The Civic Research Agenda
The Civic Research Agenda is a culmination of several years of study, partnerships, and intelligence gathering that is the first comprehensive reporting on the priority research needs of American cities and counties. It considers the demand and supply of research: what are the research needs of local governments, and how can research outputs improve to “supply” or provide answers to better serve that audience?
The priority research needs for U.S. local governments are the following:
- Housing
- Economic Development
- Human Services
- Climate and Energy
- Transportation
- Community Engagement
- Service Delivery
Beyond any specific policy domain, local governments expressed the desire for support from the research community in three overarching areas: 1) evaluation; how can the research community measure and provide evidence that a policy intervention has achieved desired (or negative) impacts; 2) efficiency; how can the research community help local governments do more with less; and 3) data generation; how can the research community create and provide access to useful data that do not currently exist.
This report also focuses on the ecosystem itself; what are the current perceptions, barriers, and recommendations that can inform and improve how local governments and universities work together? Findings show that issues include:
- Perceptions: Incorrect perceptions are stalling trust between these institutions. University faculty and staff fear being seen as too intellectual and disconnected. Local government staff fear being seen as not intellectual enough.
- Barriers: The importance of relationship building and lack of networking: there are clear structural discovery systems on either side. Both are operating informally, and often, only by individual relationships. This report also provides evidence that the research demand/supply ecosystem is deeply relationship-dependent, creating high barriers for newcomers, inequity of access, and bottlenecks around well-connected individuals.
- Recommendations: The best way for research outcomes and publications to become actionable are:
- Make the research and findings as specific to a jurisdiction as possible
- Reduce paywalls
- Provide executive summaries with no technical jargon
- Provide peer-city or peer-county comparative analysis
- Go beyond observation and make recommendations
Finally, this report provides specific recommendations for local governments and universities to improve and grow the research-to-impact pipeline for one simple purpose: make research actionable, understandable, and accessible to communities across the country.
The singular recommendation that can strengthen the research-to-impact pipeline is this: research should have an audience that lives outside of the peer-to-peer review system.
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