.svg)
Back
Centres of excellence
At Verian, we work end-to-end across the policy cycle, bringing evidence, insights, research and advice to public policy challenges.
In response to the UK government’s new mission-based approach we are delighted to announce the launch of seven centres of excellence to complement our existing teams and support our clients with the delivery of the government's national priorities.
The centres connect across the UK teams and bring together Verian’s multi-disciplinary methodological expertise, innovations, case studies and thought leadership, together with our policy and subject matter experts; and citizen participation capability. Each centre of excellence is led by a member of the UK leadership team and connects with the expertise of colleagues from across the UK and globe.
Craig Watkins, UK CEO at Verian Group commented:
"I am delighted to announce the launch of these seven new centres of excellence. We have created these centres specifically to integrate across our existing teams, bringing together the three Verian pillars of our multi-methods technical expertise, the ability to bring the UK citizen into the heart of participatory decision-making, and our policy and subject matter experts. This will ensure that we can continue to best support our clients’ priorities and the UK’s new government’s mission-based approach to delivery. Our approach builds on our existing success and structures and will enable us to better serve our clients, bringing them the latest innovations from across the globe and helping them to understand and connect with citizens to tackle the range of policy challenges faced by the UK."
The centres are:
Centre for Mission Delivery
Facilitating multi-sector collaboration and learning, promoting best practice in designing and delivering impactful evidence-based research, and co-ordinating expertise and experience to support the success of mission-driven policy making.
Delivering a mission-led approach will require new types of support from the Government’s evidence and advisory partners. Our full spectrum of capabilities and expertise relating directly to all stages of the mission-driven policy cycle enables us to provide this support, including:
- evidence-based iterative policy design,
- behavioural science,
- test and learn,
- experimentation,
- Value for Money evaluation,
- deliberative engagement,
- participatory methods,
- Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) approaches to support adaptive management.
Centre for Value for Money
Bringing together expertise, best practice and innovation in Value for Money (VfM) evaluation from across the globe.
We apply this expertise to support the effective design and implementation of impactful evidence-based policy, delivering Value for Money in public spending, where social value is considered broadly and holistically. Drawing from our extensive evaluation experience and expertise, we continue to innovate to assess:
- ‘what works’ in delivering policy impact,
- whether that impact justifies the programme cost, and
- what improvements can be made in design or delivery to increase impact and/or VfM.
Read our latest article, Evaluating VfM in government programmes and public spending or download the new Verian Guide to Evaluation of Value for Money:
Centre for Democratic Engagement
Utilising our extensive expertise and long heritage in public engagement and innovation to support the democratisation of policy design and delivery, ensuring citizens are involved in decisions about our nation’s future. This includes:
- deliberative workshops,
- citizens juries and assemblies,
- deliberative polling,
- online communities and
- co-design and participatory exercises
Drawing on our extensive expertise, we undertake work on a range of complex issues, such as new technologies, ethical issues, climate change, infrastructure, and social and health inequalities.
Our probability panel, Public Voice, provides the ability to engage with citizens digitally as well as in person. Public Voice is a highly accurate digital capability proven to have an outstanding ability to predict behaviour as demonstrated by Verian at the 2024 UK General Election.
Centre for Sustainability & Critical Infrastructure
Bringing together our deep expertise on transport, energy, utilities, environmental services and amenities.
We provide our clients with a holistic view of customer attitudes, behaviours, expectations and experiences regarding these services and inform policy and delivery decisions that will drive more efficient and effective implementation, resilient infrastructure and sustainable outcomes.
Centre for Justice & Safety
Utilising our extensive expertise on the creation and application of gold-standard quantitative and qualitative evidence to support crime and justice policy with a focus on the experience of victims and survivors of crime.
Working with our colleagues across the world, we use our global best practice on specific policy challenges such as violence against women and girls, and creating safer streets.
Read about our work evaluating the impact of programmes in the UK to create safer streets.
Centre for Opportunity & Growth
We have extensive experience and deep policy knowledge and research expertise in areas such as, inequalities, education and skills, welfare, taxation, housing and communities.
This, coupled with our expert ability to access and connect with disadvantaged, vulnerable and hard to reach groups, enables us to support government in their mission to drive economic growth and unlock opportunity for all.
Centre for Public Health & Wellbeing
Bringing together a deep understanding of society, health inequalities, risk factors and wellbeing to support decision-makers in the field of public health and well-being.
Our holistic approach to research considers health in a societal context, including the creation of evidence and understanding of behaviours alongside the analysis of outcomes to provide a wider evidence picture. Our ability to integrate social, economic and biomedical data enables us to create richer insights and evidence for our clients to support the improvement of nation’s health and wellbeing.
Craig Watkins
CEO, UK