One of the most important roles of any government is to develop policies that will – hopefully – impact people’s lives in a positive way. Choosing exactly which policy strategies to follow, though, is a daunting task. Multiple factors will determine the effectiveness of a policy, such as the efficiency of the country’s government and how the policy interacts with other policies. An intervention to support industrial growth, for example, might negatively impact on one designed to address environmental issues.
Since 2018, the Turing’s policy priority inference (PPI) project, led by Omar Guerrero, has been developing an AI tool that incorporates these complex factors, allowing governments to estimate the outcomes of their policies in a holistic way and make informed decisions about where to invest money and resources. The user inputs historical data on their country’s development indicators, government spending and policy interdependencies, and the computational model then simulates the interactions between policy makers and central government, outputting the potential responses of the development indicators.
The tool has been adopted by governments and organisations around the world, including the State of Mexico and the United Nations Development Programme in Colombia, who are both using it to advise on policies for sustainable development. In the UK, meanwhile, PPI is in the process of being adopted by various local authorities and public health regulators, as well as national government through departments including the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. The team also recently released a simplified version of its model as a web-based app (see video below), which will provide a way for policy makers with no coding knowledge to explore using these techniques in their work.
“This tool is exactly what we need to help governments plan and finance their path to sustainable development. In Colombia, I used it to help the national government understand the potential outcomes of its policies and how best to allocate its budget to move towards its development goals.”
Mauricio Ruiz, Project Coordinator, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
This piece first appeared in The Alan Turing Institute’s Annual Report 2023-24
Read a previous impact story on this project here
Top image: William / Adobe Stock
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