A Knowledge-Based Framework for Development Policy
In evaluating policy options, say, developing new textbooks or creating more vocational schools, policymakers must deal with a series of interrelated questions: Which options are likely to be the most effective in our country? Which relate most closely to the needs and wishes of the stakeholders? What are the relative costs? How have other countries addressed similar problems? The international research community has produced a wealth of studies that can provide guidance, yet policymakers are unable to incorporate development knowledge effectively into the policymaking process. As a result, policy decisions are often based on anecdotal information and the opinions of a few experts and consultants rather than solid evidence and the corpus of available knowledge and experience. Moreover, consultation with the stakeholders themselves is often limited, and in many cases it is not clear whether the right questions are being asked. These shortcomings in the policy process are not unique to developing countries but their effects are most keenly felt there. We aim to help policymakers in developing countries overcome these process shortcomings.
Typically, policy analysis focuses on, at most, a few input variables, rather than the full array of variables affecting a given public or social system. For example, in education, much of the policy research is based on the “production function” approach, in which inputs such as school funding, physical facilities, family attributes, teacher attributes, etc. are linked to student achievement using regression analysis. While these efforts have contributed to the understanding of the factors associated with student learning, research on education production functions simply has not shown a clear, systemic relationship between resource inputs and student outcomes.
In the last two decades, a growing body of research has focused on understanding and developing causal as well as diagnostic models and their applications to policy analysis. Our approach to development policy analysis is to build on these advances, develop theoretical models, and link them to a specific body of development knowledge. We use a Bayesian networks modeling approach (described in the following sections of this note) to organize the development knowledge into expert systems that enable policymakers in developing countries to analyze and formulate policy more effectively. Bayesian networks are particularly suited for specifying causal relationships among numerous variables in a complex system to analyze their interrelationship and the performance of the entire system. This modeling technique is now used in disparate fields, such as medical diagnosis, genetics, banking, and oil production. However, it has not yet been widely used in the development context.
Using a Bayesian network model as our inference engine, we have built a knowledge-based software engine tool, the Policymakers’ Workbench. Through this tool, policymakers can run unlimited iterations of various policy scenarios and connect existing knowledge to effective action. While much of the discussion in this paper is focused on education, the framework and the tool that we discuss is general and could be employed in policy analysis in other development areas, such as health, the environment, economic growth, migration, and more.
Massoud Moussavi
Massoud Moussavi is the Founder and Managing Director of Causal Links. He has more than 20 years of experience at the World Bank where he developed frameworks and models to estimate the impact and effectiveness of various policy options in a range of topics from education planning to risk assessment in banking. He has also been a resident scholar at American University, and a visiting scientist at the UK-based research center of Schlumberger, an international oil and gas services company. His experience spans countries in Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Massoud has a PhD in Computer Science from George Washington University.
Noel McGinn
Noel McGinn is the President of Causal Links. He is Professor Emeritus of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and Fellow Emeritus of the Harvard Institute for International Development. He has been a policy advisor to over two dozen national governments, non-governmental organizations, and international development agencies on broad strategies for improvement of public education systems.
Kent Lewis
Kent Lewis has more than 20 years of experience in international education, working on issues such as institutional design, capacity development, education reform, strategic planning and research-policy linkages. He has undertaken long- and short-term assignments in the former Soviet republics, Qatar, Pakistan, Brazil, and other countries on behalf of education and development organizations, such as Teachers College (Columbia University), Qatar Foundation, the World Bank, and the Eurasia Foundation. He holds masters and bachelors degrees from the University of Kansas.