Closing remarks

Nadine Williams: Thank you. And that was that was fascinating. I just wanted to say good afternoon to you all, to thank you for attending today's BI Connect conference. It's been fantastic. I've had the opportunity to dip in and out of some of the presentations and they have been fascinating. It strikes me that this forum has always been about more than behavioural science. It's about how government learns and how we build the capacity to understand human behaviour, test ideas and adjust when the evidence tells us to do so. In the Australian government I was in the Department of Finance when this this issue of behavioural science first came to the government's attention, and we started to build our capability within the Australian Public Service around it. And I recall in those days it was seen as kind of a bit of a novel and a kind of promising technique. But you know, it wasn't necessarily seen as something that was really central to the policy development process. But over time, I think it's become something much larger and a way of thinking about the relationship between policy evidence and the human experience, which is really important. It reminds us, I think, that people don't make decisions in ideal conditions and it's good for public servants to be reminded of that, and that we all operate with sort of limited attention and competing priorities and social contexts that shape, I guess, what seems possible and what is possible from a policy sense.

So I think we've actually come a long way as an Australian Public Service here, in building an evidence culture, and I think now as we look back at that, what matters is how we use that evidence, how we interpret, how we question and apply it in the settings that are really rarely linear, and they certainly seem to be becoming a lot less predictable and a lot less certain. And I think that there's an interesting evolution underway and that's kind of an evolution from generating data to cultivating judgement and from claiming certainty, to building capability for learning, and I think that sort of questioning in governments is really important. It's important in all aspects of life. But in government and in the design of policy and programs, it's really fundamental and one of the things I've been thinking about as I've dipped in and out of the conversations this afternoon is that question of trust and trust in government.  Trust is both a public good and as a policy outcome, and it strikes me that governments build that sort of trust not just through grand statements, but also through the everyday experience.

Of government working well and systems that are comprehensible, that are fair and responsive, and behavioural insights contributes to that. I think by making our interactions with citizens clearer, more respectful of how people actually think and live in an age of information overload in particular, and that rising complexity that I mentioned, you know that clarity has really become a particular form of service I think. So I just wanted to say, I think the discussions that we're having today are really valuable. What I take from it is, I think this discipline itself is really maturing and we're moving from experimentation to integration. It's becoming part of how we think about evidence and ethics and implementation. And here, as we see it in PM&C in particular, at the centre of government, where there's a real focus on delivery, I think it really reminds us of how important it is to act on evidence when we're designing policy and programs, not just so that they are appropriately targeted, but also so that they're ethical and that they deliver the things that governments have made commitments to the community to do so. I mean, those were just my brief reflections. I wanted to conclude by saying thank you.

For the commitment that you have to these issues, the intellectual seriousness that you've come to today's discussions with, and for the generosity I guess of this community of practice and of the people who work in this discipline and the work that it requires to do this well.

Next year marks the BETA’s 10th anniversary, I think, which is a milestone. Just doesn't feel like 10 years ago when we first established this, but it obviously is. It's a milestone that isn't just about longevity, but it's about continuity of purpose.

And really it goes to that building of a public service that is rigorous in its analysis, attentive to human experience, and confident enough to keep learning and growing and testing and questioning itself as to how it does its business. So I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for your attendance today.

And thank you of course to all the speakers for their excellent presentations and for taking the time to work us through their issues today as well as thank you to the BETA team for pulling together and organising this conference. And we hope that you can join us again at next year's BI Connect which will mark the 10th anniversary of BETA. So thank you.