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- How can different actors (e.g. Governments, tech companies, social media platforms, individuals etc.) mitigate these harms?
- How can various data sources inform how we identify, address and resolve market access barriers relating to goods, services and foreign investment?
- What is the best/most appropriate indicator of financial health and sustainability of AHT organisations? At what point do AHT organisations become at risk and might require government intervention to secure their long term survival?
- Analyse the most significant factors that create barriers/risks to financial health for AHT organisations. What policy interventions can reduce financial risk for these organisations?
- What are the infrastructure, airspace, regulatory and skills requirements for the UK space industry and what are the impacts of existing government interventions?
- How can government funding be used most effectively to support future adoption of important technologies?
- How effective is UK government messaging and guidance on adopting cybersecurity? Do some messages land better than others? Why? With whom?
- How can we best stress test the UK’s playbooks for different risks becoming crises in an ongoing way?
- How can ‘systems science’ be used by government and regulators to improve their understanding, making their policies better targeted and more effective? How can ‘behavioural science’ be used to influence the behaviour of key stakeholders (regulators, businesses and/or policymakers) to achieve better policy outcomes?
- What are plausible scenarios and what role could/should the UK play in them?
- How can government effectively champion UK-led space science, exploration and innovation which expands our horizons and inspires the next generation?
- What is the role of government in this context?
- How will AI impact societal cohesion, including through trust in institutions and the government and through factionalism?
- What are the key factors that could drive improved productivity and efficiency in the delivery of DWP services? How can DWP services be designed to effectively identify vulnerable groups and those with complex multiple needs, in order to facilitate early intervention in partnership with other organisations?
- Use of statistics: Who is using official statistics, where do they find them, how are they being used, and what influences this? What do people look for in statistics or data being used as evidence to have confidence in using them, and how can we build this confidence?
- How can DWP ensure all those entitled to claim benefits or access DWP services are reached? What barriers to accessing support services are faced by individuals from disadvantaged groups?
- How can the benefit system best help low income and vulnerable households with their housing costs? What is the impact of DWP’s expenditure on housing support? What factors impact on evictions, homelessness and rough sleeping? How effective are policies designed to reduce homelessness?
- What approaches will best empower rural communities to develop social, economic, and environmental interventions appropriate to their own local circumstances?
- How can good data help to ensure successful delivery of major projects?
- How can we improve the delivery and performance of government transformation and service delivery projects?
- How does the governance and assurance of major projects relate to effective decision making?
- How can we combine available and emergent information technologies (such as text analytics, natural language processing, sentiment analysis and semantic markup) to improve knowledge and information sharing in a public sector context?
- What are the audience insights across Secretary of State and Government priorities as well as ongoing marketing projects (Build Back Better, etc.)?
- How can the interests and economies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland best be supported by the UK government?
- What are good policies, interventions, and strategies to improve the capability and capacity of local authorities to deliver transport provision?
- How do different models of funding, planning and decision-making result in different outcomes for transport e.g., centralised vs. devolved; public vs. private operation of networks/asset management; short vs. long-term?
- How should government maintain trust and accountability in using AI and machine learning? What is the public appetite for government making use of these in decision making?
- How should government encourage open data publication while minimising re-identification risks (the Mosaic Effect)?
- How should government make best use of biometrics and other technologies for government service users to prove their identities? What are the most useful applications of homomorphic encryption for digital government?
- How should government make best use of alternative web interfaces such as voice assistants and augmented reality for supporting government services? To what extent do these technologies enable accessible digital government?
- How can the Civil Service develop cost effective and flexible reward structures that attract, retain and develop the very best talent?
- Analysis of how UK citizens and regions’ expectations of UK government’s international efforts are evolving
- What are the characteristics of public services that should be devolved to the local tier while strengthening local accountability, and which are best delivered at the national level? What can we learn from international comparisons?
- What does the evidence show was more or less effective about the particularly intense engagement between local and national government during the pandemic, and what we have learnt about the key enablers developed between the tiers of government in this last period? Which of these would most helpfully be sustained in future (e.g. data sharing)?
- What has the pandemic taught us are the necessary pre-conditions for effective devolution of a public service to the local tier? Within that, what has the pandemic taught us about how accountability, such as managing public money, should be managed? And where does the evidence show that centralisation is more appropriate?
- How can front-line public services adapt to the challenges and opportunities presented by automation? What are the benefits and risks of adopting new technologies to deliver services?
- Closing the window between becoming aware of a potential technical exploit and action to plug the vulnerability reduces exposure to systems compromise. How can we best apply automation across government’s cyber security practices to ensure that potential exploits are addressed as quickly as possible? What are the risks and opportunities? What are the dependencies on other technology? Are there ethical or considerations in this area?
- What are the likely longer-term consequences of COVID-19 for vulnerable groups and communities in terms of the volume and type of need? What new considerations does this introduce in terms of central government’s role, and that of other levels of government and other providers?
- How can we best measure staff engagement and capture their views on more complex aspects of systems leadership in the Civil Service, which move away from the simple hierarchical model of leadership down managerial chains?
- What do different parts of the country need from central, devolved and local government interventions? What does that tell us about where funding is most needed?
- How can the Civil Service stay abreast of, and learn from, new practices in organisational design/operating models across third, private, and the wider public sector? How can information taken from academic research feed into these developments?
- What is the range of productivity performance across public services in the UK? What are the characteristics of highest productivity public services and what needs to happen to raise productivity in lower productivity services? How could existing measures of public sector productivity be further improved? Which countries have the highest productivity in their delivery of public services? What lessons can the UK learn from international best practice?
- How can we evaluate additionality of government support in investment promotion?
- How can public services contribute to reducing the ethnic disparities identified by the Race Disparity Audit’s website Ethnicity Facts and Figures?
- What are likely to be the future delivery models for public services and how can government and society best prepare to capitalise on the opportunities presented by these?
- How can existing research evidence be made accessible and useful to frontline services? How cost effective are different communication and engagement methods?
- How can we evaluate additionality of government support in trade facilitation?
- How can we measure the market access restrictiveness of a country from a UK perspective?
- To what extent does regulatory divergence affect bilateral trade flows?
- How effective is trade and investment policy in creating economic security and resilience that safeguards against shocks? What can we learn from comparing different country responses?
- What types of governance may improve resilience of the water system?
- What are possible governance and finance options for flood and coastal erosion risk management?
- How can we best develop an inclusive societal vision for a just transition towards sustainability? At what spatial scale should such visions be developed and how to reconcile across scales? How can we best manage the polycentric governance to implement these visions?
- How can local governance best be coordinated with national?
- How can we balance devolved responsibilities with the need to avoid a weakening of national guidelines/ standards?
- What criteria should we use to determine acceptable sectoral climate resilience scenarios across government departments, and when building preparedness externally?
- How can society and government act to protect and enhance nature, thereby sustaining the ecosystem services (including mitigation and adaptation to climate change) it provides, under a changing climate?
- What are appropriate adaptation actions to climate change across government, now and as change progresses, and when is it reasonable to implement these? How can we better understand the risks and opportunities around the policy drivers for adaptation (and mitigation)? How do we avoid maladaptation and ensure resilience to a range of possible futures?
- What capabilities are needed to deliver successful major projects and how are they built and distributed?
- How to model supply chains using real-time data to ensure effective supply chain security management?
- How do we apply Cost Benefit Analysis to improve capability development across organisations with more and less specialised cadres of staff?
- How can we ensure a streamlined registration process that is accessible to all, maximises digital opportunities, and is resilient to future change?
- How should the government best enable its transformation work to be ‘cloud native’ through scalable and secure digital services?
- How should the Civil Service best enable transfer of digital innovations from the private sector into government? How can it identify and collaborate with business leaders in other sectors of the economy who face similar technology challenges?
- How should government make best use of high-performance computing resources and emerging quantum computing technology?
- What are the implications and opportunities of demographic (e.g. ageing workforce), geographic (e.g. hubs) and technological (e.g. automation, robotics and machine learning - cognitive technologies) change for the ways in which the Civil Service is organised?
- How can policy makers be supported to collaborate more effectively with external experts and academia?
- How can we ensure effective work across government and the wider public sector to maximise efficiency and realise opportunities to develop policies that improve outcomes for citizens? What are the most effective ways - financial or non-financial of encouraging public bodies to work across boundaries, and for the centre of government to coordinate policy making? 5. How can the Civil Service build career paths that encourage a breadth of experience and depth of expertise?
- What policy actions can the public sector take to better attract, recruit and retain people from a wider range of social backgrounds than it currently does? What role can the public sector take to help other sectors also attract people from a wider range of social backgrounds?
- How do we develop public services that allow users to collectively create their own solutions? What role can social movement and network theories play in helping to improve public sector services and drive large scale system change?
- What evidence is there, from the UK and internationally, about how best to manage organisational change in the public sector?
- How can the Civil Service develop world-class leaders at all levels, who are inspiring, confident and empowering?
- How can the Civil Service build career paths that encourage a breadth of experience and depth of expertise?
- How can the Civil Service attract and retain people of talent and experience from a range of sectors and all walks of life? What actions can the UK Civil Service take to be the most inclusive employer in the UK and how should this be assessed and tracked?
- How can government make best use of its data to identify users with multiple complex needs? How can integrated service provision improve outcomes for these individuals?
- How is demand for public services expected to vary ten, twenty, thirty years from now? What will be the main sources of changing demand? What actions need to be taken now to best prepare?
- How can we best measure and track media freedom in the UK context building upon existing international work including the RSF’s Media Freedom Index? What does a more detailed development and analysis reveal?
- What are the social, economic, cultural and democratic impacts of national and local news provision in the UK? How can we best quantify and/or qualify the impact of national and local news provision? How do these impacts and benefits differ across different demographics and stakeholders?
- In what ways do governance, regulation and regulatory frameworks support or hinder public service broadcasters in providing a public service?
- What drives spatial inequalities in relation to CSY’s policy responsibilities?
- What are the benefits of increased levels of civil society participation and of pride in place, overall and in more localised areas?
- What are the knock-on effects of lower levels of civil society and pride in place both overall and in local areas?
- How can collaboration between organisations, commissioners and other funders across CSY sectors and actors be enhanced at local levels to support better outcomes?
- What are the best front and back-end management practices and how do they influence project performance?
- How can innovative forms of commissioning and effective cross-sector collaboration improve outcomes at local levels?
- What are the regional disparities across CSY’s policy responsibilities?
- What principles should be used to delegate responsibilities to local communities, and how can these areas be empowered to deliver?
- What might a new more effective/efficient approach or dynamic between central government, local authorities and other partners (including communities/residents themselves) look like, and how could this help to improve specific outcomes in a place?
- How representative are existing governance structures (elected and appointed) of the communities they seek to represent, and what are the impacts of that? What are the barriers and enablers of good representation of communities in their governance structures?
- How do we measure performance / capability development for a risk before it materialises?
- How do we define value, understand and measure success and identify the critical success factors of major projects?
- How can we ensure the all-round capability of civil servants in a changing world? What will be the best learning and development methods in the future Civil Service? What technologies should government be exploring in order to enable this?
- How should government make use of data for public good and to enable government transformation?
- How can government increase its capacity to adapt to and exploit the next curve of innovation in digital, data and technology?
- How effective are current Local and Central Government planning systems and planning officers in shaping the efficiency and environmental impacts of road freight and what future improvements may be needed, including to capability, to ensure the planning system supports road freight to contribute to meeting Government ambitions?
- Which AHT sectors are growing, mature or contracting? What are the implications for targeting government interventions?
- Statistics that serve the public good: What does it mean for statistics to serve the public good, and how might this be measured and communicated? What is unique about the way in which official statistics serve the public good compared to other sources of information? How can views from ‘the public’ be brought into this conversation, respecting that there is no single homogenous group and there will be many varied perspectives?
- How can government intervention promote UK trade and exports?
- What are the benefits and barriers for devolved transport policy? How do we build on our current devolution policy to further maximise effective working practices?
- What is the role of local government or cities in autonomous aviation?
- How does the capability and capacity of Local Transport Authorities influence the delivery of transport policy developed by central government?
- What is the evidence on which decision making structures (at which geographies) work best to deliver effective public services to citizens and level up communities?
- What has the pandemic taught us about what a good governance structure in local government looks like? How is this measured? And how can central government best support continuous improvement of place leadership?