Page 26 - Delaware Lawyer - Summer 2021

FEATURE | POST-PANDEMIC POLICYMAKING
words from an undergraduate medical ethics textbook: what becomes pos- sible becomes permissible, and what be- comes permissible becomes expected. It now clearly is possible to utilize user- friendly technology to facilitate greater public participation in government. It has been permissible for more than a year. Do Delawareans now expect it? Perhaps. Whether they do or not, we should make the option available. Pub- lic participation will increase, and so too might Delawareans’ trust in the policy- making process — trust that in turn can spur additional enhancements to our processes.
[On a related note, the Delaware Ju- diciary did an amazing job of utilizing technology and keeping judicial pro- cesses running as smoothly as possible. Kudos to the judicial officers and staff who made that happen.]
We have the opportunity to more consistently and candidly embrace data in our decision making. Particularly in the early days of the pandemic, many Delawareans sought out the daily graph that showed whether cases were on the rise or if we might be “flattening the curve.” Scientific data points became the basis for community conversations. For many, public health experts became go-to voices of comfort or confidence on national and local stages. Ultimately, public health experts and support staff distilled complex and real-time data down to simple charts designed to pro- vide Delawareans with awareness of where our pandemic status stood and what datapoints or trends formed the bases of myriad decisions.
Moving out of the pandemic, we should maintain a commitment to bas- ing more of our policymaking on data and to sharing this data with Delawar- eans with clarity and timeliness. In some policy areas and governmental agencies, data collection and reporting structures already have developed in recent years. Certain data can be collected, stored
and reported with little difficulty. Other data does involve difficulty with one or more of those steps, but from a cost- benefit perspective should still be a public-facing component of policy dis- cussions and decisions. The pace of data processing and presentation will be in- formed by relative urgencies of issues; capacity building will differ in scope and pace from the response to a global pan- demic.
In the General Assembly, there is room to embrace data and reporting, not only in the budgeting and legislat- ing processes but also throughout the year as a means of identifying and co- alescing around the stories and needs of Delawareans. This will not be an easy transition, however, in the face of long- standing political culture and intense political winds. In 2021, even in the wake of data-driven public policymak- ing from an emergency framework, sev- eral legislative initiatives that were sup- ported by clear data and implementa- tion lessons from other jurisdictions still resulted in partisan reactions and roll calls. For other initiatives, data was less clear or precedent less robust, yet politi- cal pressures dictated the outcome.
And then there is the inevitability of data being relatively clear but its im- plications still in dispute — similar to
when differing sides of the spectrum both saw the same COVID-19 infec- tion and mortality rates, leading one side to advocate business-as-usual while the other side stressed the tragedy and human toll that would follow from a health system overwhelmed by even a small percentage of Delawareans flood- ing our hospitals all at once. When even a basic construct such as that public health issue involves disagreement, it is all the more difficult to work quickly through issues such as balancing virus transmission data against the proposed business hours, capacity limitations and abatement efforts of restaurateurs ready, willing and desperate to adapt their service models to minimize risk to their patrons.
Data can be difficult to interpret and apply, inherently but all the more so if viewed through a partisan lens. In this moment, though, coming off of a glob- al pandemic in which unforgettable de- cisions and experiences were driven by and explained in terms of specific data, policymakers at all levels of government have the opportunity to improve, to challenge our own assumptions about how best to make and explain decisions, and to build and embrace a culture in which data is a driver, not an esoteric footnote.
24 DELAWARE LAWYER SUMMER 2021
SAQUAN STIMPSON