1 April 2015

What is the point of a pilot?

The Multiple Purposes of Policy Piloting and Their Consequences: Three Examples from National Health and Social Care Policy in England
Journal of Social Policy, April 2015, vol 44(2)

  • Using three case studies from health and social care – the Partnerships for Older People Projects (POPP) pilots, the Individual Budgets pilots and the Whole System Demonstrators (WSD) the paper identifies multiple purposes of piloting.
  • The research found that piloting for generating evidence of effectiveness was only purpose. Piloting was also aimed at promoting policy change and driving implementation, both in pilot sites and nationally.
  • Policy makers appeared to be using pilots mainly to promote government policy, using evaluation as a strategy to strengthen the legitimacy of their decisions and to convince critical audiences. 
  • These findings highlight the ambiguous nature of piloting and thus question the extent to which piloting contributes to the agenda of evidence-based policy-making.