Policymakers at the local and state level often lack the professional research staff to keep well enough informed on the issues they are deciding upon while in office. Specifically, they need:

• Brief, up-to-date, accurate and objective policy news & analysis
• Information on related programs and policies

As noted in an article on the Dartmouth College Policy Research Shop:

"At their best, state legislatures are open institutions that serve their citizens as a marketplace for ideas. Organized interests of all political shapes and sizes attempt to add their ideas to the policymaking process; yet, ultimately it is the elected officials who must sort these competing ideas and construct a policy solution. In states having part-time legislatures with small professional staffs, such as those found in New Hampshire and Vermont, the task of discerning the correct policy path to pursue is more difficult."

from Rockefeller Center's Spring 2006 Newsletter

The Dartmouth College Policy Research Shop describes their efforts as follows:

We are committed to providing accurate research that responds to the needs of elected policymakers and their legislative staff throughout the year. We typically produce reports that are 5-15 pages in length with opportunities for follow-up research upon request. Our goal is to provide useful information in a clear format and to deliver these products in a timely manner so that they are useful during legislative deliberation.

Our researchers examine emerging issues of concern that are relevant to legislative discussions in both New Hampshire and Vermont. These topics are selected through a consultative process with policy stakeholders. We make every effort to include policy experts from both states in this process.

The PolicyOptions.org network will seek to expand on Dartmouth's example by involving more colleges and universities in similar efforts and linking their research products via the PolicyOptions.org website. In this process, we will create a network of faculty who are teaching courses that involve their students in meeting the need of policymakers and practioners for relevant research.

A focus group survey of small to medium size non-profit directors conducted by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change found the following:

• Information overload causes staff to miss out on important information
• Lack systemic learning or knowledge-management process
• Lack effective data collection and outcome measurement
• Want to hear the “real story” not just success stories
• See a role for a knowledge broker who can sift and sort available information
• Of new information technologies, email is most frequently used
• Preferred way to access information through direct one-on-one contact with someone they trust

We believe the information and support provided by local PolicyOptions.org bureaus combined with the other forms of campus-outreach (e.g., direct service, training, issue forums, community-based research in the form of program evaluations, needs/asset assessments, etc.) directly respond to these challenges:

• Easy to use, comprehensive, up-to-date PolicyOptions.org websites with linked local, state, and national news & resources
• PolicyOption Issue Briefs that provide local, state, and national analysis & proposed solutions/policy options
• Organize study circles and public issue forums to bring together non-profit and government leaders, residents, and faculty and students with common interests
• Community-based research partnerships with local campus
• Capacity building training and on-going support
• Connect local nonprofit leaders via national network of local/regional campus-community partnerships
• Staff of local PolicyOption.org bureaus serve as community news & information “bureaus” provide monitor and report on local, state, and national issue activity
• Regular email news update put out by by local PolicyOption.org bureaus, encouraging information sharing and networking
• Individualized research support provided by staff and volunteers from local PolicyOption.org partnerships (esp. students and faculty doing CBR)

Direct Democracy

excerpt from 500 Ways To Make America Better

“Citizens should be able to shape the policies that affect their families and their communities. We have the information and the technology to make this possible.

This nation has assembled an immense record of successes and failures in nearly every field. We know what works, and we know what doesn’t. This is the kind of information that can be brought together in a user-friendly way to empower citizens as policymakers in their own communities.

Moreover, the technology of the Internet can bring this information into every home, and allow us to communicate as directly as the town meetings of two hundred years ago. Why can’t the information superhighway enable us to make informed decisions for ourselves? Why can’t each of us access the best thinking on issue after issue, from health care to public safety to education?

Beginning with John and Robert Kennedy, there have been efforts to restore neighborhood-level democracy, particularly in our most impoverished communities. However, it is only now, at the end of the century, that we have all the tools to make this vision real.

It has been done. The Ellen Wilson community on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC sat down for a year to take stock and plan for the future. This ‘people’s congress’ made far-reaching decisions about local policy, and managed to rebuild a fragmented community. The legacy of the information age should be thousands of stories like this one; stories of how citizens came together to shape a common destiny.”

Despite tremendous progress both in the number and quality of community-based research (CBR) courses and projects, their our gaps in our research support to our community partners. This conclusion has been reached based on the following observations (as well as extensive discussions with our campus and community partners) from analyzing the research papers produced by campuses participating in the National Community-Based Research Project:

• The majority of CBR projects requested by community partners have focused on questions specific to a single organization rather than taking a broader look at an issue. In fact, fewer than 5% of the 330 projects profiled in the 1997-2003 grant period had a specific focus on public policy or legislative analysis. So while students and community partners have gained a better understanding of the challenges facing individual organizations and the programs they operate they have not typically looked at the underlying causes and potential solutions to the issue, nor examined how civic and government processes in our democracy can bring about meaningful change.
• Once the CBR papers have been completed, many of our community partners are asking for assistance in how they might use the research results more effectively for program planning and policy purposes.
• Few of the CBR projects have involved multiple community groups facing the same or similar issues. Collaborative research projects could inspire and inform broader community dialogue and collaborative community problem-solving efforts involving local residents and business, government, and other non-profit leaders.
• These communities lack the "local community information infrastructure" that makes important data and reports available to those who are engaged in (or seek to pursue) civic involvement on an issue of common concern (see chart below). For instance, there is a need to organize the CBR papers and other community information (e.g., current policies, funding opportunities, resource organizations and events, key organizations, and access to data such as census, employment, poverty, and other data) to support policy-making, fundraising, collaboration, and planning.

“The rich record of experience in national, state, and local policy must be rediscovered and mined. Successes and failures will be unearthed, forgotten good ideas rescued from oblivion, new ideas created from the material of past practices. America lacks a political memory, and a nation which cannot remember its past may well be doomed to repeat the worst parts of it.”

— Bill Cannon, former Director of Policy Research for the Bureau of the Budget (now OMB).

“As someone who has spent all of her not inconsiderable working life in the field of public policy research and computing, I am as aware as anyone can be of the need for a national information network. No one knows better than I that such a thing does not exist.”

— Christine de Fontenay, former Director of Research Programming, The Brookings Institution.

“The reason major problems are so resistant to political solutions is that the public is not informed, disinterested, and turned off.”

— James T. Lynn, former CEO of Aetna Life and Casualty, remarks at the Economic Club of Washington.

“[Former] Governor Kean of New Jersey said that there isn’t a problem in education that hasn’t been solved somewhere in this country. He could as well have been talking about health or social services.”

— Lisbeth Schorr, author of Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage.

“We know that there are projects out there that have worked. What we do not know is how to find them and to replicate them.”

— Frances Drake, Executive Director, Neighborhood Youth Achievement Program.

“The truth is that foundations and organizations don’t work closely enough. We may share a common vision, but rarely do we collaborate to make it come to pass.”

— Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Annual Report.

“There is a basic assumption on which we and so many other foundations operate - namely, if a pilot program or demonstration project achieves some degree of success, it will be picked up by others. Where does this process break down? Why aren’t they banging down our doors?”

— The Foundation Center.

“The very ignorance that confounds society is a call to action for universities. It underscores the other vital social purpose that we possess: to contribute the knowledge that will help society discover how to overcome its pressing problems.”

— Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University, in his final commencement address.

“Comparisons show that the rest of the developed world does a better job educating students of all economic backgrounds. In the most recent international data, [even when] comparing students in the top 5 percent in terms of achievement, the United States ranks 23rd out of 29 [countries].”

— New York Times, September 6, 2005.