The main goal is limited to improving the quality of policies, not of making them more consensual or representative.

Policy-making 2.0 is a new term that we have coined to express in more understandable terms the somehow technical notion of “ICT for governance and policy modelling”.

Its usage in the course of the project proved more effective than the latter when discussing with stakeholders. Thereby from now on we will refer to the roadmap as the Research Roadmap on Policy-Making 2.0.

Policy-making 2.0 encompasses clearly a wide set of methodologies and tools. At first sight, it might appear unclear what the common denominator is. In our view, what they share is that they are designed to use technology in order to design more effective public policies. In particular, these technologies share a common approach in taking into account and dealing with the full complexity of human nature.

As spelled out originally in the CROSSOVER project proposal:

“traditional policy-making tools are limited insofar they assume an abstract and unrealistic human being: rational (utility maximizing), consistent (not heterogeneous), atomised (not connected), wise (thinking long-term) and politically committed (as Lisa Simpson)”.

Policy-making 2.0 thus accounts for this diversity. Its methodologies and tools are designed not to impose change and artificial structures, rather to interact with this diversity. Agent-based models account for the interaction between agents that are different in nature and values; systems thinking accounts for long-term interacting impacts; social network analysis deals with the mutual influences between people rather than fully rational choices; big data analyses observed behaviour rather than theoretical models; persuasive technologies deal with the complex psychology of individuals and introduces gaming values to involve more “casual” participants. Moreover, policy-making 2.0 tools allow all stakeholders to participate to the decision-making process.