Pilot plans aim to implement public policies on a small scale in order to assess their feasibility and effect and, thereby, generate knowledge and lessons before their eventual implementation. Its application is carried out in a controlled manner, so that the policy is applied to a group of individuals -the treatment group-, while other groups are not affected by it -the control group. This procedure allows monitoring of both groups and to analyze the direction and magnitude of differential impacts that may be produced by public intervention in the group of recipients of the policy being analyzed.

Pilot implementation of this type is increasingly common in developed countries. In the UK or the US they are used, among many other sectors, in fields such as health, education, business innovation policy or development cooperation policy. In this way, there are even organizations like Nesta in the UK, which are mostly financed by the government of the country, to carry out pilot programs of this kind and analyze the pros and cons of business support policies and the promotion of social innovation.

In the area of ​​development cooperation policy, the results of a pilot conducted by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) also determine how the UK government allocates resources in terms of poverty development cooperation. In Finland, for example, the Government has launched the Experimental Finland initiative, where various pilots have been developed in strategic policy areas at various levels of government, always with the aim of promoting a culture of experimentation that enables increased allocation of public resources.

In Barcelona, ​​\u200b\u200bthe BMincome program was successfully implemented, which combines the establishment of a guaranteed minimum income for the most vulnerable people with the implementation of various social policies in disadvantaged urban areas of the city. The evaluation of this pilot program made it possible to establish how income perceptions lead to reductions in poverty risks and increases in people’s life satisfaction and social cohesion, which at the same time produce negative effects on labor force participation rates. from Beneficiaries.

In the same way, in Spain 18 pilot projects are being carried out in various autonomous communities in the area of ​​Minimum Vital Income with the aim of identifying and implementing best practices that enable the reduction of the vulnerabilities of the most disadvantaged groups.

In short, it can be argued that, without a doubt, experimentation in public policy makes it possible to generate fundamental knowledge about public policies and, more specifically, to measure the impact they produce on their target populations. The result of this process is that the administration is able to make better decisions in the allocation of public resources.

For all these reasons, we believe that it would be very worrying if the approval of an amendment in the Parliament of Catalonia recently to remove the Pilot Plan for Universal Basic Income (RBU) from the budget of the Generalitat de Catalunya is understood as a general rejection of the experimental approach as a method of analysis of government policies.

The UBI Pilot Plan was proposed from the outset with the aim of gathering as much information as possible and facilitating analysis of its impact at individual, family and community levels. The design is intended to explain as much as possible the impact of UBI in areas such as the effectiveness of the social protection system and its impact on health, education or gender equality. It is hoped to observe effects in poverty reduction, mental health, personal autonomy and to identify changing patterns in the use of public services.

Applying scientific rigor to the analysis and evaluation of government programs seems unquestionably rational, and even more so in the current context where, in the post-pandemic scenario, needs have developed at a rapid pace and where, all too often, developments in events mean that policies must be implemented. in a more or less improvised way, often based on a principal palliative logic. From this point of view, the UBI Pilot Plan was prepared with the aim of generating lessons that are relevant, not only for Catalonia, but for other autonomous communities and also internationally.

We would like to think that the parliamentary rejection of the UBI Pilot Plan in Catalonia does not imply an overall amendment in terms of using the pilot as an instrument for the necessary evaluation of government policies. Even considering the conditions and limitations, pilot plans are one of the best tools for necessary public policy improvements, as they allow innovation to be coupled with minimization of the risks emanating from it.

For all these reasons, we believe that their use should be extended to all administrations, especially in terms of the most relevant policies. We are confident in its contribution to improving the management of public resources and, ultimately, to achieving a higher level of well-being for citizens.