➡️ Back to the IPPN group!

Join us for the next IPPN Knowledge Café, a webinar series focused on building the IPPN members’ capacity to better understand a systems perspective on policy integration and acceleration; and integrated policy solutions, including curation of tools and resources that support the design and implementation of cross-cutting policy solutions. 

About this webinar

Join this session to learn about the Policy Priority Inference (PPI) Tool, a computational model designed by The Alan Turing Institute to understand the complexity of policy prioritization and distribution of transformative resources across numerous policy issues, and how it can help UN Country Teams advise governments on the policy choices needed to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), based on the practical experiences from Latin American countries (Colombia and Mexico). 

Welcome and scene-settings remarks: Maricar Garde, Programme Manager for Country Programme Development, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

This discussion will present concrete experiences from the following keynote speakers:

  • Omar Guerrero, Head of Computational Social Science Research, The Alan Turing Institute
  • Jaime Alejandro Urrego, Development Economist, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Colombia
  • Maite García de Alba, Public Policy Specialist, UNDP Mexico

This will be followed by a Q&A and exchanges with the audience! A comment from the floor will also be provided by Gonzalo Castañeda

Session materials

Find the session recording below, the PPT presentations, as well as all relevant materials in the comments section below:

About the speakers

Omar A. Guerrero is the Head of Computational Social Science Research at The Alan Turing Institute. He holds a PhD in Computational Social Science from George Mason University. Previously, he held positions at the University of Oxford and University College London, as well as consulted for governmental bodies and international organisations.

Jaime Alejandro Urrego is a Development Economist at UNDP Colombia with more than 10 years working in national and international economic development institutions. Jaime has the capability to understand social and economic problems and transform them into solutions using data, research, technology, behavioral sciences, and evaluation techniques. Jaime has experience working with public policies within the national, regional, or local governments in Colombia, and social and development projects led by an international organization. He has led multidisciplinary teams developing solutions from multiple perspectives that have helped organizations to achieve their goals. He holds an MA in Economics and MPA in Economic and Public Policy.

Maite García de Alba is Public Policy Specialist at UNDP Mexico, where she works with national and subnational authorities in the mainstreaming of the 2030 Agenda approach in plans, programs, monitoring systems and budgeting processes. She also conducts data analyses and applied research to foster the use of evidence throughout the policy life-cycle. She is coauthor of a number of publications that address the effects of the social security system in social inequalities; the relationship between the Anthropocene and human development; and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on different dimensions, among others. At UNDP, she has also worked in the strengthening of social programs to reduce risks of improper use of public resources for electoral purposes. Previously, she served as legislative advisor in issues related to education, transparency, energy and the electoral system. Maite has a degree on Political Science and master’s studies on Applied Economics.

Gonzalo Castañeda is a Mexican economist who holds a PhD from Cornell University and two BAs from the Mexican Autonomous Institute of Technology (ITAM). He currently works at the prestigious Centre for the Research and Teaching of Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City and is a member of the National System of Researchers. He has been a visiting scholar in several universities and research centres in the United States and Europe: George Mason University (Virginia, USA), The Alan Turing Institute (London, UK), Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), International Institute for Applied System Analysis (Austria), University of Salamanca (Spain), and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). Dr Castañeda has been studying social complexity for more than 15 years. During this time, he has delivered various courses on the topic at graduate and undergraduate levels, leading to the creation of this book. His research has been conducted in different approaches of economic thinking including neoclassical, structural, institutional, and evolutionary.

Connection details

Date: Wednesday, 19 April 2023

Time: 8:00 AM Panama | 9:00 AM New York | 4:00 PM Addis Ababa/ Amman/ Istanbul | 8:00 PM Bangkok

Register in two clicks to receive the Zoom connection details: https://bit.ly/IPPN_KC14.The registration for this event is now closed.


The Integrated Policy Practitioners' Network (IPPN) is a one-stop-shop for integrated policy practitioners, operating as a knowledge hub for the global community. IPPN aims to link existing efforts on SDG integration across UN agencies and beyond, and enabling cross-pollination and learning to enhance the UN System-wide capability to practice and deliver high-quality integrated policy support. IPPN is a joint effort under the auspices of the UNSDG Task Team on Integrated Policy Support.

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Comments (2)

Nadine Ravaud
Nadine Ravaud

Dear IPPN community, thank you for joining today's Knowledge Café! Find attached the PPT presentations, and a few resources shared during the session:
- Official website of the Policy Priority Inference research program:

Policy Priority Inference
, explainer video: , open-source code and tutorials: http://github.com/oguerrer/ppi, and web application with graphical interface:
The App

- [Latest publication with current version of the model] Guerrero, O., Guariso, D., & Castañeda G. (2023) Aid Effectiveness in Sustainable Development: A Multidimensional Approach. World Development, (forthcoming) dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4101378

- [Seminal paper of the research program] Castañeda, G., Chávez-Juárez, F., & Guerrero, O. (2018). How Do Governments Determine Policy Priorities? Studying Development Strategies through Networked Spillovers. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 154, 335–361. doi.org/doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.07.017

- [Analysis on the feasibility of the SDGs] Guerrero, O., Castañeda, G. (2022) How does government expenditure impact sustainable development? Studying the multidimensional link between budgets and development gaps. Sustainability Science. 17, 987–1007. doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01095-1

- [Application in Colombia] El Presupuesto Público Nacional y los ODS en Colombia: Un análisis de la Agenda 2030 desde la metodología de inferencia de prioridades de política (IPP): https://www.undp.org/es/colombia/publicaciones/presupuesto-publico-nacional-y-ods-colombia

- [Application in Mexico] Policy Priority Inference for Sustainable Development: A Tool for Identifying Global Interlinkages and Supporting Evidence-Based Decision Making: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/understanding-the-spillovers-and-transboundary-impacts-of-public-policies_862c0db7-en#page195

- Impact story "Supercharging Sustainable Development": https://www.undp.org/latin-america/press-releases/supercharging-sustainable-development-new-policy-priority-tool-turing-backed-undp Cc' Serge Kapto Maricar Garde


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