Andrew Booth, Emma Hock and Alison Scope

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Examining research systems and models for local government: a systematic review’.

Local government has been unfairly characterised as a black hole when it comes to getting evidence into practice. While it is true that work remains to be done to cultivate interest in research across local government, our recent review found plenty of evidence of academia, local officials and other partners collaborating to make a difference around the generation and use of locally-meaningful research.  

What seems to be less common, however, are coordinated approaches to organising research activity within and across an entire local government system. What can we learn from diverse approaches that harness mechanisms across different local government systems?

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