Hello from Atlanta where it is so hot you can fry an egg on the sidewalk…but the broadband is a burning hot 19306 kb/s.

Two weeks ago, I reacted to Steve Hewlett’s article about Ofcom’s evidence-based approach to regulation. Hewlett appeared to contrast Ofcom’s technocratic approach with the increasing application of political values to media and communications policy matters. I did not see too much difference between the two approaches.

Anyway, Adrian Monck points to an interesting take on this issue in the Medical Humanitites Blog:

‘[I]f there is anything that the humanities teaches, it is that human endeavors are unavoidably normative in nature. We are historicized, interpretive creatures, and we come to any practice — including medicine, science, and economics — with myriad normative commitments and philosophical beliefs that undeniably and in important ways color how we construct our methods and produce our knowledge.

Thus, the idea of “objective” evidence from data-driven, quantitative research, if such evidence is meant to imply the “view-from-nowhere,” is, to borrow my favorite Wittgensteinian metaphor, akin to the ideas of doors painted onto walls. Economics is no more or less value-based than any other human endeavor, IMO. The fact that, in my experience, this contention is likely to be resisted so fiercely says much about our epistemic commitments.’

I agree, although I have no idea what a Wittgensteinian metaphor is.

Is the Ofcom PSB Review evidence-based? Sure … to a large extent. But Ofcom’s thinking is definitely shaped by normative preferences. For example, almost any U.S. regulator — when confronted with a purportedly ailing state owned entreprise like Channel 4 — would consider privatisation as one of several policy options to recommend to the legislature. But Ofcom instead have looked for measures to support Channel 4 with public money. No evidence or research was directed towards a privatisation option. So, Ofcom’s final recommendations will have been partly shaped by evidence-gathering, but we cannot say it is technocratic or wholly objective.

Ofcom just need to produce good results in an efficient manner. I’ve said before — evidence-based approaches to regulation and policy have a significant instrumental value. They build legitimacy, garner stakeholder support and avoid judicial scrutiny. But even Ed Richards has said that this approach can be taken too far.

The real question is whether Ofcom actually uses evidence to make better decisions. Some people contacted me after my last post on this topic and gave examples of good Ofcom decisions. Yes - I realise that Ofcom make good decisions, but the precise question is how the application of evidence in a particular case helped Ofcom make a better decision. In my mind, just pointing to good decisions is not enough to prove that the use of evidence makes a difference. How are we to know those decisions would not have been made the same without evidence-gathering?

Any regulator can make good decisions — even a blind hog will occasionally find an acorn…

Ofcom spend roughly 5 million GBP per year on research and evidence-gathering. Something like that. So, after five years of Ofcom’s evidence-based approach, presumably we should see a benefit from the use of evidence to the tune of 25 million GBP (or more). If Ofcom used evidence to make better decisions and achieved less than that, we would have to say that using evidence may not be worth the additional cost.

So, the public have a right to know — where has that 25 million GBP gone? Has Ofcom audited its research and evidence-gathering function to determine if it is holding up its end of the bargain? I joked with a friend last week that Ronald Coase wrote that a firm is a nexus of contracts, whereas Ofcom is a nexus of Powerpoint slide shows. We all see the Ofcom Powerpoint slide shows … but how are those making a difference in policy making? Did the hundreds of Powerpoint slides that accompanied Ofcom’s second PSB review document put Ofcom on a different policy path than it otherwise would have taken? If not, was that money well spent? If the research did make a difference it would be interesting to know how — in what context.

Anyway, my thinking on this is still evolving, so if you have any stories or examples to share - get in touch.