Support for public-sector players represents a major innovation challenge, made all the more necessary by the specific nature and complexity of the challenges of transition (see Sc Po prezi).

These actions are also sources of innovative results and experiments in concepts and ways of doing things. They identify new research questions or help them evolve, and often lead to scientific and technical publications.

An incentive scheme to support innovative, finalised projects in support of public policies

Since 2020, the Public Policy Support Division has been offering scientists an incentive scheme to support innovative, ground-breaking projects in support of public policy.

The aim is to steer research and mobilise its results for the benefit of public policy, to nurture research and give it meaning.

A seminar to share experiences

Working at the interface between scientific disciplines is not always straightforward, and the same applies to the interface between science and the public sector. Around twenty project leaders from the 2020 and 2021 editions shared their experiences, difficulties and successes in autumn 2022.

Topics covered included: How to communicate with government departments? How to promote projects? How can targeted studies be extended to other areas? How can we work together with different partners, disciplines and cultures?

Internal survey: scientists’ views on innovation in support of public policy

The term ‘innovation’ in support of public policy calls for a change of outlook, a change of posture and a change in the way things are done. Reconciling individual interest and collective efficiency, private interest and public interest, environmental and economic objectives, requires new ways of designing, building and implementing action.

Following theincentive scheme launched by the Public Policy Support Department in 2020, which was designed to support so-called “innovative” projects, a survey was carried out in 2021 and 2022 of project sponsors who had submitted projects under this scheme, in order to gather their views on innovation in public policy support.

Around thirty interviews were analysed to draw up a portrait of innovation in support of public policy as experienced by scientists, its drivers, its obstacles and the solutions that scientists provide.

Six key elements emerge, demonstrating both a genuine motivation and capacity for innovation, but also the existence of structural obstacles capable of limiting this capacity:

• Serious motivation to support public policy, reinforced by social utility,
• a continuum between research and public policy support,
• innovation in terms of partners, subjects and methods,
• an activity that requires new skills,
• obstacles linked to the way science itself works (scientific performance criteria, evaluation of researchers, etc.),
• possible confusion between innovation in support of policy and the innovative nature of the very act of supporting public policy.