Negotiating the budget for evidence-informed policy-making: insights from a UK government department

Improving how evidence is used in policy formulation requires a better understanding of organizational processes inside government departments, for example budget management. Government departments need to ensure that such processes simultaneously strengthen robustness in the evidence base, improve alignment of the evidence base with policy priorities and contribute to a more cost-effective use of the evidence budget. This requires a nuanced understanding of who should be accountable for managing which aspects of the evidence budget and how these different lines of accountability play out in terms of their ability to foster formal and informal relationships between the policy cadre and the evidence cadre. In an era of rapid global change and declining public sector resources, the authors’ findings will help researchers and senior officials understand how government departments should manage their evidence budgets to improve evidence use.