From Evidence to Impact: Skills, Stories, and Spaces in State and Local Government

State and local governments use science and technology to pursue societal opportunities and address public challenges. These may include expanding economic development, improving public health, strengthening infrastructure, increasing access to energy, protecting the environment, and building community resilience.

This three-part series examines how skills, stories, and spaces work together to connect evidence with policies, programs, and societal outcomes:

Skills support the quantitative and qualitative analysis needed to understand societal opportunities and challenges; assess programs and potential policies; and inform decisions.

Stories reveal how people experience opportunities, challenges, policies, and programs and which activities and outcomes matter to communities.

Spaces represent the geographic, institutional, professional, and community contexts in which policies and programs are analyzed, developed, implemented, and experienced.

Each session emphasizes one element while examining its relationship to the other two. State and local government practitioners would serve as the principal speakers, using examples from energy, the environment, health, infrastructure, economic development, and other science- and technology-related fields.

Series Learning Outcomes:

• Describe how analytical skills, lived experience, and community context contribute to science- and technology-related decisions.

• Examine how quantitative and qualitative analysis can be strengthened by stories and knowledge of particular communities.

• Identify how government staff connect evidence with public needs, policy choices, and societal outcomes.

• Apply the Skills, Stories, and Spaces framework to a state or local policy or program.