A new government in the UK brings a new approach and for Labour that means missions.
The new UK Government has said it wants to be ‘mission-driven’, and has set out an ambitious agenda across five national missions, from decarbonising energy to boosting productivity.
At BIT we’ve worked for over a decade to support more effective methods of government, and our long-running partnership with Nesta – a mission-driven innovation agency – means we have a particular interest in mission-driven methods.
Today Nesta has partnered with the Institute for Government to set out the key components of mission driven government. You can read more about mission-driven approaches in our latest report.
At BIT, we want to bring these insights to our partners. So alongside today’s publication we’re announcing a new advisory offer, helping organisations to adopt mission-driven approaches.
With the new offer, we can now work with partners to define a mission in a way that inspires, helping to set well-calibrated mission targets and to develop and refine a mission strategy.
We can also help partners play the three roles we see as critical to mission-driven working:
- Experimenting and driving innovation. From building innovation teams, drawing on our long-running partnership with Bloomberg, to using a suite of evaluation methods, from RCTs, to adaptive trials, to Theory-Based Evaluation, to design methods.
- Shaping systems and markets. We can work with partners to map the behaviour of actors across a complex system, or to design and test regulatory interventions, and with our colleagues at Challenge Works we can design and run challenge prizes.
- Harnessing intelligence. We can help partners generate rich, granular insights to know if a mission is working. Whether by running large-scale deliberative exercises, as in our work with Meta, or using AI to rapidly synthesise evidence or to conduct interviews at scale.
Our work on missions is one example of how we’re delivering on our Manifesto for Behavioural Science, our agenda for maturing the discipline of behavioural science so that it can better support progress on complex and systemic social challenges.
Our support offer on missions draws on insights from organisations in the Nesta Group, from Challenge Works to the Centre for Collective Intelligence Design. We will also work with Nesta and the Better Government Lab at Georgetown to develop an evaluation framework for missions.
Learn more about our mission advisory offer.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from over a decade supporting new methods in government, it’s that the devil is in the detail of implementation. We also know the right approach to missions will vary significantly, so we always tailor our support for the context.
We see mission-driven approaches as a major opportunity to help organisations in government and beyond to be more ambitious, evidence-based, and responsive. If you’d be interested in a conversation about how to apply these methods, do reach out.
For further reading, check out:
- BIT’s Manifesto for Applying Behavioural Science, our agenda to mature the discipline to support progress on complex and systemic social challenges.
- Nesta’s account of the key components of mission-driven government co-developed with the Institute for Government.
- Nesta’s report, The Radical How, co-authored with Public Digital, which describes an operating model for missions, allowing organisations to test and learn as they go.
- Group CEO of BIT and Nesta, Ravi Gurumurthy, describing how missions could transform public service delivery under the new UK Government.
