporting unease regarding subjective well-being, including questions regarding reliability and the belief that these measures do not change over time.Strong resistance was also expressed by several interviewees about composite indicators primarily related to concerns over methodology and the weighting of different components. A commonly expressed opinion also holds that the world is too complicated to be reduced it to a single indicator. The OECD’s Better Life Initiative has managed to secure acceptance of a composite indicator by allowing users to decide for themselves how to weight the different dimensions of the measure. Being (or at least appearing) neutral is generally regarded as the best route to achieving legitimacy. As we have already noted, some alternative indicator producers work within a framework of simply providing ‘neutral’ information, while others are clearly connected to particular agendas. As a result we found that some interviewees compare advocacy organisations’ data unfavourably with that of National Statistical Offices (NSOs). In this regard, clear best practice mechanisms can be put in place to increase neutrality such as the monitoring of funding mixes and the barring of staff from involvement in political parties. Finally, having institutional power can often enhance legitimacy, with governmental or supra-governmental bodies like the Council of Europe and the OECD benefiting from the status of institutions that are ‘issuers of rules’ that are likely to be heeded by other institutions like national statistical offices.
Factors related to relationships and processes
Developing the indicators with the audiences at whom they are targeted and/or encouraging participation is also seen as a key success factor for alternative indicators. This is particularly important for local-level initiatives and was successfully achieved by several of the initiatives we looked into such as the Jacksonville Community Council Indicators (JCCI). The importance of relationship building also applies to policy makers with all of the initiatives that had achieved policy success citing direct face-to-face channels as vital. For example Gallup regularly provide individual briefings to members of parliament and government departments on their Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, while the approach of the UK’s Office of National Statistics has been to actively engage with policy makers to understand how their Measuring National Well-being can be used by them.
As has already been noted in this report, it is clear that local initiatives have been able to achieve more impact than larger national/international ones to date, with a variety of reasons cited. Local bodies are found to be more ‘flexible’ and media are often keen to pick up regional stories. It is also easier to build direct relationships with your target group at the local level. However, whilst national-level change might be harder to achieve, generally it needs only be achieved once in each country, whereas there was a perception at the local level that change needs to take place many times over.
Working in partnership was also found to be an important positive factor. Aside from allowing a greater network to be reached and a greater skill base to be marshalled, partnerships allow different organisations to take on different roles. For example, the Regional Index on Alternative Quality of Life Indicators (QUARS) brought together a range of partners which were able to advocate on different issues that the initiative raised. Many of the partners came on board because they identified something of particular interest to them in the broad initiative. This can ensure an initiative is not too associated with a particular agenda.
In a similar vein, picking one’s audience was also seen as a key to attaining success. Two contrasting strategies were observed here. On the one hand, initiatives worked with potential users who could be identified as ‘allies’, useful advocates or people who already had an interest in the issues at hand. At the same time, several initiatives highlighted the need to reach those bodies that might be expected to be least sympathetic to their initiatives – particularly ministries of finance, treasuries or economics departments. A third important option combines the strategies, targeting allies or people who have expressed interest within these difficult-to-reach audiences.
4. Barriers to the use of alternative indicators in policy making
Having looked at some of the positive drivers and opportunities available to Beyond GDP indicators as well as the factors likely to enhance their success it is important to recognise that there remains a diverse array of obstacles facing the Beyond GDP agenda. Throughout the project’s activities but particularly while working with our seven case study partners during BRAINPOoL’s action research phase we investigated the barriers to the creation and use of new measures of progress, particularly in relation to how they can guide policy. Some of the barriers we found can be seen as inevitable consequence of the ambitious aims and methodologies of Beyond GDP indicators themselves and are thus somewhat intrinsic and insoluble, while others both can be – and need to be – overcome if alternative indicators are to flourish in the future. This second set of barriers is predominantly not about the indicators per sé, but rather about the policies, narratives, and policy-making techniques that they are associated with. Whilst the following section is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the barriers being faced by Beyond GDP indicators we found a remarkable number of parallels amongst our cases, which suggests that other alternative indicators are likely to be experiencing similar challenges. The barriers were explored through the following seven action research cases.
Opportunities for use of alternative indicators in the OECD [OECD]
The OECD has been at the forefront of the development of Beyond GDP indicators and is at the vanguard in terms of exploring the policy implications of Beyond GDP indicators. However, the organisation does face challenges in taking the agenda from statistics to actual policy recommendations. In this case we identify barriers and opportunities for the further uptake of Beyond GDP indicators in influencing policy.
The German National Welfare Index (NWI) and the Environment Ministry (BMU) [Germany]
The National Welfare Index is the only index funded as a research project by the German government through the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The index attempts to act as a catalyst for the debate about what kind of growth we actually want for society and how we can best include sustainability and social prosperity into our measurement systems. In this case we explore and describe the full range of barriers affecting the indicator and where possible illustrate ways of exploiting potential drivers and opportunities.
The British Business Bank [British Business Bank]
Work is currently taking place in the UK department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to set up a state owned Business Bank which will be fully operational by the second half of 2014. In this case we take the recommendations of an independent taskforce that the Bank should have a mandate to promote good, sustainable jobs and a performance indicator framework to match, and identify potential barriers to this and how these might be overcome.
The Welsh Government Sustainable Indicator Set [Wales]
This case is about how the Welsh Government uses its headline Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs). It finds that the indicators are not currently used effectively across Welsh Government policy-making due to a variety of barriers that result in them not being seen as having a meaningful role within the policy-making process. However, it describes a clear opportunity to clarify and strengthen the role of the SDIs through the Future Generations (Wales) Bill which the Government plans to introduce in 2014.
Sustainable development in the Midi-Pyrenees, France [Midi-Pyrenees]
The main objective of this case is to identify barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy at regional and sub-regional levels in France, and to propose ways of overcoming them. We discussed the issues involved individually and at two workshops with officials and elected representatives at the level of the region, département, urban community/community of towns, and individual city/town as well as NGOs and the regional statistical office.
The Rotterdam Sustainability Profile, the Netherlands [Rotterdam]
The Rotterdam Sustainability Profile [Rotterdam] Officials at the City of Rotterdam have been developing a Sustainability Profile, a new way of presenting and using data on sustainability issues at the local level, and at the time of the case were starting to plan how best to use this. The case identifies potential bottlenecks within the City municipal organisation which could hamper the further development and implementation of this new indicator, and on the basis of discussions with stakeholders, identifies how these can be overcome.
Healthy City indicators in Chrudim, Czech Republic [Chrudim]
This case illustrates the process of development and implementation of indicators at the town level (Chrudim). In particular it describes the way the cooperation between experts in indicator development and the local authorities has influenced the indicator set development, the motivation of the town representatives to use “alternative” indicators (drivers), the barriers to indicator set implementation, and the ways these barriers are being overcome.
At the most superficial level budget constraints form a barrier to the use of Beyond GDP indicators and similar problems were identified in many of the cases we studied. The economic crisis and resulting government austerity measures have exacerbated this hurdle by reducing the budgets for statistical services, leaving fewer resources for new statistical tools. However this generally reflects low prioritisation and is thus a symptom of other problems, not the diagnosis.
The remaining underlying barriers can be divided into three groups: 1) Political barriers 2) Indicator barriers 3) Process and structural barriers
4.1 Political barriers
Lack of democratic legitimacy
This applies particularly to indicators’ role as measures of ultimate outcomes – measures of well-being now and in the future (the right hand box in our diagrams on pages 8-9). The indicators being put forward have not been agreed democratically, especially those measuring sustainability, and even subjective well-being measures, which on the face of it are completely uncontroversial and legitimate, have not been popularly endorsed as measures of outcomes in the public realm. GDP by contrast, or so it is argued, has legitimacy because it is both a key driver of welfare and a proxy measure of welfare (admittedly crude), and welfare has legitimacy because as traditionally defined it is based on how people choose to spend in the market.
Lack of strong narrative that engages the public
The lack of legitimacy is in part because ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators are not underpinned by a coherent, politically compelling narrative to compete with the orthodox narrative that underpins GDP: i.e. that markets will deliver optimal outcomes except where specific market failures are identified, and that maximising growth while correcting market failures will therefore maximise welfare. Many policymakers generally regard this narrative as essentially sound, and therefore view Beyond GDP as redundant or worse.
In the case studies we worked on we found that efforts to connect with the public and civil society by those promoting Beyond GDP indicators (where this had happened at all) had not always been particularly successful. In the Midi-Pyrenees we found that both sustainable development and the Agenda 21 did not engage citizens well and it was clear that those promoting this agenda found it difficult to involve a broader range of citizens. This meant regularly resorting to ‘top-down’ processes for developing Beyond GDP indicators for the region.
In Wales we were told that communication around sustainable development had failed to connect with the public, perhaps partly because there was nothing emotionally charged, that resonated, with the public in the Sustainable Indicator Set and no strong accompanying narrative. By contrast, one official noted, “it is the narrative around economic growth that makes it a priority”. Some thought that getting the narrative right was critical: “get the messages right, get the politics right and the other things will come in behind it”.
Lack of a clear political imperative
The lack of legitimacy and narrative just described, together with the pressures created by the economic crisis, mean that there is no demand amongst the bulk of the electorate that politicians prioritise the outcomes that Beyond GDP indicators measure (although as we have seen there is demand from some sections of the electorate and civil society of course). As a result there is no strong demand from politicians for use of the relevant indicators, even if sometimes they call for the development of these indicators (e.g. British Prime Minister David Cameron, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy).
4.2 Indicator barriers
There remain a number of technical questions with indicators and disagreements continue about how best to measure concepts such as sustainability. Adjustments to GDP made by indicators such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare are seen by some as lacking a theoretical justification and no single indicator has emerged as a measurement of well-being.
Data problems
Issues around data remain a problem for some indicators, representing a barrier both to their creation and use, but like resource shortages this kind of information resource barrier is often only a symptom of a wider problem. Some complications are inevitable in the context of the use of new data, and they only constitute a serious barrier if the necessary financial resources are not allocated, or if the lack of time series is allowed to trump the need for a Beyond GDP approach to policy-making – i.e. if the whole agenda is a relatively low priority. In some cases the necessary data is simply not available or may be difficult to find: we found this both in Chrudim and in our discussions of the British Business Bank. It may be that while data are available, timely, robust and sufficiently frequent data are not, meaning that the data could not be used to assess the current situation effectively. We found this was sometimes the case for the National Welfare Index (NWI) in Germany, where there is currently a time-lag of 1.5 to 2 years and some of the variables are based on assumptions or studies rather than hard data. Some of the indicators in the Welsh Sustainable Development Indicator set similarly only appear once a year and one is several years out of date. A third problem is that adequate time series may not yet be available. We were told that 20 years of data are necessary for the OECD to model econometric relationships, and that while contemporary data are available, adequate historic data are not.
Conceptual confusion
Throughout our work we found that the divergent and contrasting nature of concepts which underlie different Beyond GDP indicators is leading to damaging confusion about concepts and terminology. Even if people are fundamentally sympathetic to the Beyond GDP agenda, they are not going to use the indicators if they are confused by them. The competing concepts of quality of life, living standards, human development and sustainable development contribute to increased confusion, while many terms, such as well-being or sustainability, are used to mean different things by different actors. For some actors, well-being represents the social part of sustainable development; for others it constitutes a combination of the economic and social spheres. Some think that well-being is similar to sustainable development, just presented in a different way; others assume well-being is in opposition to sustainable development, bypassing environmental concerns and focusing only on present generations. In the Midi-Pyrenees, some attendees at the workshops simply identified ‘alternative’ indicators with composite indicators, and even those who saw themselves as active participants in the debate thought that well-being could not be measured. Similarly, in Wales, there was little understanding of how well-being statistics can be used. One official said “I think the problem with well-being is that people are jealous”, another referred to the fact that her “own personal well-being…changes from day to day” as a reason why the Government should not attempt to measure it. Not surprisingly given this, the meaning of ‘Beyond GDP’ was not obvious to many participants in our workshops, nor was it always clear what Beyond GDP was for. We also found very little understanding of alternative indicators amongst many politicians and officials in our workshops which is consistent with our earlier findings that a poor knowledge of alternative indicators is a key factor in the lack of political demand. Interestingly, there was some evidence that support grows as people find out more (e.g. in the Czech Republic and Midi-Pyrenees case studies we found that there was much stronger interest in opportunities when people were informed about alternative indicators).
No Beyond GDP indicator with the salience of GDP
The failure to create a strong narrative is made worse by the fact that there is, as yet, no agreed candidate for a single Beyond GDP indicator with the salience of GDP as a broad measure of societal progress. This makes it difficult to replicate the simple headlines currently linked to the quarterly GDP figures. There is no number and therefore no compelling alternative story to tell. Attempts to deal with this have not yet been successful, and we encountered recurrent debates about which alternative indicator methodology to use and the correct level of aggregation. Some favour composite indicators while others choose dashboards. Some favour adjusting economic measures to reflect social and environmental factors while others prefer to start afresh with subjective well-being indicators drawn from surveys. For those who favour subjective well-being, no single objective indicator (e.g. income, or housing, or life expectancy) can claim to represent the entirety of the multi-dimensional concept of well-being. But some subjective well-being indicators, at least in theory, are measures of well-being overall – the idea being that people responding to such questions are implicitly considering the multiple dimensions of well-being and providing an overall assessment.
Certainly, throughout the project’s activities we have found well-being measures progressively dethroning the call for sustainability indicators. However, while well-being analysis is likely to remain an important policy tool, as yet subjective well-being has not established a clear lead as the dominant indicator. For example at the OECD, there was a view that a subjective well-being indicator on its own would be too narrow as a headline indicator – that it should not be seen as “the ultimate synthesis indicator of well-being in society”, while in Wales and the Midi-Pyrenees we also encountered some scepticism as to its value. Another potential candidate would be a composite indicator, of which the NWI in Germany is an example. The main argument in favour of composites is their communicational abilities, which like GDP, can give the ‘temperature’ of a situation clearly through their single number and can often be readily compared to GDP, if, like the NWI, they are expressed in monetary units. However, there are well known problems with composites such as the choice and weighting of components, which were evident in the cases we studied. In the Midi-Pyrenees we came across the common view that composites are ‘black boxes’ and in Germany the basis of the NWI was questioned. Indicators using this methodology (the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) are very similar) have been accused of lacking a coherent theoretical foundation which critics believe results in corrections being applied to economics data without giving any theoretically sound justification for doing so. Some interviewees expressed the additional worry that aggregation into a single figure can hide crisis situations associated with a particular component.The Rotterdam Sustainability Profile is also a form of composite and we found here that the complexity of the indicator can be a real problem, especially in terms of interpretation. Several officials saw a possible danger of misinterpretation, partly driven by a complex method of presentation, or an excess of information. The final possibility is a dashboard of indicators – a pragmatic approach often associated with policy making and very much ‘operational’ rather than ‘educational’.
The language and politics associated with Beyond GDP
The resistance to change, lack of popular support and lack of a strong alternative narrative creates particular sensitivities to the rhetorical and political associations of Beyond GDP. This is both a matter of resistance to specific words, but also of the broader political positioning of Beyond GDP.
Thus at the level of words, some of the stakeholders of the British Business Bank believed there was a danger that use of Beyond GDP indicators would make the bank seem uncommercial, that as a result business would react negatively, and that the bank would therefore be ineffective. In particular, one political actor felt that the indicators would be more acceptable if described as economic rather than social indicators. As noted earlier in this report there is a need to avoid ‘taboo words’ if an indicator is going to gain broad appeal. Thus in Germany, the word welfare (‘wohlfahrt’) used in the name of the National Welfare Index has persistent negative connotations similar to those in the US where it is associated with dependency and government hand-outs. The NWI faces a more challenging barrier in that through its uptake, it is quite strongly associated in some quarters with the Green Party – rather than as an impartial way of assessing progress. While the NWI works entirely within a scientific framework and provides neutral information that is freely available for any actors to use, at least one interviewee mentioned that there “must” be a connection to the Green Party, due to the extent to which Länder (German federal states) that are associated with them have taken up the indicator, and of course it is true that the choice of variables in any index cannot but reflect a certain set of priorities. While the Green Party is relatively successful in Germany, this could be a handicap so long as other parties that are in power view it as a ‘Green Party tool’. More generally, Beyond GDP indicators will need to survive changes in administration in the way that GDP has survived such changes – a point made in the Chrudim case study and a conclusion we also drew from the Wales case study. While they may not initially reflect a consensus on what the goals for society are, in time they will need to come to do so. This is consistent with our earlier findings that the appearance of neutrality strengthens the chances of an indicator being successfully adopted, and that there is resistance to Beyond GDP indicators to the extent that they are associated with “unrealistic” steady state or de-growth proposals.
4.3 Process and structural barriers
No clear process for integrated and innovative economic policy making
The inherent multi-dimensionality of Beyond GDP poses two key challenges to the policy making machine. Firstly, an integrated approach to economic analysis must deal with complexity and uncertainty and make use of a wider range of methodological approaches: this creates analytical challenges and there has as yet been relatively little development of models linking policy with overall well-being, in contrast to the well-established (even if often highly unreliable) formal and informal models that guide the development of economic policy designed to maximise GDP and market efficiency.
What is needed is innovative policy making process (for example considering combinations of policies that have not been tried before), notoriously difficult in civil services.
In the British Business Bank case study the need to manage complexity was seen as reason for not using Beyond GDP indicators by some workshop participants. They felt that the kind of processes needed to meet non-GDP objectives would be difficult to manage effectively – and as a result the entire exercise would be more risky. The difficulty of dealing with multiple indicators and thus competing pressures was also highlighted by several officials in the Wales case.
At the OECD it was pointed out to us just how hard it would be for analysts to accurately model the impacts of policies on the multiple dimensions of well-being (including future well-being, or the environment), given the interactions between those policies and the feedback loops between different aspects of well-being. Thus the concepts that are key to Beyond GDP are seen to be more dynamic and harder to measure. As one staff member said at the OECD “our economics department has been built on the idea that if you cannot measure a phenomenon it doesn’t exist.” This may sound frivolous, but the OECD’s reputation is at least partly based on its capacity for quantification, and for robust predictions about the impact of policies based on careful assessment. However policy innovation typically involves new combinations of policies, which are unlikely to have yet been tried. Its impact is therefore difficult to predict and represents a real dilemma for organisations such as the OECD with a reputation for impartial rigour.
Increased co-operation between organisations, departments and disciplines
Second, an integrated approach to policy requires increased co-operation between organisations and working across departmental and disciplinary boundaries with a range of different perspectives at the table. The barriers to achieving these demanding cross-silo practices are familiar and were mentioned in several cases. Thus at the OECD, it was clear that working ‘Beyond GDP’ requires consideration of “diagonal effects” (the impacts of policy in one area on outcomes in another) but that there were clear challenges in harmonising the output of the organisation. This is particularly difficult because different divisions report to different committees, which represent different departments of member country governments. Reference was made by one interviewee to the different “blood groups” that the members of different committees belong to. Different “blood groups” were also referred to by an interviewee in Rotterdam as a barrier, where effective use of the Sustainability Profile would involve integrated processes. As several interviewees pointed out, work processes within Rotterdam’s municipality are not that integrated, there are several departments formally involved in the realisation of sustainability goals, and there is not strong cooperation between different departments. Accordingly, a lot of attention will be needed to embed the Sustainability Profile in work processes. Similarly in Germany, the fact that the broad social, environmental and economic components of the National Welfare Index did not fit into any ministerial mandate was seen as a barrier – although of course the whole point of the indicator is to integrate those mandates. In effect it can only be championed by a body with a broad mandate, such as the Chancellor’s office, a cross-departmental taskforce, or arguably Destatis (the German national statistics office). In the Midi-Pyrenees we found that the necessary co-ordination between different authorities was weak. This was not just a matter of policy – it was also a matter of co-operation on data and indicator initiatives: data and standards were incompatible at different scales and between territories, and initiatives were undertaken without any knowledge of what had been done elsewhere. Central co-ordination was not helping: in the Midi-Pyrenees, regional and local authorities felt limited by a lack of central leadership; similarly in Chrudim, the absence of interest at national level in the application of indicators at the local level was noted – and initiative at town level was in some cases prevented because of national directives.
Institutional resistance to change
We came across and heard about clear resistance to abandoning traditional objectives and the informal models that support them. This resistance to a Beyond GDP approach can take several forms. It may reflect a genuine belief in the need to prioritise growth, a belief that the existing system is capable of dealing with externalities and that is all that is needed, a concern that in the absence of a theoretical foundation policy guided by new indicators will be ineffective or the fact that the power and/or success of certain institutions depends on the continuing predominance of traditional objectives and informal models. This resistance is effective to the extent that (a) there is no political imperative for change and (b) it is reinforced by structures and processes that preserve the power of those resisting.
Natural conservatism
There are also clear issues of natural conservatism around habit, perceived norms and risk aversion which can result in passive resistance to the changes that the use of Beyond GDP indicators implies. In this respect, the use of Beyond GDP indicators is no different from any other significant change. Moving ‘beyond GDP’ represents innovation and as such risk – and this is not appealing to many actors who are responsible for policy making.
So, for example, some more progressive commentators on the British Business Bank took a conservative view because they believed that this would be the view of business, and they were concerned not to go against the needs of business. At the OECD, some staff, who appeared genuinely committed to the idea of making well-being rather than economic activity the objective of policy, also appeared to find it hard to break the habit of seeing GDP as the variable that one is trying to maximise.
The view that Beyond GDP is redundant
Natural conservatism shades imperceptibly into the view that in reality there is no bias towards growth in policy making and that therefore Beyond GDP is redundant or worse. Where decision makers hold this view, naturally they will not adopt Beyond GDP indicators. There is a crude and a more sophisticated version of the view. The crude version mirrors what we found when investigating the reasons for the continuing primacy of GDP amongst most economic policy actors. These findings made clear that even if GDP is not seen as a good proxy for welfare, it is seen to be measuring something so central to the current societal model that it needs to retain a central place. Some actors believe that growth is so supremely important that it should always trump other objectives. While this is certainly a minority viewpoint it does sometimes underlie political messages and thus shapes the policy environment. So for example, in 2013 both the German Federal Minister of Economics and Technology and the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer were vigorous in their respective campaigns for GDP increases, both stating a belief that environmental legislation is a barrier to growth and so needs to be cut back. We have here a policy environment in which growth will (almost) always trump other objectives, and thus one where indicators such as the German National Welfare Index or the Welsh Government Sustainable Indicator Set, designed for an environment in which there are multiple objectives, are made more-or-less redundant. Of course one reason for this view is that the ‘other desirable outcomes’ may only make a difference in the longer term, and voters are believed to take a short term perspective. This is particularly relevant now since growth is a particular priority for decision makers given the recession. Thus we were told in Wales, “we don’t pay attention to long-term ambition because we are too busy trying to sort out the immediate problem” and that sustainable development was not amongst the government’s top three goals. In the Midi-Pyrenees we were told that the social situation was currently too critical for the Beyond GDP agenda, and that territories needed to be “economically strong” first. In the more sophisticated version of the view that beyond GDP is redundant growth is only one goal amongst many but the market can be trusted to deliver optimal outcomes, except to the extent specific market failures are identified. Dealing with the latter does not require us to develop a whole alternative apparatus of measurement – we already have a well-honed methodology for assessing and correcting such failures. This traditional statement of economic theory remains very powerful.
Here too, a more extensive role for alternative indicators is considered unnecessary and probably counter-productive because of the complexity involved. It is worth emphasising that this is in effect arguing that an integrated approach to policy (with multiple objectives using multiple indicators) was inappropriate. In their words it is a direct rejection of the Beyond GDP approach.
A failure to connect
We also came across examples of indicator development that was not taking into account the requirements of their users or ‘client groups’ – as if the creation of the indicator was in itself enough for it to be used. But even if many of the theoretical and indicator barriers described above are overcome, they will not be used without effective action within potential user organisations. For example, indicators are unlikely to be used if they have been developed in isolation from the policy process and agenda or allowed to drift apart from that process and agenda. In such cases there is a clear need for more effective ‘indicator entrepreneurs’ capable of spotting the opportunities for new or existing metrics and promoting them to those who could benefit from them. In a sense this is obvious, and was the original hypothesis of the BRAINPOoL project – that the promoters and potential users of indicators were not talking to each other sufficiently. It is worth emphasising, however, because the idea that what is measured will on its own influence what is done appears to have gained some traction, particularly since the Stiglitz Report. However while measurement may be a necessary condition for policy change, it is self-evidently not a sufficient one.
We saw this in two cases. In one case (Rotterdam) the indicator was still at a relatively early stage of development and there had been a strong initial focus on the technical aspects, rather than an attempt to think about its place in the policy process, and arguably a failure to link its spatial scope to political boundaries. The result was a lack of shared understanding as to the purpose of the indicator and considerable scepticism amongst senior managers which clearly needed addressing.
In the other case (Wales) it was because the indicators were the result of an earlier initiative designed to create a permanent measurement framework for government, which no longer represented the current government’s priorities (and arguably never really did). Given this, there was naturally no strong impetus to use the indicators as an accountability mechanism and no link between the indicators and policy outcomes – described as “totally disconnected from the work that goes on” by one official. Why was this? One official noted that a robust theory of change was not always developed on how particular indicators would help address an identified problem. In some cases policy objectives were even opposed to the objectives implied by the SDI indicators so would have resulted in big distortions if used to measure the policy success. More broadly, as in Rotterdam, the indicators were not yet part of a policy making process designed to produce sustainable development outcomes. As yet another official put it, the indicators themselves are too “linear” and “don’t ensure that people address the full range of SD outcomes in the round. We need mechanisms for integrating.” So one official could point to the headline SDI measuring economic growth and describe his activities towards this goal as evidence he was addressing the SD agenda, when of course the whole point of the SD agenda is to encourage policy makers to consider the trade-offs between growth, sustainability and other objectives.
5. Going Forward
In this section, we have brought together those recommendations that we think can be of use to a wide audience, leaving aside those barriers that we consider to be symptoms rather than root causes and concentrating on those that we feel are most urgently in need of resolution.
5.1 Recommendations
Our recommendations are addressed to a range of actors: political parties, officials, NGOs, the OECD and other international agencies, official statisticians and unofficial statisticians. Different recommendations are relevant to different actors (in brackets).
Recommendation 1: Develop processes to engage citizens and establish the democratic legitimacy of Beyond GDP indicators (Political parties, officials, NGOs)
Beyond GDP concepts need to be rooted in processes, goals and targets that have legitimacy. A democratic process with wide representative and public engagement on the measurement of ultimate goals (end indicators), including subjectively measured ends, will help to raise legitimacy and public awareness of (harmonised) Beyond GDP concepts. This probably has highest potential for success on the local level, as democratic engagement might be easier to organise at smaller scales, but is important at all scales, including at the European level.
More generally, the debate about how we measure progress cannot be left to experts. The complexity and multi-dimensionality of Beyond GDP in fact makes deliberation necessary, based on exchanging knowledge and experiences between various stakeholders and partners.
Recommendation 2: Develop a strong Beyond GDP narrative, and demonstrate the difference use of Beyond GDP indicators will make to policies and outcomes (Political parties, OECD, NGOs)
A consistent theme throughout our work is the need for better communication to effectively demonstrate the salience and relevance of the Beyond GDP agenda to a wider audience and there is a clear need for further work to develop politically compelling messages around Beyond GDP indicators. To be successful as a public communication tool, Beyond GDP indicators must connect with things that have real impact on people’s lives – dramatising a real problem and pointing the way towards a solution. In our action research case studies, we recommended the development of new messages around Germany’s National Welfare Index and Wales’ Sustainable Development Indicators which showed their clear relevance to people’s lives – particularly the disadvantaged. Such messages must go beyond the division between economic, environmental and social, instead articulating a new, more holistic vision of progress which resonates with the public. For example, well-being can be expressed as quality of life and linked to politically powerful concepts such as good jobs; sustainability can be expressed in terms of security and future quality of life. The impacts of the financial crisis and the clear perils of planetary boundaries and tipping points can be used as a backdrop to the narrative but should not be a core message. Instead the foundation for this work will be what people care about and should use positive messages built around what people find most important: community, fairness, equality, good education and a better quality of life.
There is also a clear need for further work to develop the theoretical foundations for Beyond GDP narratives. Various speakers at our final conference stressed that this was vital if Beyond GDP was to compete with conventional neoclassical narratives. The narrative will need to be populated with specific policies with appeal, and the success of which can be measured. We return to this under recommendation 4.
Recommendation 3: Continue work on the technical and theoretical foundations of alternative indicators, with particular focus on standard setting and harmonisation, and paying attention to the need for engagement by politicians as well as experts (Academics, official statisticians, OECD, international agencies)
Although we conclude that the political and policy related barriers to Beyond GDP are fundamental, it is of course true that technical issues remain. There is a need for greater scientific consensus on sound methodologies, based on peer reviewing etc; we also recommend that a neutral body or institute should have a role in safeguarding data quality and neutrality of those Beyond GDP indicators which are based on non-official data.
Policy makers will find it easier to deal with the complexity inherent in multiple indicators if the latter are properly categorised and grouped, in such a way that policymakers can access them easily and use them. Accordingly we recommend that indicator producers and their sponsors ensure that existing and future indicators are categorised in this way and brought together into a database. This is being addressed in another EU-funded project, NETGREEN.
International comparability is particularly important for Beyond GDP indicators in an increasingly globalised world, since it not only enables benchmarking of progress against other countries, but also enhances the credibility and legitimacy of indicators. This work is underway through the European Statistical System and other initiatives. However under recommendation 4 we have suggested some initial actions to link the UN’s SDG process to Beyond GDP.
Recommendation 4: Improve processes for integrated and innovative policy making (Officials, political parties)
This requires the ability to manage complexity without recourse to standard economic thinking. Three strands of change are needed:
- More and different people are at the table when decisions are made. This requires multi-disciplinary working (i.e. incorporating insights from disciplines beyond economics), working across silos within organisations, increased co-operation between organisations and potentially re-organising in order to bring together diverse perspectives and challenge orthodoxies. For instance, in the Chrudim and Rotterdam case studies we recommended closer co-operation between departments and units, as well as between experts and representatives, while in the OECD we suggested a new unit (perhaps called the ‘well-being unit’ or the ‘quality growth unit’) to co-ordinate horizontal initiatives, accountable to an overarching committee representing central government offices. We also recommended more interaction with external parties, such as academics, who are less constrained by the technocratic nature of the OECD’s mandate.
- New approaches to analysis and policy development. Dealing more robustly with multiple objectives and the trade-offs between them requires new approaches to policy analysis, and, at least in the short term, a willingness and ability to innovate when the results of policies cannot be accurately modelled. For instance, at the OECD we recommended building on the approach adopted in their recent Austria Economic Survey, and the reports published by the Development Centre, which combine formal economics with other forms of analysis, as well as continuing work to develop a single numeraire for the evaluation of trade-offs between different dimensions of well-being. At the Welsh Government and the British Business Bank, we recommended the development of screening processes to help integrate new indicators into policy development and decision-making. Other processes designed to stimulate innovation will be needed.
- The adoption of Beyond GDP indicators to measure key goals, by local and national governments and the EU as part of its mid-term review of the Europe 2020 targets and possibly the European Semester process. This would be strengthened by harmonisation with the UN’s SDGs.
It is also important to demonstrate how Beyond GDP indicators will lead to different policy outcomes from conventional policy, otherwise the narrative we suggest will lack substance. In our action research case study with the OECD, we recommended the identification of key policy areas where there might be trade-offs between conventional economic objectives and Better Life Index outcomes, which could be used to pilot new forms of policy analysis which consider the interactions between different domains – for example, the links between transport policy, housing policy and spatial planning policy.
In Germany, we recommended that the BMU and Länder authorities identify the policy implications of the National Welfare Index and Regional Welfare Index respectively, showing how they might translate into new policy priorities.
Attendees at BRAINPOoL’s final conference workshops strongly endorsed the need demonstrate different policy outcomes more systematically and disseminate these messages directly to policy makers.
Recommendation 5: Develop strategies for overcoming institutional resistance (Political parties, NGOs)
Significant change always encounters resistance; as any competent change manager knows, advocates of change must have a strategy for neutralising that resistance. Some initial recommendations discussed at BRAINPOoL’s final conference include:
- More concerted outreach efforts by the Beyond GDP community, in particular to economic and finance ministries. Participants at our workshops pointed out that though these can often be treated as the ‘enemy’ by Beyond GDP advocates, there are often opportunities to build alliances and shift perspectives from the inside.
- Work to develop theoretical foundations for Beyond GDP (e.g. see Recommendation 2) – some participants felt that this would be crucial to overcoming resistance.
Recommendation 6: Strengthen the ‘indicator entrepreneur’ role (Official and unofficial statisticians)
Those responsible for indicators (whether statisticians, policy makers, politicians, or independent watch dogs) need to be alert to opportunities to promote the use of new and existing indicators. In other words they should act as ‘statistical entrepreneurs’. Since Beyond GDP is both a political and a technocratic problem, it also necessitates much closer collaboration between statisticians and democratic representatives. At national level this allows indicators to better match objectives, while at local level it can help achieve the right balance between sophistication (the priority of the experts) and feasibility (the priority of the representatives).
For instance, in Rotterdam we recommended that the officials responsible for the Sustainability Profile work closely with those responsible for the planning process so that the Profile becomes embedded into that process. In Wales, we recommended that the government’s sustainable development unit work with the independent Sustainable Development Commissioner to ensure that the indicator set facilitates the oversight role of the Auditor General. In Chrudim we identified the crucial role played by the LA21 co-ordinator in overcoming barriers – he or she is effectively the indicator entrepreneur - and we recommended that the authorities ensure that a strongly motivated person is appointed and then given sufficient powers.
5.2 From recommendations to actions: putting projects into practice
The day after the BRAINPOoL final conference, a workshop was held, attended by some of those participating in the final conference, to begin developing an action plan for taking forward some of the recommendations. Attendees at the workshop committed to taking this plan forward, working groups were formed, and it was agreed that there was value in co-ordinating the work of these groups. The new economics foundation (nef), one of the BRAINPOoL partners, undertook to provide the secretariat for the groups.
Since a key lesson of the project and the workshops was the need for indicator specialists to become more outward-facing and engage strategically with influential actors, the working groups were structured according to the key audiences for new projects. All the groups are designed to get Beyond GDP indicators used in policy making. However while policy makers and politicians are the decision makers, they are influenced by others, and therefore these others also need to be influenced. The groups were:
- The EU institutions and through them, the UN SDG process
- National governments and politicians
- Local government and politicians
- The public
- The media
- Business
- Academia
In addition to external-facing activities of this kind, a key next step identified throughout our discussions was that agents of change – the Beyond GDP community – need to have more opportunities to meet each other, learn from successes and failures, and collaborate on projects to bring Beyond GDP into the mainstream. This is an overarching recommendation which underpins and cuts across all of the other activities discussed in this document. We envisage that the network itself will provide a crucial platform for building and developing this community.
Potential Impact:
Main dissemination strategy during the project period
Given that the BRAINPOoL project was a Knowledge brokerage project aiming to stimulate and improve interaction between users and producers of Beyond GDP indicators, through case studies, interviews, roadshow, workshops and a final conference, much of the dissemination activities and network building have been realised during the course of the project. The project website provided an important platform to disseminate scientific research results and other project outcomes. All finalised documents have been published on the website shortly after submission to the European Commission services.
The nature of the project implied intense interaction with a multitude of internal and external audiences, be it through personal contacts with other researchers, indicator developers and policy makers, conferences and workshops or our work in the case studies.
WP1 comprised of research activities aimed to framing the reservoir of existing Beyond GDP indicators. For this purpose we interviewed indicator producers or indicator developers. While executing these research activities we recorded contact details of interviewees and other persons we engaged with, such to keep them informed about project progress and results, and to be able to invite them for workshops, seminars, and the final conference.
In WP2 we investigated the institutional context in consortium member countries, an activity for which several interviews with ministries, statisticians, NGOs etc. were conducted, in order to understand how beyond GDP indicators match to the needs of (potential) users. Accordingly, during the ‘WP2 roadshow’, workshops or seminars were organised to have discussion with actors that we identified as being more sceptical to the Beyond Agenda. In this way we achieved to learn why some actors are hesitant to take alternative indicators on-board.
The third work package “Action research in practical cases” was a work package where dissemination clearly was integral part of all research activities. The case studies have been developed in close collaboration with the institutes or organisations under investigation. Almost all case studies had a set-up of a round of interviews with a small group of actors, followed with a workshop or seminar with a larger invited group of participants.
The first three work packages of BRAINPOoL thus meant a lot of interaction with different actors, institutes and organisation. Therefore we were able to continue to build-up a growing list of project contacts to keep informed and to recruit participants for the knowledge brokerage from.
After finalisation of each work package we created summary PowerPoint presentations to communicate key results in a more attractive manner than the regular deliverable reports. Each time these summary presentation have been sent out by e-mail to a long list of project contacts, and have been published on the project website. The summary presentation reached an audience of about 5,500 persons.
Networking with topical organisations and other research projects was another part of our dissemination strategy. For example we cooperated with FP7 projects e-Frame and APRAISE. A special session in collaboration with research projects in the area of research efficiency was organised at the World Resources Forum in Davos (October 2013). E-Frame and BRAINPOoL explored the possibility to merge the final conferences to maximise impact. This merge of conferences turned out to be too complex. Instead, both projects presented their work at both conferences.
For the knowledge brokerage workshop of WP4 we intensively cooperated with ICLE-Europe and UNESCO Venice. In this way we were able to reach larger audiences to inform about the project and to recruit workshop participants from. This resulted in a two-day workshop that was hosted by UNESCO Venice in Italy. We received positive feedback from participants that the two-day knowledge brokerage workshop, offering ample of opportunities to informally meet and continue discussions, contributed to ‘community building’. Many participants left Venice with new contact with whom they wanted to cooperate more often in the future.
We considered the established linkages between different actors and stakeholders and networks involving both indicator producers and potential users during the course of the project as important building blocks for a longer-lasting “community”. We especially hoped to achieve that actors we have engaged with during knowledge brokerage activities will continue to cooperate in the future. The fact that almost half of the participants of the October 2013 knowledge brokerage workshop in Venice also attended the final conference and workshops in March 2014, proofs us that we have succeeded in this objective of community building.
Potential impact after the duration of the project
Although target groups were active partners in the delivery of the project with their participation during various knowledge brokerage events, BRAINPOoL did not aim to create passive awareness of our research findings but instead wants to enable people to actually use the results in their work practice, also beyond the duration of the project. For this reason, the last key objective of BRAINPOoL was to ensure consolidation and follow-up beyond the duration of the project.
In terms of Foreground, BRAINPOoL’s joint Vision Document on the application of Beyond GDP indicators and Final Action Plan are in particular intended to inform a wide variety of stakeholder and actors that would like to make more use of Beyond GDP indicators in their work practice. These two documents have the highest potential to maximally exploit BRAINPOoL’s foreground. The Foreground may be exploited by those trying to have Beyond GDP indicators used more extensively in policy making, at supra-national, national, regional and city level, and whether from within institutions (officials and politicians) or from the outside (ngos).
The Action Plan identifies the steps and actions needed to help overcome barriers to the use of indicators that can balance the use of GDP in policy-making. With this ‘Action Plan’ or ‘Roadmap’ the BRAINPOoL project aims to provide an outline of the best opportunities for future implementation of Beyond GDP indicators in integrated policy processes, building on BRAINPOoL’s joint Vision report on the application of Beyond GDP indicators.
The vision report expresses a shared view on the most important challenges to the application of ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators in regional, national as well as international policy making and governance, and provides some direction on possible solutions to overcome barriers and to tackle challenges. BRAINPOoL’s action plan aims to provide more practical recommendations, and where possible, identified which actors should be involved in follow-up actions.
A first draft of action plan has been discussed during a workshop on the 25th March 2014, one day after BRAINPOoL’s final conference. At the final conference, the key findings and recommendations of BRAINPOoL were presented, with a focus on how to achieve both a Beyond GDP narrative, and the integrated, innovative policy-making that is needed for Beyond GDP indicators to influence policy. Recommendations stemming from the final conference’s panel discussion and results of the workshop discussions on ‘next steps’ and ‘making it happen’ are integrated in the final version of BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan. Moreover, a set of working groups was set up at this last workshop on the 25th of March 2014 consisting of individual participants that are committed to working together to attempt to achieve to have Beyond GDP indicators used more extensively in policy making.
Intended audience of the Action Plan
BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan aims to inform different target groups. The Action Plan builds on the project’s findings on barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy making, and recommendations to overcoming them. The recommendations, or ways to overcome challenges and barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy, are primarily addressed to a range of actors: political parties, officials, NGOs, the OECD and other international agencies, official statisticians and unofficial statisticians. In particular the working groups formed after the final conference are thus likely to use the Foreground of BRAINPOoL. Further research on workable and popular ‘beyond GDP’ policies, and the processes needed to develop and deliver these at all levels will be needed, though.
Furthermore, we hope that actors in the international statistical community that will progress in the short-term with ‘GDP and Beyond work’ can make good use of actions reported in this BRAINPOoL deliverable. We think in particular of: consortium members of the e-Frame project in their efforts to finalise its handbook for policy use of indicators and its Roadmap for future research needs; the European Statistical System with its Common reflection on ‘GDP and Beyond’; the High-level Expert Group (“Stiglitz 2”); and actors involved in the post 2015 Development Agenda (UN Sustainable Development Goals).
Most of the actions reported in BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan can be started by national or regional policy making bodies that wish to use Beyond GDP indicators for their own policy purposes. Some of these actions can be started by individual actors, building on recent proposals, for example on a harmonised conceptual framework to measuring sustainable development, that are stemming from internationally coordinated actions.
Lastly, the Action Plan also aims to be an informative document to a wider audience, that might not yet be fully informed on ‘GDP and Beyond actions’. For this reason the Action Plan provides a short but informative summary of recent internationally coordinated actions.
In addition to the Vision document and BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan, the “Online Tool” on the project website functions as a ‘library’ of other types of exploitable Foreground, i.e. science-based outreach materials, including BRAINPOoL’s Final report (Deliverable D5.2). The Online Tool ensures general dissemination of all (scientific) research results, case study reports, indicator factsheets, and a reservoir (Excel Spreadsheet) of 95 Beyond GDP indicators or indicator initiatives. Lastly, movies showing interviews with high-level participants of the final conference, as well as both panel discussions during the conference will be made available on the BRAINPOoL website.
The website will be hosted for at least two more years after the end date of the project.
Scientific publications
During the project period three scientific articles have been published, a fourth peer reviewed has been submitted as manuscript, and a fifth article is planned for the future.
1. Published scientific articles:
• Janoušková, S., Hák, T. (2013). Values and Sustainable Development: Reflection on selected Czech Policy Documents 1988-2010. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 15 (3), pp. 371-386.
Abstract: A coherent value system and attitude towards the social and natural environment are considered to be a basic condition for the implementation of sustainable development as implicitly contained in the Rio+20 Declaration ‘The Future We Want’. The importance of human values such as justice, equality, shared responsibility, empowerment, solidarity or tolerance also need to gain appeal a new because of the ongoing economic crises. Although politicians have often taken advantage of the powerful concept of values, extensive research in this field is still lacking. The main goal of the study is to analyse the meaning of values and how their importance has changed over time. The values under scrutiny were identified in selected national policies relating to environmental protection and sustainable development covering the period 1988–2010. The study presents a method for the operationalization of values to understand their meaning and to obtain the first quantitative findings on changes of values in selected policies over the past two decades. The results of the analysis revealed the absence or low representation of sustainable development values (e.g. solidarity or tolerance) which may open up a discussion on the role of values in policy-making and possibly improve new, relevant Czech policies accordingly.
Journal: The Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning is an international journal that provides a forum for the critical analysis of environmental policy and planning. It explores the environmental dimensions of common policies such as transport, agriculture and fisheries, urban and rural policy, all stages in the policy and planning processes from formulation to implementation, and the interactions between governments and markets, the strategies of non-governmental organizations and business in relation to the environment, and land-use decision-making. (Impact factor: 1,421)
• Seaford, Ch. (2013). The Multiple Uses of Subjective Well-Being Indicators. Social Indicators Research. Vol. 114 (1), pp. 29-43.
Abstract: There are barriers to the significant use of subjective well-being indicators in policy making. These barriers can be overcome, but this will take a co-ordinated effort. These indicators can play multiple roles. They can stimulate public debate, inform the development of formal or informal economic models, influence the choice of other indicators more directly related to policy outcomes, draw attention to important issues which might otherwise be ignored, input into a new form of cost benefit analysis, be used in before and after appraisal, and be used by the public to hold politicians to account. Subjective indicators are better placed to play these roles than either dashboards or indexes based on objective indicators. It is not clear whether they will play these roles and two scenarios are possible. In the first, the relatively marginal role the indicators are beginning to play in policy will be expand, but they will not move centre stage, or in any way challenge existing headline indicators such as gross domestic product. In the second, a set of tools is developed which politicians and journalists find useful, both for communicating and for developing their ideas. In this scenario, the ideas implicit in subjective well-being indicators find their way into public debate and thus drive policy change. As a result they do challenge existing headline indicators.
Journal: Social Indicators Research is an International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement. It has become a leading journal for the publication of research results dealing with measurement of the quality of life. These studies - empirical, philosophical and methodological - encompass the whole spectrum of society, including the individual, public and private organizations, and municipal, country, regional, national and international systems. Topics covered include health, population, shelter, transportation, the natural environment, social customs and morality, mental health, law enforcement, politics, education, religion, the media and the arts, science and technology, economics, poverty, and welfare. (Impact factor: 1,264)
• Hák, T., Janoušková, S. (2013). Beyond GDP Indicators in the Czech Republic. Statistika. Vol. 93 (2), pp. 86-99.
Abstract: The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the “Beyond GDP” issues addressed in the Czech Republic and the two member organizations: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the European Union. Traditional indicators such as e.g. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI) have been the main determinants used to measure the progress of nations. However, neither GDP nor the HDI reflex the state of the natural environment and both focus on the short-term aspects, with no indication of whether current wellbeing can be sustained. We have applied a simple categorization framework that revealed types of indicator-related initiatives run by the respective bodies. The framework is based on the purpose of the alternative “Beyond GDP” indicators to replace, adjust or complement GDP. Yet the Czech politicians and experts have hardly used this term, the analysis has shown quite extensive activities in that field.
Journal: Statistika is a Czech peer-reviewed journal published in English. Its aim is to create a platform enabling national statistical and research institutions to present the progress and results of complex analyses in the economic, environmental and social spheres. Its mission is to promote the official statistics as a tool supporting the decision making at the level of international organizations, central and local authorities, as well as businesses. Statistika contribute to the world debate and efforts strengthening the bridge between theory and practice of the official statistics.
2. Submitted but not yet published scientific article
• Thiry, G., Sébastien, L.,Bauler, T. Le bien-être et sa quantification : un retour en force? Analyse de l’évolution des usages politiques de la notion de « bien-être » en Europe. L'"année sociologique"
Abstract: Although well-being appears as an old notion having been already questioned by Aristotle, it is nowadays taking more and more place in the public debate. Nevertheless, together with concepts like life satisfaction, happiness, social progress or quality of life, well-being struggles to find its specificity and an overall confusion about these themes seems to arise within societal and political spheres at different scales. The objective of this paper is to grasp the divergences and convergences of political actors’ positioning in different European countries regarding the notion of well-being. We intend to decrypt the various practices, representations and knowledge of political actors about well-being and its indicators. To do so, we run 50 semi-structured interviews with political actors in 5 countries and within the European Commission, organized 4 workshops in 4 countries and analyzed 40 European documents about well-being from political, societal and scientific sources. Our hypothesis for this research (initiated by the FP7 project BRAINPOoL) is that the absence of a common conceptual background about the notion of well-being is a barrier to its institutionalization.
Our results highlight that the way political actors define, use and know about well-being in Europe is extremely eclectic. Many oppositions well-being and sustainable development are observed in the studied European countries, with different perspectives according to the actor or the place considered.
Talking about well-being implies also talking about its measurability. Here again, the divergences with sustainable development are present in all discourses, but with a great variability among actors with regard to issues such as subjective and objective data, environmental and generational concerns, happiness measures or composite indicators. Our discussion focuses on two stakes resulting from our analyses of all discourses and documents about the political implementation of well-being. First, the question that well-being cannot be a global uniform measure as GDP but has to be adapted to each society in order to be salient. Second, that well-being has to be defined by civil society through participation arenas in order to be legitimate. Political actors in Europe can insure the credibility aspects of well-being measures thanks to expertise but fail to attain their salience and legitimacy, both crucial to the institutionalization of well-being.
Journal: The journal largely publishes contributions on empirical sociological knowledge, and research on social science history. It also includes research regarding the relationship between sociology and other social sciences (history, anthropology, economics, and psychology).
3. Additional planned scientific article
• Hák, T., Janoušková, S., Abdallah, S., Whitby A. Indicator policy fact sheet: the knowledge brokerage tool?
Abstract: The concepts of sustainable development, quality of life, wellbeing, green growth and Beyond GDP movement have become important aspects of professional life of many researchers as well as administrators and politicians. The underlying concepts as well as indicators are rather vast, they are in a continuous development process and they all are closely linked or they even overlap among them. The information on them is mostly available in a scientific form – hypotheses, models, charts and the omnipresent figures – that are often not fully comprehensible for the final users. Some recent surveys show that only just the proliferation of indicators and complexity (and complicatedness) of their concepts impede the willingness of policy makers to take the indicators in.
One of the viable and effective ways to overcome that barrier may be to provide the users with precisely targeted information on the indicators. Such “indicator policy fact sheets” would offer them specialized (expert) information without necessity of gaining insight into the indicator theory and methodology. Besides brief general information on the indicator (developer, indicator meaning, presentation style, etc.) the policy fact sheets contain other important information as e.g. rigor of the methodology used, usefulness of the indicator for policy making and evaluation, attractiveness for media and the public, etc. It is this very kind of information that brings the indicators closer to policy makers rather than in detail-described sophisticated methodologies and calculations behind the indicator.
The article reacts to the call requiring bridging the gap between science, policy making and the lay public. Our central assumption is that indicators, if effectively embedded in the policy making process, are an effective transmission mechanism to connect research and policy. However, such a state is far from reality although there are many suitable indicators in place. Therefore we seek to enhance and speed up the effective use of indicators that can balance the use of conventional indicators and thus support the sustainable development policy process. Ideally, indicator users need to be aware of the knowledge that exists, and vice versa indicator producers need to be aware of the context(s) in which the indicators will be used. Indicators should be developed as part of an interactive process with multiple feedbacks that ensure that user demands are taken up in the production of sustainability indicators. The indicator policy fact sheets may be modest but effective tools increasing the indicators´ policy relevance. And this article deals with their development and use.
List of Websites:
http://www.brainpoolproject.eu/
E-mail: info@brainpool.eu
Economic growth, on its own, cannot deliver what society now wants: sustainability, social justice and improved well-being. Institutions such as Eurostat, the OECD, the World Bank, National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and others, are responding to the desire from governments and civil society to consider a more nuanced set of economic policy objectives, that is broader than maximising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and market efficiency. The BRAINPOoL project’s activities have been directed at making sense of the array of actors, aims, indicators and initiatives that have emerged from these efforts with a focus on exploring the barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy making and how these can be overcome. Beyond GDP indicators are defined as: “those indicators and indicator sets that have been proposed as necessary and central to the measurement of societal progress in a broad sense, other than those indicators, such as GDP or the unemployment rate, that are already playing this role.” In terms of their use in policy we do not simply mean their use in parallel with traditional economic indicators but as part of an integrated policy process that also informs a more holistic approach to economic policy making. The BRAINPOoL project explored the question of why some indicators manage to achieve success while others fall short. We identified a clear set of success factors which include the need for:
Salience for decision makers. Indicators are successful when they can demonstrate real relevance for policy or strategy, measuring things that can be influenced by policy.
Salience for a broader audience. Producing a simple, attractive message that links to a meaningful concept while avoiding certain ‘taboo’ words and concepts is key to impacting a broad audience.
Credibility. Data quality and the appearance of neutrality continue to best routes to overcoming resistance and achieving credibility.
Relationships. The importance of relationship-building, including developing indicators in partnership with the audience at whom they are targeted is critical, including in policy where face-to-face channels and active engagement is vital.
The project analysed the key barriers to using new measures of societal progress in a broad sense to guide policy and how these hurdles can be overcome. We found that although there are a number of technical barriers to do with data quality and lack of adequate resources, these are really only symptoms of low current political priority and of more fundamental underlying barriers:
Political barriers, including perceived lack of democratic legitimacy, lack of a clear and compelling narrative underpinning new indicators, and lack of clear political imperative for change (due to low public awareness of new indicators).
Indicator barriers, including disagreements over methodology and a perceived lack of theoretical foundation underpinning new indicators (particularly composite indicators of adjusted GDP).
Process and structural barriers, including organisational and analytical challenges posed by a more holistic, multi-dimensional view of progress; institutional resistance to change, and a failure of indicator producers to connect with the priorities of potential users.
As a result of many interactions between the involved actor groups that were organized during the project’s lifetime, the project produced a joint vision report (A vision on application of Beyond GDP indicators in policy making), a joint action plan or ‘roadmap’ to overcome barriers, a final report and a concise summary report, with the aim to fuel the actor groups as good as possible beyond the lifetime of the project. To maximize the potential impact of Brainpool’s products, a workshop was organised the day after the BRAINPOoL final conference to develop actions for taking forward some of the recommendations. At the workshop working groups were formed, and it was agreed that there was value in coordinating the work of these groups. The new economics foundation (nef), one of the BRAINPOoL partners, undertook to provide the secretariat for the groups.
Project Context and Objectives:
In last years, Beyond GDP indicators have rapidly risen up the political agenda and enjoyed greater public awareness. High profile initiatives have included nef’s Happy Planet Index, launched in 2006, the EU’s Beyond GDP initiative – starting with the Beyond GDP conference in 2007, the OECD’s Measuring the Progress of Societies project, and in 2009, the publication of the recommendations of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, led by economists Stiglitz, Sen & Fitoussi.
Despite a growing number of critiques of GDP, and the emergence of an impressive array of
alternatives, GDP maintains a central place amongst policy makers, planning offices, media and other target groups. Some data on what may be considered Beyond GDP indicators are being collected by official statistics offices, but they appear not to be considered in policy-making, or are given a peripheral role.
The assumption of the project is on the one hand that a lack of fruitful interaction between producers and users of Beyond GDP indicators hampers the creation of a joint context for interpretation of indicators and their meaning. On the other hand, the assumption is that indicators, if effectively embedded in the policy making process, are an effective transmission mechanism to connect research and policy. The central motivation for this project is that indicator users need to be aware of the knowledge that is currently out there. And, vice versa, indicator producers need to be aware of the context(s) in which their indicators will be put to use. Ideally indicators are developed as part of an interactive process with multiple feedbacks. These feedbacks will ensure that user demands are taken up in the production of alternative indicators. All of this needs to be understood as part of a change process, which will need to overcome various barriers which currently prevent the extensive research that exists from being acted on, not only a lack knowledge.
The BRAINPOoL project approaches this problem as a mismatch between demand and supply and aims to solve this via action research and brokerage activities. This is done by:
Objective 1. Structuring the research reservoir on Beyond GDP indicators.
The project will synthesize an overview of Beyond GDP indicators and the research that underpins them.
Objective 2. Increasing the understanding of the user context of Beyond GDP indicators.
The demand side of alternative indicators is less well studied than the supply-side. The demand for Beyond GDP indicators and the factors that influence this demand should be better understood to be able to match demand and supply of beyond GDP indicators in a better way.
Objective 3. Stimulating and improving user-producer interactions.
The BRAINPOoL project will create many opportunities for producers and users of Beyond GDP indicators to meet, discuss and relate to each other at different levels – both in one-off meetings and in more in-depth and purposive engagements. These activities will ensure that joint learning is facilitated between the groups.
Objective 4. Consolidating and structuring a follow-up beyond the duration of BRAINPOoL.
To fully succeed in its aims, the project must lead to developments that continue beyond the duration of its funded activities. Several actions are taken to ensure this continuation, like the preparation of a joint action plan between users and producers of Beyond-GDP indicators. Throughout the project linkages are established with relevant target groups, such as policy makers on different levels, statistical offices, planning agencies, and other stakeholders.
Project Results:
1. Introduction
This report summarises the main findings, results and conclusions of the BRAINPOoL project (Bringing Alternative Indicators into Policy). BRAINPOoL is funded through the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration, and seeks to help accelerate the use of ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators in policy-making. It is primarily a knowledge brokerage project working by helping the producers and promoters of Beyond GDP indicators and the potential users of these indicators come together, understand one another, and identify actions to promote the use of Beyond GDP-indicators in policy making.
The first stage of the project explored the arena through the perspective of indicator producers and promoters – cataloguing the various initiatives, understanding the producers’ intentions, and learning about the indicators’ successes or otherwise in achieving some form of impact in policy, the media and elsewhere.
In the second stage of the project we took up the perspective of the potential users of Beyond GDP indicators – working to understand several selected national and supranational organisational contexts, and identifying the barriers to and opportunities for demand for Beyond GDP indicators.
In the third stage we took a closer look at how different alternative indicators are being used within seven specific organisations and contexts at different geographical levels, from the local to the supranational, bringing producers and potential users together. We worked with the OECD, the Welsh Government, the City of Rotterdam (The Netherlands), the City of Chrudim (Czech Republic), the British Business Bank (United Kingdom), the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU, Germany), and the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. In each of these case studies, we sought to identify a problem that Beyond GDP indicators might help solve, and explored the steps and barriers to be overcome towards them playing such a role.
The fourth stage comprised of knowledge brokerage activities which brought together a diverse group of stakeholders identified as being key to accelerating the use of alternative indicators. A two day workshop was held to verify the drivers and barriers identified in previous BRAINPOoL work, and develop a ‘vision report’ and ‘action plan’ identifying the steps and actions needed to help overcome barriers to the use of indicators that can balance the use of GDP in policy-making.
1.1 Methodology
A wide variety of complementary research tasks and actions provided the basis for the results presented in this report. One of the more experimental aspects of the BRAINPOoL project is that our work has moved from rather classical empirical analysis to encompass more innovative ‘action research’ and brokerage activities and finally the co-development of what could be called ‘policy strategy’ with some of the actors we engaged. In brief this progression of work included:
- Extensive desk research, literature reviews and analysis of institutional documents.
- Widespread structured and non-structured interviews with indicator producers and users across Europe and at international fora.
- Studies on the institutional contexts of Beyond GDP indicators in specific EU-member countries, as well as at the level of selected international and European organizations through ‘road shows’ (in-house workshops).
- Hands-on work with policy agencies (at supra-national, national, regional and local levels) on the issues and barriers they face in using or promoting alternative indicators through tailored case studies and seminars.
- A two-day knowledge-brokerage workshop for policy makers, economists and statisticians to validate the barriers, identify best practice and co-create a vision and agenda for future Beyond GDP work.
- A final conference focusing on how to achieve both a Beyond GDP narrative that can win electoral support, and the integrated, innovative policy-making that is needed for Beyond GDP indicators to influence policy.
1.2 What do we mean by ‘Beyond GDP’?
The term ‘Beyond GDP’ suggests those indicators that are providing some information that GDP currently excludes. But it is necessary to underline that ‘Beyond GDP’ does not simply mean the limited additional use of environmental and social indicators. If this were the case, there would be no issue to investigate, since of course environmental and social indicators are used in environmental and social policy making. If they are to have the impact necessary to define new objectives for society, change our policy goals and result in ‘better’ outcomes, Beyond GDP indicators are going to have to be used in at least some contexts where GDP is currently used, either as integrated or complementary decision-making tools or as replacements.
We emphasise this because during our research we found that many statisticians felt that there was nothing new about Beyond GDP, after all social and environmental variables had been measured for decades. This suggested that they did simply equate ‘Beyond GDP’ with ‘social and environmental’.
Instead, for our purposes, as well as embodying a certain vision about the quality and sustainability of our way of life, ‘Beyond GDP’ refers to a particular way an indicator is or should be used. We therefore defined Beyond GDP indicators as:
“those indicators and indicator sets that have been proposed as necessary and central to the measurement of societal progress in a broad sense, other than those indicators, such as GDP or the unemployment rate, that are already playing this role.”
We believe that creating agreement for a definition such as this, that is less about indicators themselves and more about how, where and why people propose they are used and what measurements are really important for societal progress, will contribute positively to the understanding and diffusion of Beyond GDP indicators.
In this report we will use the term ‘alternative indicators’ to mean ‘Beyond GDP indicators’ and use both terms interchangeably.
1.3 What is this project addressing?
It is now widely agreed that the intermediate objectives that have dominated economic policy for the last 40 years and more – maximizing GDP and market efficiency – are no longer adequate goals for society. Over the last decade it has become clear to a steadily widening group that growth on its own cannot deliver what a broad coalition now wants: sustainability, social justice and improved well-being. Instead, we need to ask how efficient different forms of economic and other societal activity are at delivering these desirable outcomes. To the extent that growth is desirable, it needs to be ‘good growth’.
The question then becomes how to achieve changes to economic policy making consistent with these changed priorities. One part of the answer is new measures of progress that reduce the predominance of GDP: a necessary, although obviously not sufficient, condition.
Increasingly institutions such as Eurostat, the OECD, the World Bank, National Statistics Offices (NSOs) and others are responding to the desire of governments and civil society to at least consider a more nuanced set of economic policy objectives than growth pure and simple. At the same time NGOs – that do not consider the existing official attempts sufficient – are using alternative indicators as an advocacy tool, and seeking more radical societal change that promotes a quality of human life and levels of well-being that is consistent with the carrying capacity of the earth’s ecosystems.
The BRAINPOoL project’s goals are necessarily multi-layered but all our activities have been directed at making sense of the array of actors, aims, indicators and initiatives that have emerged from these activities.
We have therefore attempted to take a broad view of the whole indicator cycle from indicator production towards final use in policy making, as well as the processes that don’t fit this pattern. We have looked at the emergence of new indicators, categorising the diverse types, differing aims and varying levels of success and impact. We have focused on gaining in-depth knowledge of the different types of demand for alternative indicators across different target groups and crucially for a brokerage project investigating the reasons for a ‘lack of demand’.
Some, but not all, of the activity around alternative indicators is effective at having a ‘real world’ impact, that is, helping policy makers, and those influencing policy makers, crystallise their objectives, assess their performance, and as a result change and improve what they do. So we have also spent time assessing what the barriers are to using new measures of societal progress in a broad sense to guide policy and how these hurdles can be overcome.
1.4 Why is this important?
The sixty years since the creation of national accounting systems with gross domestic product (GDP) as the central indicator have revealed a variety of inadequacies in both the metric itself and the ability of GDP and economic growth to tackle fundamental problems in society. While many people correctly argue that GDP was never intended to measure economic welfare, there is widespread ‘maximalist’ (mis)use of GDP (by economists, politicians, and the media) as a proxy for ‘success’ or ‘failure’ at a national level.
The questions BRAINPOoL is tackling are worth addressing to the extent that there is a bias in policy making towards prioritising GDP growth above other objectives, and to the extent that this bias is exacerbated by the prominence of the GDP metric itself. In particular the idea that the ability to maximise GDP growth defines ‘economic competence’, perceptions of which influence economic advice and drive elections, which in turn create strong incentives to maximise GDP.
The bias towards prioritising GDP growth and efficient markets is particularly damaging given the pervasive scale and scope of current market failures and damaging externalities, suggesting two interdependent challenges:
- the need for a new headline measure of progress (or small set of such measures) that can balance GDP and thus help define and guide a more balanced political programme, and
- the need for a more balanced political programme itself; this can be characterised neutrally as one that involves better management of trade-offs than in the past (i.e. less bias in favour of growth) leading to better quality growth (i.e. growth that is equitable, sustainable and results in high levels of well-being).
BRAINPOoL is concerned with both of these – using ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators in policy making means ‘balanced’ policy making. As already noted it is important to emphasise that ‘balanced’ does not just mean the adoption of social and environmental goals in parallel with economic goals (experience tells us that economic objectives tend to trump other ones) but rather a more integrated approach to economic and other policy making.
Beyond GDP indicators appear at two points in this model: as ultimate outcome measures, measures of well-being now and in the future), and as measures of the drivers of these outcomes. This corresponds to the double role that GDP plays: as a proxy for welfare, and as a measure of output. In other words the indicators could play two roles in the policy process: defining the ultimate objectives of policy, and defining the intermediate objectives of policy.
The key point is that what we measure does affect the choices we make and if our measurements are flawed or incomplete, decisions are likely to be distorted. Thus the choice between promoting GDP and tackling income inequality or protecting the environment may be a false choice, once the negative costs to society of environmental degradation or inequality are appropriately included in our measurement of economic performance.
Without successfully merging these currently parallel processes we are in no position to understand whether the continuing commitment to economic growth is, or is not, taking us in the right direction; towards well-being and genuine progress for societies, both for current and future generations.
2. Understanding the supply, influence and success of Beyond GDP indicators
Interest in Beyond GDP indicators has grown rapidly in the last decade, at least partly in reaction to the growing complexity and number of interlinked social and environmental crises that the world is facing. A broad variety of alternative indicators reflecting trends in the state of the social and physical environment have been developed offering new signposts for the orientation of our societies. Ideally, this information expands alternatives, clarifies choices and provides decision makers with important functions such as monitoring progress made towards fulfilling policy goals.
In reality, however, despite their many useful applications in both defining the intermediate objectives of policy (policy drivers) and in measuring ultimate outcomes (e.g. well-being/sustainability), the number and diversity of alternative indicators has made it difficult for their relevance and meaning to be appreciated. Decision makers therefore often still lack the broad-based information needed for ‘good’ decision making. In fact the very diversity or ‘over-abundance’ of Beyond GDP indicators is cited as one of the reasons that has prevented any single alternative indicator to emerge as a serious counterbalance to the dominance of GDP.
This abundance can cause both competition between producers of indicators and confusion from potential users. Concentrating efforts on increasing the supply of scientific data, there is a danger that academics, statisticians and NGOs may not be producing information considered relevant or useful by decision makers, and may simply be producing too much of the ‘wrong’ kind of information. On the other hand, due to a general lack of fruitful interactions between statisticians and democratic representatives, actual and potential users are likely to have specific information needs that go unmet.
During the early phase of the project we therefore considered a number of ways indicators can be usefully classified to increase clarity. These included:
- Level of impact (international, national, local) – Indicator providers should develop and promote indicators for a particular spatial and geopolitical scale. The same indicator may have different meaning in different contexts or when applied on different scales. A national average value or global figure can mask regional disparities or significant inequities between societal groups and patterns evident at one level of resolution can be lost at lower or higher levels. Some issues are affected by regional inputs and require regional action in order to be addressed effectively.
- Indicator domains (environmental, social, economic) – Beyond GDP indicators are often designed to shed light on the development of human, social and economic systems able to be sustained into the future and be kept in harmony with the biophysical systems of the planet. They should thus provide information on one or more of these domains, not neglecting the important links between them.
- Indicator approaches (subjective, objective) – Beyond GDP indicators are supposed to measure characteristics or processes of the human-environment system. Specifying the characteristics of the system or entity can be very subjective (in some cases political, philosophical and/or cultural differences may prevent a wider consensus). It is important to realise that science cannot (always) validate the goals set for the system, but it can validate the ability of the chosen indicators to measure the system characteristics properly.
- Indicator types (single indicator, set/dashboard, aggregated, composite) – Beyond GDP indicators are truly multi-purpose and are thus necessarily multi-structure. We will explore the merits of these different approaches later in this report.
- Envisaged users – politicians/policy makers, the public, specific experts – Indicators are by definition communication tools and it is the capacity of the indicator to reach its target audience that to a large extent determines its use and potential impact. Some users need simple, structured information (voters, non-specialist media, and decision makers), others require an intermediate level of detail (local government, policy implementers, non-government organizations, funding bodies, and industries), while statisticians and academics may need highly technical data.
- Link to GDP (adjusting GDP, “replacing” GDP, supplementing GDP) – the realization that GDP is a measure of economic quantity, not economic quality or welfare has led to (i) indexes that ‘correct’ GDP by incorporating a variety of economic, social or environmental factors which are not included in the conventional measure (e.g. Genuine Progress Indicator); (ii) indexes that do not use GDP (e.g. Ecological Footprint) and (iii) indexes that include GDP (Human Development Index).
2.1 Indicator producers: intentions versus ‘use’ of alternative indicators
Through wide-ranging interviews with indicator promoters the project identified nine key categories that describe their intentions. These included influencing the public, enhancing knowledge, pursuing democratic goals, providing tools for others and encouraging data collection. By far the most important goal, however, was to influence policy, with an important distinction between indicators associated with broad ‘macro-economic’ objectives and indicators aimed at informing specific finer-grained ‘micro’ policy decisions.
Beyond these intentions we also looked at the actual ‘use’ of indicators and as other studies have found, we noted a number of different types:
Thus instrumental use of indicators describes situations where indicators are seen as objective information tools to improve policy-making. Typically, the discourse used in this model is about solving problems and providing information. An indicator has an influence when it is ‘used’ directly by a policy maker and this consciously influences their decisions.
Conceptual use, on the other hand, sees the prime value of the indicator to be more intangible and less about their actual direct use. In this model, indicators influence how policy makers think through a process of ‘enlightenment’. Indicators (or indeed the framework they are placed in) might affect how decision makers define problems, or provide new perspectives on problems.
Finally political use encompasses three interesting sub-categories:
Legitimisation use – where indicators are used to justify or bolster a decision which has already been taken. Where the indicators that are successful tend to be ones that provide the desired message. This is also called strategic use.
Tactical use – quite a specific use of indicators, whereby decisions are postponed or avoided with the excuse that data is being awaited. The content of the indicator is actually of little relevance.
Symbolic use – whereby indicators are being used to convey a message or present an image.
2.2 Influences: What counts as success?
From BRAINPOoL’s interviews and workshops, we can conclude that many policy actors believe that alternative indicators are most liable to achieve ‘success’ (in terms of becoming broadly adopted by a critical mass of mainstream policy actors or catalysing a change public policies) once they meet a set of criteria which many in the Beyond GDP field would regard as lacking any real innovation.
We found persistent perceptions among mainstream policy actors that if alternative indicators are to succeed their methodologies must be consistent with the current economic model and be directly linkable to existing economic instruments and tools (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, resource efficiency).
In the business context, it was suggested that to be adopted alternative indicators should be compatible with traditional managerial and accounting processes, and hence the goals of profit and competitiveness. If indicators are viewed as helping to serve, enhance or support pre-existing growth objectives, they are more likely to be considered as desirable.
2.3 Achieving Impact
Notwithstanding the difficulties, almost all indicator producers we surveyed want to influence or be useful to policy makers and thus ultimately have a real world impact, although we identified a number of other forms of influence that indicators can have. These influences may ultimately contribute to real societal change (or act as stepping stones to achieving that change) and can be summarised as follows:
- Internal influence and external reputation of the organisation
- Influence with the rest of the Beyond GDP movement and on data collection processes
- Influence with opinion formers: media, education, academics
- Influence with the public
- Influence on policy making and assessment processes
- Influence on specific policies; influence on practice
Despite most of the indicator initiatives we studied being less than ten years old, there were a great variety of influences these indicator initiatives believe they have achieved, which demonstrates that Beyond GDP indicators are achieving some traction in policy.
2.4 Media impact
The media attractiveness of an indicator is important, not least for politicians hoping to reach wide audiences and influence public opinion, and was taken in this project to represent one objective proxy for indicator impact. The BRAINPOoL project conducted an extensive media survey of a short list of 16 indicators that spanned all the major indicator categories we had identified.
The main conclusion is that, in the arena of media, it is particularly important that indicators deliver simple and meaningful concepts. The Human Development Index (HDI) and Ecological Footprint (EF) are by some margin the most popular international-level Beyond GDP indicators. What they measure may be complicated, but both indicator sets manage to illustrate a complex reality using a single figure that allows straightforward trend monitoring and comparisons between countries.
3. Understanding demand for Beyond GDP indicators
Given the significant variations in the uptake and impacts that different Beyond GDP indicators achieve, and the relative lack of clarity surrounding how different policy actors perceive and react to the ‘Beyond GDP’ approach one of the project’s key tasks was trying to identify and describe the different aspects of ‘demand’ for Beyond GDP indicators.
The BRAINPOoL project explored how key actual and potential users understand and relate to alternative indicators, the range of success factors and drivers which determine the uptake of indicators into policy and the various institutional and other barriers that need to be overcome for this to happen. Of course ‘demand’, and indeed, ‘supply’ are rather crude concepts compared to the reality of the production, diffusion, use and impact of indicators. Our research quite clearly illustrates that the uptake of indicators depends on a much more complex set of mechanisms than a simple reaction to the state of demand. Furthermore, very few of the actors we interviewed considered themselves to be a “user” or “producer” of alternative indicators. Most of them appear to be somewhere in the middle of the process – as part of demand and supply, production and use – and uncomfortable with a reductive term to describe the whole landscape of processes surrounding new indicators. With this proviso, there are a range of the projects key findings that can be usefully summarised under the title of ‘demand’. Several types of demand were identified.
3.1 Societal demand … for new models
We found little evidence for strong ‘bottom up’ societal demand for indicators themselves, which is not surprising given the complexity of these tools and their almost exclusive construction by experts. What certainly exists in parts of civil society is a strong appetite for a more or less extensive transformation of both our current ‘world vision’ and of the underlying socio-political system itself. The general public, of course, does not think in terms of indicators, but in terms of human dimensions and societal change that impacts their daily lives. Scientists, NGOs and governmental bodies are increasingly basing their work in response to this genuine and often widespread demand for solutions to various environmental, social and economic problems that face society. Their work can therefore be viewed as a technical interpretation of this demand.
The fact that civil society is impacting the debate reveals an important evolution in a field that was once almost the exclusive preserve of statisticians and economists. A certain popular unease about the validity of the economic system, influenced by the economic crisis, an increasing awareness regarding the need for sustainability and the growing influence of the participatory approach has led actors within the debate to progressively take into account the broader needs of society. In this way civil society plays a role as an informal stakeholder that affects broad trends, without being directly involved in the production or promotion of alternative indicators.
So, while ‘bottom up’ demand is rarely for indicators themselves the strong call for societal change that can be identified should be taken into account in the construction of new indicators which can be used to measure and enable the changes that are being demanded. Civil society should certainly play a more central role in future debates about what ‘societal progress’ or a ‘good life’ actually mean and the types of indicators we use to measure these concepts.
3.2 Political demand … for new measures
The transformational vision seen in some parts of civil society is unsurprisingly not common amongst political elites and demand for Beyond GDP indicators tends to come when they are seen to be compatible with the status quo or incremental change (e.g. enhancing well-being at work to support profit maximisation). However, an increasing political demand has been observed for a single, simple, yet multi-dimensional indicator – despite the obstacles faced by the creation of such synthesised tools – and better environmental indicators. Political demand also tends to be strongest at the local and regional levels, due in part to the objectives of sustainable development and the relative proximity of local leaders and civil society amongst other factors. Where political demand does exist it is often either associated with pressure from civil society, or is strongly dependent on the existence of a legal or regulatory framework mandating the use of alternative indicators e.g. as part of obligatory evaluation procedures or national sustainable development strategies in which indicators often have a specific role to play. While some actors we interviewed suggested that the problematic over-supply of alternative indicators should not be an issue for decision makers who are used to a profusion of data, there is still not widespread high-level use of the existing initiatives. While Beyond GDP indicators can be useful both at the macro guiding and micro decision-making levels, we found that they are more likely to serve a conceptual, assessment or communication role rather than a role in decision-making, where they are often applied too late in the process to have real influence. This is consistent with the views of indicator producers we interviewed who doubted that any policies would be implemented as a result of an indicator that weren’t already part of the ideology of the decision maker in question. This is also consistent with various examples we encountered of very specific uses of indicators connected to very particular user requirements, and also to the common belief that politicians are liable to only use indicators that make themselves look good (or make the government look bad in the case of opposition parties). On a more positive note, we found that there is real connection between an indicators ability to transport new concepts and their eventual political impact. Indicators can often first deliver conceptual change without which subsequent instrumental (political) change could not happen.
3.3 Radical vs Status quo
The different types of demand seen at the societal and political level is indicative of a broader divergence about aims in the wider Beyond GDP movement, with the proliferation of new actors involved guaranteeing the existence of a diversity of aims and ambitions. These new actors, while all questioning GDP to some extent, hold very different expectations about the outcomes of the movement, ranging somewhere between two extremes:
- The replacement of GDP with another aggregated indicator, with the goal of reassessing the link between measurement and the evolution of society. Here, calls for ‘beyond GDP’ indicators are essentially calls for a ‘beyond GDP’ society.
- This contrasts with a stance that favours an evolution of the current economic system, rather than the development of an alternative vision, with the addition of new indicators alongside GDP to support the goal of extending the existing statistical system.
3.4 Demand for democratic legitimacy
In many of the discourses that the BRAINPOoL project analysed there was agreement about the lack of adequate democratic legitimacy and public participation, particularly in the construction and development phases of Beyond GDP indicators. We also encountered general demands for wider access to statistical information. The recurrence of such demands strongly contrasts with the actual context in which Beyond GDP indicators are commonly formulated: very technical debates, with the involvement of high-level actors, in frequently costly processes, at events and conferences without media coverage and with poor civil society participation. The contrast between the expectations around democratisation and the current reality needs to be seriously addressed if the public is to have any sense of engagement or ownership of this agenda. We address this point more fully in our ‘recommendations’ section.
3.5 Lack of demand
Generally, however, we found that the use of Beyond GDP indicators remains weak, both within institutions and in the policy making process. This weak demand can be explained in terms of:
- A lack belief in the need to move away from GDP and a lack of knowledge of the alternatives amongst potential users (‘user factors’)
- The difficulties of moving away from GDP in the current political context (‘policy factors’)
- Concerns about the quality, robustness and neutrality Beyond GDP indicators themselves (‘indicator factors’)
We will explore some of these ‘reasons for non-demand’ in detail in the following chapter on ‘Barriers to the use of alternative indicators in policy making’ but it is worth highlighting a range of them here.
No clear belief in the innovation presented by Beyond GDP
On the one hand, while there is a general acknowledgement of GDP’s weaknesses, we observed that many statisticians feel there is nothing new about Beyond GDP indicators and that they do not offer any social or statistical innovation. Furthermore, they point out that GDP is often used to inform areas for which it was not created and was never meant to measure welfare. The problem, as they see it, is not with the metric itself, but how it is used and broadcast to the general public, particularly by the media. As such, there is a perception from statisticians in particular that the Beyond GDP debate has been blown out of all proportion, because they produce all sorts of indicators, not just GDP. The recurrence of debate is often not fully understood by statisticians which explains their reluctance to engage in the issue.
A belief that the well-known defects of GDP can be lived with
While mainstream actors (not linked to the Beyond GDP agenda) in BRAINPOoL’s workshops did mention the lack of correlation between GDP and subjective well-being in rich countries and the negative environmental impacts of growth, in most cases these limitations were perceived quite superficially. If GDP’s methodological defects are questioned at all, the consistency of its use in decision-making is not. Most of these actors are thus in favour of “completing” GDP rather than replacing it as they believe it represents a robust measurement system that can be compatible with many environmental goals and remains a good proxy measure for progress.
A belief growth remains pivotal
Ultimately, even if GDP is not seen as a good proxy for welfare, it is seen to be measuring something that is so central to the current societal model that it needs to remain in a central place. Thus, most mainstream actors we encountered could not entertain the possibility of organising economic and societal activities according to an alternative indicator to GDP. A strong belief remains that quality of life improvements – whether social, human or environmental – are impossible without assuming the pursuit of economic growth. Concepts such as “smart growth”, “green growth” or “inclusive growth” have emerged as ‘Beyond GDP’ responses to this mainstream need for an overriding framework of growth, while steady-state proposals of zero-growth or even de-growth are rejected as unrealistic given the lack of compatibility between such objectives and the effective functioning of the current economic system.
Poor knowledge of alternatives
If the limits of GDP seem to be only weakly identified by mainstream actors, existing indicator alternatives are even less well known. Aside from the ‘Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi’ report, Human Development Index and Ecological Footprint, awareness of international Beyond GDP initiatives, events and indicators is generally poor. For example many workshop attendees had not heard about the OECD’s ‘Better Life’ initiative or the EU’s ‘GDP and Beyond’ initiative showing that even strong institutional support is not sufficient to guarantee mainstream awareness. Even where a clear demand exists, knowledge of the Beyond GDP initiatives can be lacking. In France, for instance, some MPs suggested it would be a good idea to have a dashboard of indicators on sustainable development, without realising that they already existed.
Lack of trust in Beyond GDP indicators
We were able to identify several features of the Beyond GDP agenda that elicit distrust from mainstream actors and appear to exacerbate a lack of demand.
- Distrust of subjective data – we found that many actors question the quality of subjective data. Among the main reasons raised were the lack of verifiability, difficulties with comparability of data, the potential for arbitrary dimensions and their lack of time-consistency.
- Distrust of ulterior motives – of course all indicators carry normative or political values in the very choice of what they measure and exclude, delivering meaning in a much broader sense than their pure statistical nature. However, we found that some mainstream actors find the value-based aspects or political assumptions underlying the methodologies of some Beyond GDP indicators to be particularly problematic.
- Concern about a lack of realism underlying alternative indicators – a third element of distrust lies in the important role of underlying assumptions and models. Many of the participants consider the dependence of indicators on issues that contain high level of uncertainty, such as sustainability, as problematic with suggestions that might lead to arbitrary choices, a lack of transparency or the ‘massaging’ of numbers.
- A very important related issue (which we will deal with in greater detail in the following ‘Barriers’ section) is the lack of an alternative societal model that links clearly with Beyond GDP indicators in the way that the orthodox growth model links with GDP.
- There are also concerns about the longevity of the Beyond GDP movement – some actors expressed a view that Beyond GDP indicators are a ‘flash in the pan’ or transient interest that would be unlikely to endure in the long-term.
Incompatible temporalities
One of GDP’s strong points is that it is published at regular three-monthly intervals and is considered timely, allowing decision makers to use it as a policy making tool. In contrast many alternative indicators are currently published irregularly or with too much of a time lag to impact on policy cycles. Added to this is fact that Beyond GDP indicators often necessarily incorporate long-term issues (such as sustainability) and long-term trends (such as changes in well-being), which struggle to attract the attention of politicians and the media focused on short-term political and news cycles.
A primary factor suppressing demand is thus a lack of political will confronting actors working in this field brought about by a conflict in time scales that alternative indicators often experience within the political sphere. In other words, if measures that are desirable for long-term sustainability also somehow imply short-term ‘pain’, they are less liable to be adopted by those engaged in the short-term focus of political decision making.
Ambivalent effects of the financial crisis
A range of factors influencing demand for Beyond GDP indicators can be linked to the structural (economic and political) context into which they are introduced. The effects of the financial crisis on the Beyond GDP agenda, for example, can be viewed in both positive and negative terms and provides support to multiple – and to a certain extent conflicting – beliefs.
One position tends to assume that the crisis has played a role in weakening the credibility of GDP as a leading indicator and has revealed an increased need for alternative measurement tools, in part to counterbalance low or stagnating GDP figures. This argument sees the old economic model as discredited due to further evidence of its endemic and harmful instability, thus opening the space for new social critique and allowing the positive expansion of the Beyond GDP agenda. We found that in France and elsewhere, this analysis had gained ground and demand for a Beyond GDP approach had increased since the crisis.
In contrast, while many actors agree that the current system’s limitations have been further exposed, they assert that there been no marked increase in the actual use of Beyond GDP indicators to reveal alternative or ‘better’ solutions since the onset of the financial crises. Indeed the pattern seems to match historical precedent whereby when growth levels are high there is concern about its negative side-effects, whilst during periods of low growth there is an almost exclusive obsession with how to increase it again.
3.6 Opportunities and success factors
Alongside these factors identified as negatively influencing the demand for Beyond GDP indicators our work revealed some clear counter examples of opportunities and reasons to be hopeful. These drivers of demand appear at both the political and societal level:
Institutionalisation
While no alternative indicator has come close to the institutionalisation experienced by GDP, the existence of political programmes such as National Sustainable Development Strategies, including those in Germany, France and the UK, in which indicators have a specific role to play has rendered indicators less dependent on the vagaries of political and policy cycles. These and other structural governance mechanisms in which alternative indicators are linked to legally binding frameworks are increasingly allowing them to be used and monitored more systematically.
The influence of the ‘Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report’
One of the most recurrent observations in the interviews and workshops we conducted is the pivotal influence of the ‘Stiglitz Commission’ and the report which followed. The strong political support, eminent scientific contributions and wide media coverage it received played an important role in allowing Beyond GDP indicators to gain access to wider political audiences and agendas, not only in its host country of France but also in the wider EU and OECD.
The clear, readable synthesis of the state-of-the-art that it offers has undeniably contributed in orienting many institutions towards the production and/or use of new indicators. The report not only enhanced the demand for indicators by highlighting the importance of the Beyond GDP agenda, but helped several emerging notions gain greater credibility, legitimacy and salience. Like the ‘Brundtland report’ did for concept of sustainable development, the ‘Stiglitz report’ initiated renewed reflection on the way societies should think about their future and manage their priorities.This time, however, concepts of quality of life, of well-being, and of social progress were placed centre stage and the report catalysed the emergence and popularity of a series of well-being indicators, which are slowly but surely encroaching on domains once inhabited by sustainable development.
A more proactive approach
We were able to identify increasingly proactive moves on the part of statisticians and decision makers towards the production and use of alternative indicators. The most salient example regards the European Union, were a major change of approach has been observed among many Directorates-General (DGs). From an initial relatively passive attitude towards indicators (e.g. waiting for Eurostat proposals), many DGs have progressively gained awareness of the role of measurement in policy making and now actively request the supply of specific types of data and indicators from Eurostat.
Recognition of the interplay between indicators and social change
Several of the actors we interviewed noted the key role that indicators play in defining world visions, striving as they often do to influence existing socio-political conventions and generate support for new societal models. As we have already seen the impact of the financial crisis on the Beyond GDP agenda was mixed, but it is worth reiterating that the crisis has led to stronger calls for social change and further questioning of the current economic model. This observation is supported by a recent international survey (in 11 countries) which shows that since the onset of the crisis 68% of respondents favoured replacing GDP with a broader indicator that also incorporates health, social and environmental statistics.
New actors at the table
One of the main developments that has accompanied the emergence of the Beyond GDP agenda, is the opening up of the measurement debate to a much wider set of actors. Progress is no longer just a topic for economists. The field has broadened from an initially narrow and close-knit group of experts to a wide range of stakeholders including academics, political actors, NGOs, think-tanks, psychologists and civil society groups. While GDP restricted the scope of discussions to economic issues and therefore limited the number of concerned actors to the economic sphere, beyond GDP indicators, in contrast, address a far broader range of issues which inevitably involve new actors. Other disciplines such as psychology and environmental science are now closely involved, while academics are playing an important role in launching critical debates, taking part in official processes and building strong interconnections between the different actors involved in the debate.
The rise of the well-being approach has further catalysed this process with initiatives generated from every type of actor with a desire to reach civil society through the use of an easily grasped concept.
3.7 What factors can contribute to an indicators success?
Given the range of reasons the BRAINPOoL project has identified as contributing to a lack of demand on the one hand and the diverse opportunities and drivers for the Beyond GDP agenda experienced at both the political and societal level on the other, it is worth exploring why some indicators manage to achieve success while others fall short. Based on interviews with the promoters of 17 different Beyond GDP initiatives we were able to identify a clear set of factors which are likely to enhance the success and impact of alternative indicators, both in terms of generating interest and demand but more importantly in terms of influencing policy and allowing indicator promoters and producers to achieve their aims. The main factors are summarised below.
Salience for decision makers
Indicators were successful when they could be demonstrated to have real relevance for policy or strategy. Crucially they need to measure something that policy makers believe they can influence which can be a problem for Beyond GDP indicators given the intention to measure broad overarching concepts such as progress. For example this is one of the biggest hurdles to the uptake of subjective well-being indicators, which explains why several initiatives promoting them are working to build the evidence base on how policy can influence well-being.
A related success factor is the ability of an indicator to show clear links between what it measures and other tangible outcomes (e.g. levels of subjective well-being that are related to reducing obesity, health costs, absenteeism and staff turnover) both for policy makers and business. When an indicator is applied by an organisation or institution, it should also have the ability to fit with its vision or strategy particularly for those initiatives whose goals are around priority-setting or assessing progress. This was relevant for the three sustainable development indicator sets we studied, all of which were born in the context of sustainable development strategies.
Similarly, local level indicator initiatives need to ensure that their outcomes meet the priorities of the community they serve e.g. by inviting community members in to ‘red flag’ indicator results that they feel are important for the organisation to explore further. Typically, the ability to match a vision or strategy works best when the indicator is produced in-house, though we found the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) to be an exception to this rule.
Another factor that is relevant to the political sphere is cost. In the current climate, indicators that provide clues for low cost policies, or indeed those can help save money are of particular interest. On the flipside, we found that indicators that necessitate expensive data collection are either ruled out or seen as a waste of public money.
Salience for a broader audience
We found that having relevance for a broad audience is also crucial to an indicator’s success. Our findings include lessons both about the indicators themselves and how they are communicated.
Indicator initiatives tend to be effective when they allow the production of a ‘simple’ and ‘attractive’ message that links to a meaningful concept. A related issue is that of comprehension. For example, whilst well-being is not a simple concept, many of those we interviewed regarded it as a notion that ordinary people found easy to grasp. A similar point can be made regarding the Ecological Footprint (EF) which is an understandable, appealing concept, despite involving very complex calculations. An interesting lesson emerged from Eurostat which highlighted the importance of working collaboratively and closely with communication experts, rather than simply handing data over to them. Outputs are then developed iteratively to ensure that both communicability and accuracy are maintained. Avoiding the use of ‘taboo’ words was also identified during our interviews as being key to a broad appeal. In the UK the word ‘happiness’ was often perceived as woolly, frivolous or non-scientific. In Germany among other countries, the word ‘welfare’ (‘wohlfahrt’ in German) has negative connotations in its association with financial handouts from the government, while in the USA, alternative indicator producers have avoided talking about ‘climate change’ instead referring to ‘air quality’.
Factors related to credibility and legitimacy
Indicators need credibility and legitimacy to succeed and we found a number of factors that were relevant in this regard. Data quality is a particular concern with some interviewees reporting unease regarding subjective well-being, including questions regarding reliability and the belief that these measures do not change over time.Strong resistance was also expressed by several interviewees about composite indicators primarily related to concerns over methodology and the weighting of different components. A commonly expressed opinion also holds that the world is too complicated to be reduced it to a single indicator. The OECD’s Better Life Initiative has managed to secure acceptance of a composite indicator by allowing users to decide for themselves how to weight the different dimensions of the measure. Being (or at least appearing) neutral is generally regarded as the best route to achieving legitimacy. As we have already noted, some alternative indicator producers work within a framework of simply providing ‘neutral’ information, while others are clearly connected to particular agendas. As a result we found that some interviewees compare advocacy organisations’ data unfavourably with that of National Statistical Offices (NSOs). In this regard, clear best practice mechanisms can be put in place to increase neutrality such as the monitoring of funding mixes and the barring of staff from involvement in political parties. Finally, having institutional power can often enhance legitimacy, with governmental or supra-governmental bodies like the Council of Europe and the OECD benefiting from the status of institutions that are ‘issuers of rules’ that are likely to be heeded by other institutions like national statistical offices.
Factors related to relationships and processes
Developing the indicators with the audiences at whom they are targeted and/or encouraging participation is also seen as a key success factor for alternative indicators. This is particularly important for local-level initiatives and was successfully achieved by several of the initiatives we looked into such as the Jacksonville Community Council Indicators (JCCI). The importance of relationship building also applies to policy makers with all of the initiatives that had achieved policy success citing direct face-to-face channels as vital. For example Gallup regularly provide individual briefings to members of parliament and government departments on their Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, while the approach of the UK’s Office of National Statistics has been to actively engage with policy makers to understand how their Measuring National Well-being can be used by them.
As has already been noted in this report, it is clear that local initiatives have been able to achieve more impact than larger national/international ones to date, with a variety of reasons cited. Local bodies are found to be more ‘flexible’ and media are often keen to pick up regional stories. It is also easier to build direct relationships with your target group at the local level. However, whilst national-level change might be harder to achieve, generally it needs only be achieved once in each country, whereas there was a perception at the local level that change needs to take place many times over.
Working in partnership was also found to be an important positive factor. Aside from allowing a greater network to be reached and a greater skill base to be marshalled, partnerships allow different organisations to take on different roles. For example, the Regional Index on Alternative Quality of Life Indicators (QUARS) brought together a range of partners which were able to advocate on different issues that the initiative raised. Many of the partners came on board because they identified something of particular interest to them in the broad initiative. This can ensure an initiative is not too associated with a particular agenda.
In a similar vein, picking one’s audience was also seen as a key to attaining success. Two contrasting strategies were observed here. On the one hand, initiatives worked with potential users who could be identified as ‘allies’, useful advocates or people who already had an interest in the issues at hand. At the same time, several initiatives highlighted the need to reach those bodies that might be expected to be least sympathetic to their initiatives – particularly ministries of finance, treasuries or economics departments. A third important option combines the strategies, targeting allies or people who have expressed interest within these difficult-to-reach audiences.
4. Barriers to the use of alternative indicators in policy making
Having looked at some of the positive drivers and opportunities available to Beyond GDP indicators as well as the factors likely to enhance their success it is important to recognise that there remains a diverse array of obstacles facing the Beyond GDP agenda. Throughout the project’s activities but particularly while working with our seven case study partners during BRAINPOoL’s action research phase we investigated the barriers to the creation and use of new measures of progress, particularly in relation to how they can guide policy. Some of the barriers we found can be seen as inevitable consequence of the ambitious aims and methodologies of Beyond GDP indicators themselves and are thus somewhat intrinsic and insoluble, while others both can be – and need to be – overcome if alternative indicators are to flourish in the future. This second set of barriers is predominantly not about the indicators per sé, but rather about the policies, narratives, and policy-making techniques that they are associated with. Whilst the following section is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the barriers being faced by Beyond GDP indicators we found a remarkable number of parallels amongst our cases, which suggests that other alternative indicators are likely to be experiencing similar challenges. The barriers were explored through the following seven action research cases.
Opportunities for use of alternative indicators in the OECD [OECD]
The OECD has been at the forefront of the development of Beyond GDP indicators and is at the vanguard in terms of exploring the policy implications of Beyond GDP indicators. However, the organisation does face challenges in taking the agenda from statistics to actual policy recommendations. In this case we identify barriers and opportunities for the further uptake of Beyond GDP indicators in influencing policy.
The German National Welfare Index (NWI) and the Environment Ministry (BMU) [Germany]
The National Welfare Index is the only index funded as a research project by the German government through the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The index attempts to act as a catalyst for the debate about what kind of growth we actually want for society and how we can best include sustainability and social prosperity into our measurement systems. In this case we explore and describe the full range of barriers affecting the indicator and where possible illustrate ways of exploiting potential drivers and opportunities.
The British Business Bank [British Business Bank]
Work is currently taking place in the UK department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to set up a state owned Business Bank which will be fully operational by the second half of 2014. In this case we take the recommendations of an independent taskforce that the Bank should have a mandate to promote good, sustainable jobs and a performance indicator framework to match, and identify potential barriers to this and how these might be overcome.
The Welsh Government Sustainable Indicator Set [Wales]
This case is about how the Welsh Government uses its headline Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs). It finds that the indicators are not currently used effectively across Welsh Government policy-making due to a variety of barriers that result in them not being seen as having a meaningful role within the policy-making process. However, it describes a clear opportunity to clarify and strengthen the role of the SDIs through the Future Generations (Wales) Bill which the Government plans to introduce in 2014.
Sustainable development in the Midi-Pyrenees, France [Midi-Pyrenees]
The main objective of this case is to identify barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy at regional and sub-regional levels in France, and to propose ways of overcoming them. We discussed the issues involved individually and at two workshops with officials and elected representatives at the level of the region, département, urban community/community of towns, and individual city/town as well as NGOs and the regional statistical office.
The Rotterdam Sustainability Profile, the Netherlands [Rotterdam]
The Rotterdam Sustainability Profile [Rotterdam] Officials at the City of Rotterdam have been developing a Sustainability Profile, a new way of presenting and using data on sustainability issues at the local level, and at the time of the case were starting to plan how best to use this. The case identifies potential bottlenecks within the City municipal organisation which could hamper the further development and implementation of this new indicator, and on the basis of discussions with stakeholders, identifies how these can be overcome.
Healthy City indicators in Chrudim, Czech Republic [Chrudim]
This case illustrates the process of development and implementation of indicators at the town level (Chrudim). In particular it describes the way the cooperation between experts in indicator development and the local authorities has influenced the indicator set development, the motivation of the town representatives to use “alternative” indicators (drivers), the barriers to indicator set implementation, and the ways these barriers are being overcome.
At the most superficial level budget constraints form a barrier to the use of Beyond GDP indicators and similar problems were identified in many of the cases we studied. The economic crisis and resulting government austerity measures have exacerbated this hurdle by reducing the budgets for statistical services, leaving fewer resources for new statistical tools. However this generally reflects low prioritisation and is thus a symptom of other problems, not the diagnosis.
The remaining underlying barriers can be divided into three groups: 1) Political barriers 2) Indicator barriers 3) Process and structural barriers
4.1 Political barriers
Lack of democratic legitimacy
This applies particularly to indicators’ role as measures of ultimate outcomes – measures of well-being now and in the future (the right hand box in our diagrams on pages 8-9). The indicators being put forward have not been agreed democratically, especially those measuring sustainability, and even subjective well-being measures, which on the face of it are completely uncontroversial and legitimate, have not been popularly endorsed as measures of outcomes in the public realm. GDP by contrast, or so it is argued, has legitimacy because it is both a key driver of welfare and a proxy measure of welfare (admittedly crude), and welfare has legitimacy because as traditionally defined it is based on how people choose to spend in the market.
Lack of strong narrative that engages the public
The lack of legitimacy is in part because ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators are not underpinned by a coherent, politically compelling narrative to compete with the orthodox narrative that underpins GDP: i.e. that markets will deliver optimal outcomes except where specific market failures are identified, and that maximising growth while correcting market failures will therefore maximise welfare. Many policymakers generally regard this narrative as essentially sound, and therefore view Beyond GDP as redundant or worse.
In the case studies we worked on we found that efforts to connect with the public and civil society by those promoting Beyond GDP indicators (where this had happened at all) had not always been particularly successful. In the Midi-Pyrenees we found that both sustainable development and the Agenda 21 did not engage citizens well and it was clear that those promoting this agenda found it difficult to involve a broader range of citizens. This meant regularly resorting to ‘top-down’ processes for developing Beyond GDP indicators for the region.
In Wales we were told that communication around sustainable development had failed to connect with the public, perhaps partly because there was nothing emotionally charged, that resonated, with the public in the Sustainable Indicator Set and no strong accompanying narrative. By contrast, one official noted, “it is the narrative around economic growth that makes it a priority”. Some thought that getting the narrative right was critical: “get the messages right, get the politics right and the other things will come in behind it”.
Lack of a clear political imperative
The lack of legitimacy and narrative just described, together with the pressures created by the economic crisis, mean that there is no demand amongst the bulk of the electorate that politicians prioritise the outcomes that Beyond GDP indicators measure (although as we have seen there is demand from some sections of the electorate and civil society of course). As a result there is no strong demand from politicians for use of the relevant indicators, even if sometimes they call for the development of these indicators (e.g. British Prime Minister David Cameron, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy).
4.2 Indicator barriers
There remain a number of technical questions with indicators and disagreements continue about how best to measure concepts such as sustainability. Adjustments to GDP made by indicators such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare are seen by some as lacking a theoretical justification and no single indicator has emerged as a measurement of well-being.
Data problems
Issues around data remain a problem for some indicators, representing a barrier both to their creation and use, but like resource shortages this kind of information resource barrier is often only a symptom of a wider problem. Some complications are inevitable in the context of the use of new data, and they only constitute a serious barrier if the necessary financial resources are not allocated, or if the lack of time series is allowed to trump the need for a Beyond GDP approach to policy-making – i.e. if the whole agenda is a relatively low priority. In some cases the necessary data is simply not available or may be difficult to find: we found this both in Chrudim and in our discussions of the British Business Bank. It may be that while data are available, timely, robust and sufficiently frequent data are not, meaning that the data could not be used to assess the current situation effectively. We found this was sometimes the case for the National Welfare Index (NWI) in Germany, where there is currently a time-lag of 1.5 to 2 years and some of the variables are based on assumptions or studies rather than hard data. Some of the indicators in the Welsh Sustainable Development Indicator set similarly only appear once a year and one is several years out of date. A third problem is that adequate time series may not yet be available. We were told that 20 years of data are necessary for the OECD to model econometric relationships, and that while contemporary data are available, adequate historic data are not.
Conceptual confusion
Throughout our work we found that the divergent and contrasting nature of concepts which underlie different Beyond GDP indicators is leading to damaging confusion about concepts and terminology. Even if people are fundamentally sympathetic to the Beyond GDP agenda, they are not going to use the indicators if they are confused by them. The competing concepts of quality of life, living standards, human development and sustainable development contribute to increased confusion, while many terms, such as well-being or sustainability, are used to mean different things by different actors. For some actors, well-being represents the social part of sustainable development; for others it constitutes a combination of the economic and social spheres. Some think that well-being is similar to sustainable development, just presented in a different way; others assume well-being is in opposition to sustainable development, bypassing environmental concerns and focusing only on present generations. In the Midi-Pyrenees, some attendees at the workshops simply identified ‘alternative’ indicators with composite indicators, and even those who saw themselves as active participants in the debate thought that well-being could not be measured. Similarly, in Wales, there was little understanding of how well-being statistics can be used. One official said “I think the problem with well-being is that people are jealous”, another referred to the fact that her “own personal well-being…changes from day to day” as a reason why the Government should not attempt to measure it. Not surprisingly given this, the meaning of ‘Beyond GDP’ was not obvious to many participants in our workshops, nor was it always clear what Beyond GDP was for. We also found very little understanding of alternative indicators amongst many politicians and officials in our workshops which is consistent with our earlier findings that a poor knowledge of alternative indicators is a key factor in the lack of political demand. Interestingly, there was some evidence that support grows as people find out more (e.g. in the Czech Republic and Midi-Pyrenees case studies we found that there was much stronger interest in opportunities when people were informed about alternative indicators).
No Beyond GDP indicator with the salience of GDP
The failure to create a strong narrative is made worse by the fact that there is, as yet, no agreed candidate for a single Beyond GDP indicator with the salience of GDP as a broad measure of societal progress. This makes it difficult to replicate the simple headlines currently linked to the quarterly GDP figures. There is no number and therefore no compelling alternative story to tell. Attempts to deal with this have not yet been successful, and we encountered recurrent debates about which alternative indicator methodology to use and the correct level of aggregation. Some favour composite indicators while others choose dashboards. Some favour adjusting economic measures to reflect social and environmental factors while others prefer to start afresh with subjective well-being indicators drawn from surveys. For those who favour subjective well-being, no single objective indicator (e.g. income, or housing, or life expectancy) can claim to represent the entirety of the multi-dimensional concept of well-being. But some subjective well-being indicators, at least in theory, are measures of well-being overall – the idea being that people responding to such questions are implicitly considering the multiple dimensions of well-being and providing an overall assessment.
Certainly, throughout the project’s activities we have found well-being measures progressively dethroning the call for sustainability indicators. However, while well-being analysis is likely to remain an important policy tool, as yet subjective well-being has not established a clear lead as the dominant indicator. For example at the OECD, there was a view that a subjective well-being indicator on its own would be too narrow as a headline indicator – that it should not be seen as “the ultimate synthesis indicator of well-being in society”, while in Wales and the Midi-Pyrenees we also encountered some scepticism as to its value. Another potential candidate would be a composite indicator, of which the NWI in Germany is an example. The main argument in favour of composites is their communicational abilities, which like GDP, can give the ‘temperature’ of a situation clearly through their single number and can often be readily compared to GDP, if, like the NWI, they are expressed in monetary units. However, there are well known problems with composites such as the choice and weighting of components, which were evident in the cases we studied. In the Midi-Pyrenees we came across the common view that composites are ‘black boxes’ and in Germany the basis of the NWI was questioned. Indicators using this methodology (the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) are very similar) have been accused of lacking a coherent theoretical foundation which critics believe results in corrections being applied to economics data without giving any theoretically sound justification for doing so. Some interviewees expressed the additional worry that aggregation into a single figure can hide crisis situations associated with a particular component.The Rotterdam Sustainability Profile is also a form of composite and we found here that the complexity of the indicator can be a real problem, especially in terms of interpretation. Several officials saw a possible danger of misinterpretation, partly driven by a complex method of presentation, or an excess of information. The final possibility is a dashboard of indicators – a pragmatic approach often associated with policy making and very much ‘operational’ rather than ‘educational’.
The language and politics associated with Beyond GDP
The resistance to change, lack of popular support and lack of a strong alternative narrative creates particular sensitivities to the rhetorical and political associations of Beyond GDP. This is both a matter of resistance to specific words, but also of the broader political positioning of Beyond GDP.
Thus at the level of words, some of the stakeholders of the British Business Bank believed there was a danger that use of Beyond GDP indicators would make the bank seem uncommercial, that as a result business would react negatively, and that the bank would therefore be ineffective. In particular, one political actor felt that the indicators would be more acceptable if described as economic rather than social indicators. As noted earlier in this report there is a need to avoid ‘taboo words’ if an indicator is going to gain broad appeal. Thus in Germany, the word welfare (‘wohlfahrt’) used in the name of the National Welfare Index has persistent negative connotations similar to those in the US where it is associated with dependency and government hand-outs. The NWI faces a more challenging barrier in that through its uptake, it is quite strongly associated in some quarters with the Green Party – rather than as an impartial way of assessing progress. While the NWI works entirely within a scientific framework and provides neutral information that is freely available for any actors to use, at least one interviewee mentioned that there “must” be a connection to the Green Party, due to the extent to which Länder (German federal states) that are associated with them have taken up the indicator, and of course it is true that the choice of variables in any index cannot but reflect a certain set of priorities. While the Green Party is relatively successful in Germany, this could be a handicap so long as other parties that are in power view it as a ‘Green Party tool’. More generally, Beyond GDP indicators will need to survive changes in administration in the way that GDP has survived such changes – a point made in the Chrudim case study and a conclusion we also drew from the Wales case study. While they may not initially reflect a consensus on what the goals for society are, in time they will need to come to do so. This is consistent with our earlier findings that the appearance of neutrality strengthens the chances of an indicator being successfully adopted, and that there is resistance to Beyond GDP indicators to the extent that they are associated with “unrealistic” steady state or de-growth proposals.
4.3 Process and structural barriers
No clear process for integrated and innovative economic policy making
The inherent multi-dimensionality of Beyond GDP poses two key challenges to the policy making machine. Firstly, an integrated approach to economic analysis must deal with complexity and uncertainty and make use of a wider range of methodological approaches: this creates analytical challenges and there has as yet been relatively little development of models linking policy with overall well-being, in contrast to the well-established (even if often highly unreliable) formal and informal models that guide the development of economic policy designed to maximise GDP and market efficiency.
What is needed is innovative policy making process (for example considering combinations of policies that have not been tried before), notoriously difficult in civil services.
In the British Business Bank case study the need to manage complexity was seen as reason for not using Beyond GDP indicators by some workshop participants. They felt that the kind of processes needed to meet non-GDP objectives would be difficult to manage effectively – and as a result the entire exercise would be more risky. The difficulty of dealing with multiple indicators and thus competing pressures was also highlighted by several officials in the Wales case.
At the OECD it was pointed out to us just how hard it would be for analysts to accurately model the impacts of policies on the multiple dimensions of well-being (including future well-being, or the environment), given the interactions between those policies and the feedback loops between different aspects of well-being. Thus the concepts that are key to Beyond GDP are seen to be more dynamic and harder to measure. As one staff member said at the OECD “our economics department has been built on the idea that if you cannot measure a phenomenon it doesn’t exist.” This may sound frivolous, but the OECD’s reputation is at least partly based on its capacity for quantification, and for robust predictions about the impact of policies based on careful assessment. However policy innovation typically involves new combinations of policies, which are unlikely to have yet been tried. Its impact is therefore difficult to predict and represents a real dilemma for organisations such as the OECD with a reputation for impartial rigour.
Increased co-operation between organisations, departments and disciplines
Second, an integrated approach to policy requires increased co-operation between organisations and working across departmental and disciplinary boundaries with a range of different perspectives at the table. The barriers to achieving these demanding cross-silo practices are familiar and were mentioned in several cases. Thus at the OECD, it was clear that working ‘Beyond GDP’ requires consideration of “diagonal effects” (the impacts of policy in one area on outcomes in another) but that there were clear challenges in harmonising the output of the organisation. This is particularly difficult because different divisions report to different committees, which represent different departments of member country governments. Reference was made by one interviewee to the different “blood groups” that the members of different committees belong to. Different “blood groups” were also referred to by an interviewee in Rotterdam as a barrier, where effective use of the Sustainability Profile would involve integrated processes. As several interviewees pointed out, work processes within Rotterdam’s municipality are not that integrated, there are several departments formally involved in the realisation of sustainability goals, and there is not strong cooperation between different departments. Accordingly, a lot of attention will be needed to embed the Sustainability Profile in work processes. Similarly in Germany, the fact that the broad social, environmental and economic components of the National Welfare Index did not fit into any ministerial mandate was seen as a barrier – although of course the whole point of the indicator is to integrate those mandates. In effect it can only be championed by a body with a broad mandate, such as the Chancellor’s office, a cross-departmental taskforce, or arguably Destatis (the German national statistics office). In the Midi-Pyrenees we found that the necessary co-ordination between different authorities was weak. This was not just a matter of policy – it was also a matter of co-operation on data and indicator initiatives: data and standards were incompatible at different scales and between territories, and initiatives were undertaken without any knowledge of what had been done elsewhere. Central co-ordination was not helping: in the Midi-Pyrenees, regional and local authorities felt limited by a lack of central leadership; similarly in Chrudim, the absence of interest at national level in the application of indicators at the local level was noted – and initiative at town level was in some cases prevented because of national directives.
Institutional resistance to change
We came across and heard about clear resistance to abandoning traditional objectives and the informal models that support them. This resistance to a Beyond GDP approach can take several forms. It may reflect a genuine belief in the need to prioritise growth, a belief that the existing system is capable of dealing with externalities and that is all that is needed, a concern that in the absence of a theoretical foundation policy guided by new indicators will be ineffective or the fact that the power and/or success of certain institutions depends on the continuing predominance of traditional objectives and informal models. This resistance is effective to the extent that (a) there is no political imperative for change and (b) it is reinforced by structures and processes that preserve the power of those resisting.
Natural conservatism
There are also clear issues of natural conservatism around habit, perceived norms and risk aversion which can result in passive resistance to the changes that the use of Beyond GDP indicators implies. In this respect, the use of Beyond GDP indicators is no different from any other significant change. Moving ‘beyond GDP’ represents innovation and as such risk – and this is not appealing to many actors who are responsible for policy making.
So, for example, some more progressive commentators on the British Business Bank took a conservative view because they believed that this would be the view of business, and they were concerned not to go against the needs of business. At the OECD, some staff, who appeared genuinely committed to the idea of making well-being rather than economic activity the objective of policy, also appeared to find it hard to break the habit of seeing GDP as the variable that one is trying to maximise.
The view that Beyond GDP is redundant
Natural conservatism shades imperceptibly into the view that in reality there is no bias towards growth in policy making and that therefore Beyond GDP is redundant or worse. Where decision makers hold this view, naturally they will not adopt Beyond GDP indicators. There is a crude and a more sophisticated version of the view. The crude version mirrors what we found when investigating the reasons for the continuing primacy of GDP amongst most economic policy actors. These findings made clear that even if GDP is not seen as a good proxy for welfare, it is seen to be measuring something so central to the current societal model that it needs to retain a central place. Some actors believe that growth is so supremely important that it should always trump other objectives. While this is certainly a minority viewpoint it does sometimes underlie political messages and thus shapes the policy environment. So for example, in 2013 both the German Federal Minister of Economics and Technology and the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer were vigorous in their respective campaigns for GDP increases, both stating a belief that environmental legislation is a barrier to growth and so needs to be cut back. We have here a policy environment in which growth will (almost) always trump other objectives, and thus one where indicators such as the German National Welfare Index or the Welsh Government Sustainable Indicator Set, designed for an environment in which there are multiple objectives, are made more-or-less redundant. Of course one reason for this view is that the ‘other desirable outcomes’ may only make a difference in the longer term, and voters are believed to take a short term perspective. This is particularly relevant now since growth is a particular priority for decision makers given the recession. Thus we were told in Wales, “we don’t pay attention to long-term ambition because we are too busy trying to sort out the immediate problem” and that sustainable development was not amongst the government’s top three goals. In the Midi-Pyrenees we were told that the social situation was currently too critical for the Beyond GDP agenda, and that territories needed to be “economically strong” first. In the more sophisticated version of the view that beyond GDP is redundant growth is only one goal amongst many but the market can be trusted to deliver optimal outcomes, except to the extent specific market failures are identified. Dealing with the latter does not require us to develop a whole alternative apparatus of measurement – we already have a well-honed methodology for assessing and correcting such failures. This traditional statement of economic theory remains very powerful.
Here too, a more extensive role for alternative indicators is considered unnecessary and probably counter-productive because of the complexity involved. It is worth emphasising that this is in effect arguing that an integrated approach to policy (with multiple objectives using multiple indicators) was inappropriate. In their words it is a direct rejection of the Beyond GDP approach.
A failure to connect
We also came across examples of indicator development that was not taking into account the requirements of their users or ‘client groups’ – as if the creation of the indicator was in itself enough for it to be used. But even if many of the theoretical and indicator barriers described above are overcome, they will not be used without effective action within potential user organisations. For example, indicators are unlikely to be used if they have been developed in isolation from the policy process and agenda or allowed to drift apart from that process and agenda. In such cases there is a clear need for more effective ‘indicator entrepreneurs’ capable of spotting the opportunities for new or existing metrics and promoting them to those who could benefit from them. In a sense this is obvious, and was the original hypothesis of the BRAINPOoL project – that the promoters and potential users of indicators were not talking to each other sufficiently. It is worth emphasising, however, because the idea that what is measured will on its own influence what is done appears to have gained some traction, particularly since the Stiglitz Report. However while measurement may be a necessary condition for policy change, it is self-evidently not a sufficient one.
We saw this in two cases. In one case (Rotterdam) the indicator was still at a relatively early stage of development and there had been a strong initial focus on the technical aspects, rather than an attempt to think about its place in the policy process, and arguably a failure to link its spatial scope to political boundaries. The result was a lack of shared understanding as to the purpose of the indicator and considerable scepticism amongst senior managers which clearly needed addressing.
In the other case (Wales) it was because the indicators were the result of an earlier initiative designed to create a permanent measurement framework for government, which no longer represented the current government’s priorities (and arguably never really did). Given this, there was naturally no strong impetus to use the indicators as an accountability mechanism and no link between the indicators and policy outcomes – described as “totally disconnected from the work that goes on” by one official. Why was this? One official noted that a robust theory of change was not always developed on how particular indicators would help address an identified problem. In some cases policy objectives were even opposed to the objectives implied by the SDI indicators so would have resulted in big distortions if used to measure the policy success. More broadly, as in Rotterdam, the indicators were not yet part of a policy making process designed to produce sustainable development outcomes. As yet another official put it, the indicators themselves are too “linear” and “don’t ensure that people address the full range of SD outcomes in the round. We need mechanisms for integrating.” So one official could point to the headline SDI measuring economic growth and describe his activities towards this goal as evidence he was addressing the SD agenda, when of course the whole point of the SD agenda is to encourage policy makers to consider the trade-offs between growth, sustainability and other objectives.
5. Going Forward
In this section, we have brought together those recommendations that we think can be of use to a wide audience, leaving aside those barriers that we consider to be symptoms rather than root causes and concentrating on those that we feel are most urgently in need of resolution.
5.1 Recommendations
Our recommendations are addressed to a range of actors: political parties, officials, NGOs, the OECD and other international agencies, official statisticians and unofficial statisticians. Different recommendations are relevant to different actors (in brackets).
Recommendation 1: Develop processes to engage citizens and establish the democratic legitimacy of Beyond GDP indicators (Political parties, officials, NGOs)
Beyond GDP concepts need to be rooted in processes, goals and targets that have legitimacy. A democratic process with wide representative and public engagement on the measurement of ultimate goals (end indicators), including subjectively measured ends, will help to raise legitimacy and public awareness of (harmonised) Beyond GDP concepts. This probably has highest potential for success on the local level, as democratic engagement might be easier to organise at smaller scales, but is important at all scales, including at the European level.
More generally, the debate about how we measure progress cannot be left to experts. The complexity and multi-dimensionality of Beyond GDP in fact makes deliberation necessary, based on exchanging knowledge and experiences between various stakeholders and partners.
Recommendation 2: Develop a strong Beyond GDP narrative, and demonstrate the difference use of Beyond GDP indicators will make to policies and outcomes (Political parties, OECD, NGOs)
A consistent theme throughout our work is the need for better communication to effectively demonstrate the salience and relevance of the Beyond GDP agenda to a wider audience and there is a clear need for further work to develop politically compelling messages around Beyond GDP indicators. To be successful as a public communication tool, Beyond GDP indicators must connect with things that have real impact on people’s lives – dramatising a real problem and pointing the way towards a solution. In our action research case studies, we recommended the development of new messages around Germany’s National Welfare Index and Wales’ Sustainable Development Indicators which showed their clear relevance to people’s lives – particularly the disadvantaged. Such messages must go beyond the division between economic, environmental and social, instead articulating a new, more holistic vision of progress which resonates with the public. For example, well-being can be expressed as quality of life and linked to politically powerful concepts such as good jobs; sustainability can be expressed in terms of security and future quality of life. The impacts of the financial crisis and the clear perils of planetary boundaries and tipping points can be used as a backdrop to the narrative but should not be a core message. Instead the foundation for this work will be what people care about and should use positive messages built around what people find most important: community, fairness, equality, good education and a better quality of life.
There is also a clear need for further work to develop the theoretical foundations for Beyond GDP narratives. Various speakers at our final conference stressed that this was vital if Beyond GDP was to compete with conventional neoclassical narratives. The narrative will need to be populated with specific policies with appeal, and the success of which can be measured. We return to this under recommendation 4.
Recommendation 3: Continue work on the technical and theoretical foundations of alternative indicators, with particular focus on standard setting and harmonisation, and paying attention to the need for engagement by politicians as well as experts (Academics, official statisticians, OECD, international agencies)
Although we conclude that the political and policy related barriers to Beyond GDP are fundamental, it is of course true that technical issues remain. There is a need for greater scientific consensus on sound methodologies, based on peer reviewing etc; we also recommend that a neutral body or institute should have a role in safeguarding data quality and neutrality of those Beyond GDP indicators which are based on non-official data.
Policy makers will find it easier to deal with the complexity inherent in multiple indicators if the latter are properly categorised and grouped, in such a way that policymakers can access them easily and use them. Accordingly we recommend that indicator producers and their sponsors ensure that existing and future indicators are categorised in this way and brought together into a database. This is being addressed in another EU-funded project, NETGREEN.
International comparability is particularly important for Beyond GDP indicators in an increasingly globalised world, since it not only enables benchmarking of progress against other countries, but also enhances the credibility and legitimacy of indicators. This work is underway through the European Statistical System and other initiatives. However under recommendation 4 we have suggested some initial actions to link the UN’s SDG process to Beyond GDP.
Recommendation 4: Improve processes for integrated and innovative policy making (Officials, political parties)
This requires the ability to manage complexity without recourse to standard economic thinking. Three strands of change are needed:
- More and different people are at the table when decisions are made. This requires multi-disciplinary working (i.e. incorporating insights from disciplines beyond economics), working across silos within organisations, increased co-operation between organisations and potentially re-organising in order to bring together diverse perspectives and challenge orthodoxies. For instance, in the Chrudim and Rotterdam case studies we recommended closer co-operation between departments and units, as well as between experts and representatives, while in the OECD we suggested a new unit (perhaps called the ‘well-being unit’ or the ‘quality growth unit’) to co-ordinate horizontal initiatives, accountable to an overarching committee representing central government offices. We also recommended more interaction with external parties, such as academics, who are less constrained by the technocratic nature of the OECD’s mandate.
- New approaches to analysis and policy development. Dealing more robustly with multiple objectives and the trade-offs between them requires new approaches to policy analysis, and, at least in the short term, a willingness and ability to innovate when the results of policies cannot be accurately modelled. For instance, at the OECD we recommended building on the approach adopted in their recent Austria Economic Survey, and the reports published by the Development Centre, which combine formal economics with other forms of analysis, as well as continuing work to develop a single numeraire for the evaluation of trade-offs between different dimensions of well-being. At the Welsh Government and the British Business Bank, we recommended the development of screening processes to help integrate new indicators into policy development and decision-making. Other processes designed to stimulate innovation will be needed.
- The adoption of Beyond GDP indicators to measure key goals, by local and national governments and the EU as part of its mid-term review of the Europe 2020 targets and possibly the European Semester process. This would be strengthened by harmonisation with the UN’s SDGs.
It is also important to demonstrate how Beyond GDP indicators will lead to different policy outcomes from conventional policy, otherwise the narrative we suggest will lack substance. In our action research case study with the OECD, we recommended the identification of key policy areas where there might be trade-offs between conventional economic objectives and Better Life Index outcomes, which could be used to pilot new forms of policy analysis which consider the interactions between different domains – for example, the links between transport policy, housing policy and spatial planning policy.
In Germany, we recommended that the BMU and Länder authorities identify the policy implications of the National Welfare Index and Regional Welfare Index respectively, showing how they might translate into new policy priorities.
Attendees at BRAINPOoL’s final conference workshops strongly endorsed the need demonstrate different policy outcomes more systematically and disseminate these messages directly to policy makers.
Recommendation 5: Develop strategies for overcoming institutional resistance (Political parties, NGOs)
Significant change always encounters resistance; as any competent change manager knows, advocates of change must have a strategy for neutralising that resistance. Some initial recommendations discussed at BRAINPOoL’s final conference include:
- More concerted outreach efforts by the Beyond GDP community, in particular to economic and finance ministries. Participants at our workshops pointed out that though these can often be treated as the ‘enemy’ by Beyond GDP advocates, there are often opportunities to build alliances and shift perspectives from the inside.
- Work to develop theoretical foundations for Beyond GDP (e.g. see Recommendation 2) – some participants felt that this would be crucial to overcoming resistance.
Recommendation 6: Strengthen the ‘indicator entrepreneur’ role (Official and unofficial statisticians)
Those responsible for indicators (whether statisticians, policy makers, politicians, or independent watch dogs) need to be alert to opportunities to promote the use of new and existing indicators. In other words they should act as ‘statistical entrepreneurs’. Since Beyond GDP is both a political and a technocratic problem, it also necessitates much closer collaboration between statisticians and democratic representatives. At national level this allows indicators to better match objectives, while at local level it can help achieve the right balance between sophistication (the priority of the experts) and feasibility (the priority of the representatives).
For instance, in Rotterdam we recommended that the officials responsible for the Sustainability Profile work closely with those responsible for the planning process so that the Profile becomes embedded into that process. In Wales, we recommended that the government’s sustainable development unit work with the independent Sustainable Development Commissioner to ensure that the indicator set facilitates the oversight role of the Auditor General. In Chrudim we identified the crucial role played by the LA21 co-ordinator in overcoming barriers – he or she is effectively the indicator entrepreneur - and we recommended that the authorities ensure that a strongly motivated person is appointed and then given sufficient powers.
5.2 From recommendations to actions: putting projects into practice
The day after the BRAINPOoL final conference, a workshop was held, attended by some of those participating in the final conference, to begin developing an action plan for taking forward some of the recommendations. Attendees at the workshop committed to taking this plan forward, working groups were formed, and it was agreed that there was value in co-ordinating the work of these groups. The new economics foundation (nef), one of the BRAINPOoL partners, undertook to provide the secretariat for the groups.
Since a key lesson of the project and the workshops was the need for indicator specialists to become more outward-facing and engage strategically with influential actors, the working groups were structured according to the key audiences for new projects. All the groups are designed to get Beyond GDP indicators used in policy making. However while policy makers and politicians are the decision makers, they are influenced by others, and therefore these others also need to be influenced. The groups were:
- The EU institutions and through them, the UN SDG process
- National governments and politicians
- Local government and politicians
- The public
- The media
- Business
- Academia
In addition to external-facing activities of this kind, a key next step identified throughout our discussions was that agents of change – the Beyond GDP community – need to have more opportunities to meet each other, learn from successes and failures, and collaborate on projects to bring Beyond GDP into the mainstream. This is an overarching recommendation which underpins and cuts across all of the other activities discussed in this document. We envisage that the network itself will provide a crucial platform for building and developing this community.
Potential Impact:
Main dissemination strategy during the project period
Given that the BRAINPOoL project was a Knowledge brokerage project aiming to stimulate and improve interaction between users and producers of Beyond GDP indicators, through case studies, interviews, roadshow, workshops and a final conference, much of the dissemination activities and network building have been realised during the course of the project. The project website provided an important platform to disseminate scientific research results and other project outcomes. All finalised documents have been published on the website shortly after submission to the European Commission services.
The nature of the project implied intense interaction with a multitude of internal and external audiences, be it through personal contacts with other researchers, indicator developers and policy makers, conferences and workshops or our work in the case studies.
WP1 comprised of research activities aimed to framing the reservoir of existing Beyond GDP indicators. For this purpose we interviewed indicator producers or indicator developers. While executing these research activities we recorded contact details of interviewees and other persons we engaged with, such to keep them informed about project progress and results, and to be able to invite them for workshops, seminars, and the final conference.
In WP2 we investigated the institutional context in consortium member countries, an activity for which several interviews with ministries, statisticians, NGOs etc. were conducted, in order to understand how beyond GDP indicators match to the needs of (potential) users. Accordingly, during the ‘WP2 roadshow’, workshops or seminars were organised to have discussion with actors that we identified as being more sceptical to the Beyond Agenda. In this way we achieved to learn why some actors are hesitant to take alternative indicators on-board.
The third work package “Action research in practical cases” was a work package where dissemination clearly was integral part of all research activities. The case studies have been developed in close collaboration with the institutes or organisations under investigation. Almost all case studies had a set-up of a round of interviews with a small group of actors, followed with a workshop or seminar with a larger invited group of participants.
The first three work packages of BRAINPOoL thus meant a lot of interaction with different actors, institutes and organisation. Therefore we were able to continue to build-up a growing list of project contacts to keep informed and to recruit participants for the knowledge brokerage from.
After finalisation of each work package we created summary PowerPoint presentations to communicate key results in a more attractive manner than the regular deliverable reports. Each time these summary presentation have been sent out by e-mail to a long list of project contacts, and have been published on the project website. The summary presentation reached an audience of about 5,500 persons.
Networking with topical organisations and other research projects was another part of our dissemination strategy. For example we cooperated with FP7 projects e-Frame and APRAISE. A special session in collaboration with research projects in the area of research efficiency was organised at the World Resources Forum in Davos (October 2013). E-Frame and BRAINPOoL explored the possibility to merge the final conferences to maximise impact. This merge of conferences turned out to be too complex. Instead, both projects presented their work at both conferences.
For the knowledge brokerage workshop of WP4 we intensively cooperated with ICLE-Europe and UNESCO Venice. In this way we were able to reach larger audiences to inform about the project and to recruit workshop participants from. This resulted in a two-day workshop that was hosted by UNESCO Venice in Italy. We received positive feedback from participants that the two-day knowledge brokerage workshop, offering ample of opportunities to informally meet and continue discussions, contributed to ‘community building’. Many participants left Venice with new contact with whom they wanted to cooperate more often in the future.
We considered the established linkages between different actors and stakeholders and networks involving both indicator producers and potential users during the course of the project as important building blocks for a longer-lasting “community”. We especially hoped to achieve that actors we have engaged with during knowledge brokerage activities will continue to cooperate in the future. The fact that almost half of the participants of the October 2013 knowledge brokerage workshop in Venice also attended the final conference and workshops in March 2014, proofs us that we have succeeded in this objective of community building.
Potential impact after the duration of the project
Although target groups were active partners in the delivery of the project with their participation during various knowledge brokerage events, BRAINPOoL did not aim to create passive awareness of our research findings but instead wants to enable people to actually use the results in their work practice, also beyond the duration of the project. For this reason, the last key objective of BRAINPOoL was to ensure consolidation and follow-up beyond the duration of the project.
In terms of Foreground, BRAINPOoL’s joint Vision Document on the application of Beyond GDP indicators and Final Action Plan are in particular intended to inform a wide variety of stakeholder and actors that would like to make more use of Beyond GDP indicators in their work practice. These two documents have the highest potential to maximally exploit BRAINPOoL’s foreground. The Foreground may be exploited by those trying to have Beyond GDP indicators used more extensively in policy making, at supra-national, national, regional and city level, and whether from within institutions (officials and politicians) or from the outside (ngos).
The Action Plan identifies the steps and actions needed to help overcome barriers to the use of indicators that can balance the use of GDP in policy-making. With this ‘Action Plan’ or ‘Roadmap’ the BRAINPOoL project aims to provide an outline of the best opportunities for future implementation of Beyond GDP indicators in integrated policy processes, building on BRAINPOoL’s joint Vision report on the application of Beyond GDP indicators.
The vision report expresses a shared view on the most important challenges to the application of ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators in regional, national as well as international policy making and governance, and provides some direction on possible solutions to overcome barriers and to tackle challenges. BRAINPOoL’s action plan aims to provide more practical recommendations, and where possible, identified which actors should be involved in follow-up actions.
A first draft of action plan has been discussed during a workshop on the 25th March 2014, one day after BRAINPOoL’s final conference. At the final conference, the key findings and recommendations of BRAINPOoL were presented, with a focus on how to achieve both a Beyond GDP narrative, and the integrated, innovative policy-making that is needed for Beyond GDP indicators to influence policy. Recommendations stemming from the final conference’s panel discussion and results of the workshop discussions on ‘next steps’ and ‘making it happen’ are integrated in the final version of BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan. Moreover, a set of working groups was set up at this last workshop on the 25th of March 2014 consisting of individual participants that are committed to working together to attempt to achieve to have Beyond GDP indicators used more extensively in policy making.
Intended audience of the Action Plan
BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan aims to inform different target groups. The Action Plan builds on the project’s findings on barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy making, and recommendations to overcoming them. The recommendations, or ways to overcome challenges and barriers to the use of Beyond GDP indicators in policy, are primarily addressed to a range of actors: political parties, officials, NGOs, the OECD and other international agencies, official statisticians and unofficial statisticians. In particular the working groups formed after the final conference are thus likely to use the Foreground of BRAINPOoL. Further research on workable and popular ‘beyond GDP’ policies, and the processes needed to develop and deliver these at all levels will be needed, though.
Furthermore, we hope that actors in the international statistical community that will progress in the short-term with ‘GDP and Beyond work’ can make good use of actions reported in this BRAINPOoL deliverable. We think in particular of: consortium members of the e-Frame project in their efforts to finalise its handbook for policy use of indicators and its Roadmap for future research needs; the European Statistical System with its Common reflection on ‘GDP and Beyond’; the High-level Expert Group (“Stiglitz 2”); and actors involved in the post 2015 Development Agenda (UN Sustainable Development Goals).
Most of the actions reported in BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan can be started by national or regional policy making bodies that wish to use Beyond GDP indicators for their own policy purposes. Some of these actions can be started by individual actors, building on recent proposals, for example on a harmonised conceptual framework to measuring sustainable development, that are stemming from internationally coordinated actions.
Lastly, the Action Plan also aims to be an informative document to a wider audience, that might not yet be fully informed on ‘GDP and Beyond actions’. For this reason the Action Plan provides a short but informative summary of recent internationally coordinated actions.
In addition to the Vision document and BRAINPOoL’s Action Plan, the “Online Tool” on the project website functions as a ‘library’ of other types of exploitable Foreground, i.e. science-based outreach materials, including BRAINPOoL’s Final report (Deliverable D5.2). The Online Tool ensures general dissemination of all (scientific) research results, case study reports, indicator factsheets, and a reservoir (Excel Spreadsheet) of 95 Beyond GDP indicators or indicator initiatives. Lastly, movies showing interviews with high-level participants of the final conference, as well as both panel discussions during the conference will be made available on the BRAINPOoL website.
The website will be hosted for at least two more years after the end date of the project.
Scientific publications
During the project period three scientific articles have been published, a fourth peer reviewed has been submitted as manuscript, and a fifth article is planned for the future.
1. Published scientific articles:
• Janoušková, S., Hák, T. (2013). Values and Sustainable Development: Reflection on selected Czech Policy Documents 1988-2010. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 15 (3), pp. 371-386.
Abstract: A coherent value system and attitude towards the social and natural environment are considered to be a basic condition for the implementation of sustainable development as implicitly contained in the Rio+20 Declaration ‘The Future We Want’. The importance of human values such as justice, equality, shared responsibility, empowerment, solidarity or tolerance also need to gain appeal a new because of the ongoing economic crises. Although politicians have often taken advantage of the powerful concept of values, extensive research in this field is still lacking. The main goal of the study is to analyse the meaning of values and how their importance has changed over time. The values under scrutiny were identified in selected national policies relating to environmental protection and sustainable development covering the period 1988–2010. The study presents a method for the operationalization of values to understand their meaning and to obtain the first quantitative findings on changes of values in selected policies over the past two decades. The results of the analysis revealed the absence or low representation of sustainable development values (e.g. solidarity or tolerance) which may open up a discussion on the role of values in policy-making and possibly improve new, relevant Czech policies accordingly.
Journal: The Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning is an international journal that provides a forum for the critical analysis of environmental policy and planning. It explores the environmental dimensions of common policies such as transport, agriculture and fisheries, urban and rural policy, all stages in the policy and planning processes from formulation to implementation, and the interactions between governments and markets, the strategies of non-governmental organizations and business in relation to the environment, and land-use decision-making. (Impact factor: 1,421)
• Seaford, Ch. (2013). The Multiple Uses of Subjective Well-Being Indicators. Social Indicators Research. Vol. 114 (1), pp. 29-43.
Abstract: There are barriers to the significant use of subjective well-being indicators in policy making. These barriers can be overcome, but this will take a co-ordinated effort. These indicators can play multiple roles. They can stimulate public debate, inform the development of formal or informal economic models, influence the choice of other indicators more directly related to policy outcomes, draw attention to important issues which might otherwise be ignored, input into a new form of cost benefit analysis, be used in before and after appraisal, and be used by the public to hold politicians to account. Subjective indicators are better placed to play these roles than either dashboards or indexes based on objective indicators. It is not clear whether they will play these roles and two scenarios are possible. In the first, the relatively marginal role the indicators are beginning to play in policy will be expand, but they will not move centre stage, or in any way challenge existing headline indicators such as gross domestic product. In the second, a set of tools is developed which politicians and journalists find useful, both for communicating and for developing their ideas. In this scenario, the ideas implicit in subjective well-being indicators find their way into public debate and thus drive policy change. As a result they do challenge existing headline indicators.
Journal: Social Indicators Research is an International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement. It has become a leading journal for the publication of research results dealing with measurement of the quality of life. These studies - empirical, philosophical and methodological - encompass the whole spectrum of society, including the individual, public and private organizations, and municipal, country, regional, national and international systems. Topics covered include health, population, shelter, transportation, the natural environment, social customs and morality, mental health, law enforcement, politics, education, religion, the media and the arts, science and technology, economics, poverty, and welfare. (Impact factor: 1,264)
• Hák, T., Janoušková, S. (2013). Beyond GDP Indicators in the Czech Republic. Statistika. Vol. 93 (2), pp. 86-99.
Abstract: The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the “Beyond GDP” issues addressed in the Czech Republic and the two member organizations: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the European Union. Traditional indicators such as e.g. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI) have been the main determinants used to measure the progress of nations. However, neither GDP nor the HDI reflex the state of the natural environment and both focus on the short-term aspects, with no indication of whether current wellbeing can be sustained. We have applied a simple categorization framework that revealed types of indicator-related initiatives run by the respective bodies. The framework is based on the purpose of the alternative “Beyond GDP” indicators to replace, adjust or complement GDP. Yet the Czech politicians and experts have hardly used this term, the analysis has shown quite extensive activities in that field.
Journal: Statistika is a Czech peer-reviewed journal published in English. Its aim is to create a platform enabling national statistical and research institutions to present the progress and results of complex analyses in the economic, environmental and social spheres. Its mission is to promote the official statistics as a tool supporting the decision making at the level of international organizations, central and local authorities, as well as businesses. Statistika contribute to the world debate and efforts strengthening the bridge between theory and practice of the official statistics.
2. Submitted but not yet published scientific article
• Thiry, G., Sébastien, L.,Bauler, T. Le bien-être et sa quantification : un retour en force? Analyse de l’évolution des usages politiques de la notion de « bien-être » en Europe. L'"année sociologique"
Abstract: Although well-being appears as an old notion having been already questioned by Aristotle, it is nowadays taking more and more place in the public debate. Nevertheless, together with concepts like life satisfaction, happiness, social progress or quality of life, well-being struggles to find its specificity and an overall confusion about these themes seems to arise within societal and political spheres at different scales. The objective of this paper is to grasp the divergences and convergences of political actors’ positioning in different European countries regarding the notion of well-being. We intend to decrypt the various practices, representations and knowledge of political actors about well-being and its indicators. To do so, we run 50 semi-structured interviews with political actors in 5 countries and within the European Commission, organized 4 workshops in 4 countries and analyzed 40 European documents about well-being from political, societal and scientific sources. Our hypothesis for this research (initiated by the FP7 project BRAINPOoL) is that the absence of a common conceptual background about the notion of well-being is a barrier to its institutionalization.
Our results highlight that the way political actors define, use and know about well-being in Europe is extremely eclectic. Many oppositions well-being and sustainable development are observed in the studied European countries, with different perspectives according to the actor or the place considered.
Talking about well-being implies also talking about its measurability. Here again, the divergences with sustainable development are present in all discourses, but with a great variability among actors with regard to issues such as subjective and objective data, environmental and generational concerns, happiness measures or composite indicators. Our discussion focuses on two stakes resulting from our analyses of all discourses and documents about the political implementation of well-being. First, the question that well-being cannot be a global uniform measure as GDP but has to be adapted to each society in order to be salient. Second, that well-being has to be defined by civil society through participation arenas in order to be legitimate. Political actors in Europe can insure the credibility aspects of well-being measures thanks to expertise but fail to attain their salience and legitimacy, both crucial to the institutionalization of well-being.
Journal: The journal largely publishes contributions on empirical sociological knowledge, and research on social science history. It also includes research regarding the relationship between sociology and other social sciences (history, anthropology, economics, and psychology).
3. Additional planned scientific article
• Hák, T., Janoušková, S., Abdallah, S., Whitby A. Indicator policy fact sheet: the knowledge brokerage tool?
Abstract: The concepts of sustainable development, quality of life, wellbeing, green growth and Beyond GDP movement have become important aspects of professional life of many researchers as well as administrators and politicians. The underlying concepts as well as indicators are rather vast, they are in a continuous development process and they all are closely linked or they even overlap among them. The information on them is mostly available in a scientific form – hypotheses, models, charts and the omnipresent figures – that are often not fully comprehensible for the final users. Some recent surveys show that only just the proliferation of indicators and complexity (and complicatedness) of their concepts impede the willingness of policy makers to take the indicators in.
One of the viable and effective ways to overcome that barrier may be to provide the users with precisely targeted information on the indicators. Such “indicator policy fact sheets” would offer them specialized (expert) information without necessity of gaining insight into the indicator theory and methodology. Besides brief general information on the indicator (developer, indicator meaning, presentation style, etc.) the policy fact sheets contain other important information as e.g. rigor of the methodology used, usefulness of the indicator for policy making and evaluation, attractiveness for media and the public, etc. It is this very kind of information that brings the indicators closer to policy makers rather than in detail-described sophisticated methodologies and calculations behind the indicator.
The article reacts to the call requiring bridging the gap between science, policy making and the lay public. Our central assumption is that indicators, if effectively embedded in the policy making process, are an effective transmission mechanism to connect research and policy. However, such a state is far from reality although there are many suitable indicators in place. Therefore we seek to enhance and speed up the effective use of indicators that can balance the use of conventional indicators and thus support the sustainable development policy process. Ideally, indicator users need to be aware of the knowledge that exists, and vice versa indicator producers need to be aware of the context(s) in which the indicators will be used. Indicators should be developed as part of an interactive process with multiple feedbacks that ensure that user demands are taken up in the production of sustainability indicators. The indicator policy fact sheets may be modest but effective tools increasing the indicators´ policy relevance. And this article deals with their development and use.
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