EPEx - Empowering Policy Excellence
The UCD Geary Institute’s EPEx initiative strengthens collaboration and skills between policymakers and researchers to enhance innovative, evidence-based policymaking.
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Overview
UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy has launched a new initiative called Empowering Policy Excellence (EPEx), which is intended to strengthen ties between policymakers, foster innovation in policy development, build research impact capacity, and provide educational programmes.
EPEx aims to enable policymakers to achieve excellence in policymaking, implementation and evaluation by: 1) Building stronger links between policymakers and UCD researchers to strengthen the evidence base for policy; 2) Enabling UCD researchers to maximise the policy impact of their research; and 3) Strengthening policymakers’ capacity to commission, conduct, interpret and use research effectively to inform their work.
Under EPEx, there are currently four key initiatives under way at the Geary Institute:
- (opens in a new window)PublicPolicy.ie - an online research dissemination platform
- A policymaker expert residency programme which allows industry professionals to spend three months at the Institute,
- A mobility programme to bring researchers from public policy institutes in universities abroad to UCD, and
- A webinar series for policymakers that will examine the latest innovations in thinking about formulating and implementing policy more effectively.
EPEx Initiatives
EPEx Expert Residency Programme
Our EPEx Expert Residency Programme was launched in January 2025. This residency programme provides experts from the Irish civil and public service, and relevant non-governmental and commercial organisations, with the opportunity to spend a three-month period at the Geary Institute. Bob Jordan, a key figure in Ireland’s housing sector and former CEO of The Housing Agency, joined the Geary Institute as our first expert in residency.
This residency programme provides these policymakers and practitioners with an opportunity to take a break from ‘thinking fast’ about responses to the most pressing political priorities and gives them an opportunity to ‘think slow’ about how to address ‘wicked problems’. During their visit, they will write a 5,000-10,000 word reflection on a particularly critical and knotty policy and/or practice challenge that they have faced in their career or a current/ ongoing challenge. These reflections will form a new Policy and Practice Expert Reflections (PAPERs) series which will be published on (opens in a new window)PublicPolicy.ie
International Mobility Programme
EPEx will launch an international mobility programme to enable experts from policy institutes in highly ranked universities abroad to spend a period of time at the Geary Institute. This is an expansion of the Geary Institute’s successful Building International Collaborations Supports (BICS) seed funding scheme which provides office space and funding to enable Geary Members to bring international collaborators to Ireland.
PublicPolicy.ie
The Geary Institute manages PublicPolicy.ie, which is an online platform that disseminates policy-related research findings in order to inform academic and contemporary debates about public policy in Ireland. Through the website, Irish policymakers and interested citizens can source a range of material including original papers and external reports on a variety of policy areas including housing, health, the labour market, AI, education, the environment, and social protection.
Under EPEx, this platform will be expanded to include detailed policy reflections written by policy experts on a range of pressing issues.
EPEx Webinar Series
The monthly EPEx webinar series for policymakers will start in late 2025 and will examine the latest innovations in thinking about formulating and implementing policy more effectively.
This webinar series builds on the well received online training programme that the Geary Institute ran in the 2023/24 academic year for civil servants attached to the Irish Government Economic Evaluation Service (IGEES), which involved contributions from leading international public policy experts (detailed in our report here).
This expansion of the EPEx series will see the Geary Institute partner with the Irish Civil Service Research Network to develop a programme that is intended to feed new ideas into the Irish policymaking infrastructure, inspire innovation, and strengthen the Geary Institute’s links with Irish policymakers and public policy institutes and researchers internationally.
At each monthly webinar, an international researcher or policymaker will present research on policymaking, implementation and evaluation innovations, and a member of the Irish Civil Service Research Network will respond with a short reflection on the relevance of these reforms and ideas for Ireland.
