We’d like to see a general simulation engine—built with open source code and freely available to researchers and the public—to estimate the impact of a wide variety of public policy reforms on a wide variety of outcomes, using a wide variety of customizable parameters and assumptions. Such a simulation engine could power analyses like those above, while opening up policy analysis to more intricate reforms, presented as a technology product that estimates impacts on society and one’s own household.
A common technology layer for public policy analysis would promote empiricism across institutions from government to think tanks to the media. Exposing households to society-wide and personalized effects of policy reforms can align the policymaking and democratic processes, ultimately producing more effective public policy.
Disclaimer: My nonprofit, PolicyEngine, is building toward this vision, starting with the tax and benefit system in the UK and the US. We plan to apply for the Future Fund’s first round.
Comprehensive, personalized, open source simulation engine for public policy reforms
Epistemic Institutions, Economic Growth, Values and Reflective Processes
Policy researchers apply quantitative modeling to estimate the impacts of immigration reform on GDP, child benefits on fertility, safety net reform on poverty, carbon pricing on emissions, and other policies. But these analyses are typically narrow, impersonal, inflexible, and closed-source, and the public can rarely access the models that produce them.
We’d like to see a general simulation engine—built with open source code and freely available to researchers and the public—to estimate the impact of a wide variety of public policy reforms on a wide variety of outcomes, using a wide variety of customizable parameters and assumptions. Such a simulation engine could power analyses like those above, while opening up policy analysis to more intricate reforms, presented as a technology product that estimates impacts on society and one’s own household.
A common technology layer for public policy analysis would promote empiricism across institutions from government to think tanks to the media. Exposing households to society-wide and personalized effects of policy reforms can align the policymaking and democratic processes, ultimately producing more effective public policy.
Disclaimer: My nonprofit, PolicyEngine, is building toward this vision, starting with the tax and benefit system in the UK and the US. We plan to apply for the Future Fund’s first round.
See also “Unified, quantified world model” and “Civic sector software”.