Responsible by Design – Principles for the ethical use of behavioural science in government


OECD Report: “The use of behavioural insights (BI) in public policy has grown over the last decade, with the largest increase of new behavioural teams emerging in the last five years. More and more governments are turning to behavioural science – a multidisciplinary approach to policy making encompassing lessons from psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, anthropology, economics and more. There are a wide variety of frameworks and resources currently available, such as the OECD BASIC framework, designed with the purpose of helping BI practitioners and government officials infusing behavioural science throughout the policy cycle.

Despite the availability of such frameworks, there are less resources available with the primary purpose of safeguarding the responsible use of behavioural science in government. Oftentimes, teams are left to establish their own ethical standards and practices, which has resulted in an uncoordinated mosaic of procedures guiding the international community interested in upholding ethical behavioural practices. Until now, few attempts have been made to standardize ethical principles for behavioural science in public policy, and to concisely gather and present international best practices.

In light of this, we developed the first-of-its-kind Good Practice Principles for the Ethical Use of Behavioural Science in Public Policy to advance the responsible use of BI in government…(More)”.