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Use of systematic literature reviews in Canadian government departments: Where do we need to go?
Author(s) -
Ouimet Mathieu,
Jette Danny,
Fonda Marc,
Jacob Steve,
Bédard PierreOlivier
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
canadian public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.361
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1754-7121
pISSN - 0008-4840
DOI - 10.1111/capa.12225
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , systematic review , process (computing) , public relations , point (geometry) , political science , business , computer science , linguistics , geometry , mathematics , medline , law , operating system , philosophy
Abstract The article reports on ongoing reflections on how to improve the structures and processes by which relevant research findings produced outside Canadian government departments (for example, in universities, think tanks or other research institutions) can be more effectively found, assessed for potential biases, synthesized and disseminated to provide support to government analysts, advisers and decision makers. The focus is on how to structure and routinize research use by government analysts and advisers within a large Canadian department that has a strategic research directorate and many program divisions. Our starting point is the current situation where literature reviews that are produced and used by government analysts and advisers do not correspond to the systematic review standards. We discuss four alternative models. In two models, the whole production process would be controlled from within the department. In the other two models, external actors such as university‐based teams or independent non‐governmental evidence centres would carry the leadership in producing those reviews.