The use of facts or evidence in decision making is vital for organisations to ensure best practices within the management and improve their overall performance.
For the public sector, such facts essentially refer to information that is generated through results that have been analysed systematically, from performance measurement to findings from programme or project evaluations.
By gathering good data, perform sound analysis and ensure precise evaluations, public sector organisations will be able to have greater capability and efficiency to deliver programmes, policies and services that could significantly impact the lives of citizen customers.
Fact-based decision making allows public sector organisations to identify the impact of their services; strengthen emphasis on public service strategies that have been effective; establish appropriate targets; and ensure accountability of services to produce quantified results.
They can also rely on evidence that they have gathered to assess potential innovations or practices that could enhance present strategies and services, as well as managing resources when funding is limited.
Emphasising a culture of fact-based decision making helps organisations in the public sector to determine what are considered as ‘complex decisions’, in which domain expertise may not be enough to come up with solutions that require diverse inputs.
These decisions are characterised by decision researchers as those with multiple criteria and many possible alternatives, and those that have serious uncertainty in their outcomes.
Complex decisions can also involve having competing points-of-view among decision-makers and/or stakeholders; conflicting criteria; and potentially meaningful impacts on many people.
Public sector organisations that utilise fact-based decision making properly and effectively are more likely to prevent themselves from making errors in their decision-making processes.
According to Kara Morgan from the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University, some of these common errors include:
- Not actively re-assessing the problem definition and framing as new information and perspectives become available;
- Focusing purely on the data currently presented to inform the decision rather than considering what information is deemed important;
- Leaving stakeholders out of critical steps in the decision-making process, such as defining the problem, determining the decision criteria, and identifying possible alternatives;
- Deciding which alternative is preferred independently and then working to convince others that it is the right decision, which is related to…
- Selecting an alternative based on the perception of political winds rather than reviewing the data and evidence for each possible option.
