About us

­The Policy > Action Network (P>AN) is hosted by the Policy Analysis Unit (PAU) based at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and was established with funding from the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST).

­­P>AN supports the policy community by sourcing information on social policy and monitoring current developments. Through this, P>AN aims to contribute to rigour in policy making and greater participation in policy processes. To facilitate debate, the resource collections on this site represent a range of viewpoints and so are not necessarily endorsed by the P>AN Secretariat.

Activities

The Policy > Action Network aims to disseminate policy-relevant information, act as a resource, and build an active network to support the advancement of policy expertise and greater participation in policy development processes.

Information from the Human Sciences Research Council and the Policy Analysis Unit as well as from a number of other sources is disseminated.

Getting research into policy and action is a focus area of the site. A collection of documents on the policy development process from formulation to implementation is currently being developed.

Policy formulation and analysis methodologies are further illustrated through information collections on the development state, education, gender, health, poverty, social and economic policy, social innovation and social protection.

Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme (UNESCO)

The Policy > Action Network is the secretariat for the MOST National Liaison Committee for South Africa.

The focus of the MOST programme is on building bridges between research, policy and practice. The programme aims to promote a culture of evidence-based policy-making – nationally, regionally and internationally.

It aims to achieve this through the development of a clearing house which can be accessed with the online policy research tool. This allows full text, peer reviewed documents to be retrieved according to subject areas and regions.

How the policy research tool has been set up is clearly outlined in this HSRC presentation from the Power of In-Between Conference held in South Africa, which looked at the  contribution that research intermediaries can make to evidence-based policy and practice.