Messaging with discipline: The INFORMS advocacy initiative

When INFORMS launched its advocacy initiative at the end of 2017, the prescribed goal was relatively straightforward:

The INFORMS Advocacy program will be a dedicated effort to raise awareness and interest in the application of Operations Research and Analytics and how that serves the public interest policymaking, governmental operations, or returns on research investment in these fields.

Today, a little more than 18 months later, this objective is already manifesting itself in the increasing interest among policymakers about operations research, analytics and the expertise of INFORMS members.

As we’ve shared with you before, we have had dozens and dozens of meetings and briefings with policymakers in the House, Senate, White House and many federal agencies. More importantly, we have been asked back for follow-up conversations with many of the people we’ve met with, steadily building connective tissues between our community and the policy community. In our richest engagements, we have also been able to bring INFORMS members to participate in these conversations with our staff and consultants to foster an even more dynamic discussion.

As a result, we’ve been asked to provide information about INFORMS members who can serve as subject matter experts on ethics in data science, health policy, national security, disaster preparation, transportation, smart cities, the sharing economy, artificial intelligence and a variety of other topics. We are working to create NSF agenda-setting workshops in partnership with the computing community consortium (CCC) and have had opportunities to participate in key events, such as the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Summit, which you can read more about in Sheldon’s Jacobson’s column. 

Weighing in on Draft Legislation

INFORMS has also been afforded opportunities to weigh in on draft legislation, regarding artificial intelligence, as well as other potential legislative initiatives around operations research (O.R.) and analytics more generally.

Along the way, we have learned a variety of lessons about what works in advocacy and what doesn’t. One of the things we have learned is how important it is to share real-world impactful stories about practical work and research in O.R. and analytics that demonstrably saves lives, saves money and solves problems. These proof points of the impactful work done by our community includes world-leading performance in challenges. William Cook, an INFORMS Fellow, won the Kaggle Traveling Santa Challenge in 2018. The winning team in the inaugural explainable machine learning challenge at the NIPS meeting in 2018 of Sanjeeb Dash, Oktay Günlük and Dennis Wei from IBM Research, used O.R. to power their winning entry.

Another lesson learned: the velocity of activity on Capitol Hill and at the White House is vastly faster than we are typically accustomed to, and there are important times in which the pace of needed decisions or approvals does not align with INFORMS policies or procedures. To that end, the INFORMS Board has approved an important change to streamline some of the advocacy processes to ensure that our staff, consultants and members have the operational efficiency they need in working with policymakers without sacrificing proper oversight by the Board. For more information, review P&P 2.7.1, which is available here. 

We’ve Only Just Begun

As successful as our advocacy efforts have been to date, we’ve only just begun. But the more we do, the more we need even more members of the INFORMS community to join us in these activities. Staff, along with those of us on the INFORMS Board, are always looking for new examples or stories that will resonate with the policy community and other decision-makers, as well as for INFORMS members who can help enhance our interactions with policymakers.

We’re doing that in a variety of ways, including promoting award winners and research through the press and on social media; in interviews on the Resoundingly Human podcast; through contributed articles in OR/MS Today and Analytics magazines; and with case studies that demonstrate the impact of O.R. and analytics in action. All of those become important ways of communicating with policymakers as well as other important audiences.

We’ve also started a section of the INFORMS website just for policymakers – www.informs.org/Impact/O.R.-Analytics-for-Policymakers – to promote examples of how O.R. and analytics are saving lives, saving money and solving problems.

Even with this steady stream of effort we want to do more, and we know we can do even better. That’s where you come in. Our staff does a great job of finding content and community members to serve as the foundation of these efforts and the core of our messages. But they can only do so much on their own.

Taking our efforts to the next level and ensuring they are sustainable means we want to hear from INFORMS members about your work. We want INFORMS members to become even more engaged in our advocacy and communication activities. That requires you telling us about what you’re doing, what areas of expertise you possess, your successes, and expressing your willingness and ability to talk with policymakers or the press. 

Share Stories, Raise Profile

It also means we need to find other ways to share our stories and raise the profile of our fields not only within the policy community, but among other decisionmakers and influencers as well. We’re exploring new ideas, like hosting INFORMS-branded TED Talks to amplify our efforts. We’re discussing how to capitalize on new conferences, like our regional analytics conference series, or the inaugural INFORMS Conference on Security to create new channels that expand our reach and impact. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Beyond the need to expand the engagement of members for our external outreach, we also want to capitalize on that same idea to expand how INFORMS can better support our community in your daily work, regardless of whether that’s in education, practice or research.

All of these activities are designed to create greater awareness and interest in the work you do and how that work contributes to making our world a better place. I want to hear from you – tell me what you’ve been publishing, or if you’ve been in the press. Let me know if you’re involved in public sector work or have relationships with policymakers. And tell me if you want to be involved in INFORMS’ important advocacy activities.

Our success and your success are mutually dependent. As you would expect from INFORMS, we have created a set of input and outcome metrics that we will use to monitor, manage and fine-tune our advocacy efforts. INFORMS has come a long way in a short amount of time. But this effort is a marathon, and we hope you’ll join the race. You can reach me at [email protected].