Background

In July 1996, the Clerk of the Privy Council created the organization known today as the Policy Research Initiative (PRI). The PRI was originally designed to strengthen the federal government's ability to identify, understand, and address medium and longer-term, crosscutting policy research issues.

The PRI's first incarnation was as a government-wide initiative to launch horizontal policy research. Its specific purpose was to require senior managers of research and policy to identify key medium-term pressure points for the government's policy agenda. This first phase culminated in the release of two significant reports: Growth, Human Development and Social Cohesion (1996) and Canada 2005: Global Challenges and Opportunities (1997).

A second phase began in 1997 with the creation of the Policy Research Secretariat (PRS). The Secretariat was designed to support the multi-departmental networks that produced the original reports. The PRS was mandated to assist the networks in carrying out further crosscutting policy research on key issues raised in the reports. In this phase, the PRS forged links with the broader Canadian policy research community, including policy researchers, academic institutions, independent research organizations, and other institutions across Canada and abroad.

The PRS developed a series of vehicles to promote horizontal policy research, including the publications of a newsletter (Horizons) and a policy research magazine (Isuma), an annual national policy research conference, as well as theme-specific regional conferences. In partnership with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SHRCC), the Trends Project was developed as means of engaging academics across Canada in the production of policy relevant research. Finally, the Policy Research Data Group (PRDG) was established to identify data gaps across government.

In a third phase, the PRS was organizationally affiliated with the Privy Council Office (PCO), becoming, pursuant to the 2000-2001 Annual Reference Level update, an independent organization that receives administrative support from the PCO. At this time the PRS was renamed as the Policy Research Initiative, and it was given by Deputy Ministers three main areas of focus for its activities:

• deepening research on emerging horizontal issues, and integrating the results into the government's policy agenda,
• devising means for building a capable policy research workforce, and
• creating the infrastructure to support horizontal policy research collaboration.