Ka mate kāinga tahi ka ora kāinga rua

19/10/2022

Today social media was full of accounts going off at the idea of social investment.

Most of them have not read the literature or explored why it’s intuitively appealing.

The idea of social investment has been around for a couple of decades. Like it or not it is one of those policies that will endure and keep improving.

At its heart, it proposes intractable and complex problems can be solved by drawing on big data and deploying specific evidential techniques to enable more evidence-based decision-making.

While the idea has been around for a while, the last iteration was controversial for several reasons.

First, the policy was still in its practice infancy. It was grasping for its philosophical principles and still securing its analytical foundations. The pure actuarial approach was flawed.

Secondly, the evidence pointed to dis-investment in some Washington monuments, which made its implementation politically tricky.

Third, it had not grasped the implications of the data sovereignty movement, let alone the need for every social investment project to run itself through an ethics committee.

Finally, it revealed just how poor the evidential systems were and how much investment needed to be made in the Crown’s information systems.

Over the next year, we will hear more about the policy. For my part, I welcome that.

Why?

The data sovereignty movement is much better placed to ensure the main issues are addressed. Some outstanding people work in this space, and the published work is first-rate.

Secondly, social investment points firmly to devolved models, such as Whānau Ora, iwi, and hapori social service provision. The evidence says rangatiratanga works: i.e., moving power away from the centre and giving it back to those best placed to respond to the need and opportunity.

Thirdly, social investment only works if the sitting Cabinet sets clear targets and is unafraid of ensuring both the political and administrative actors are accountable for progress. Social investments need the purple zone jointly and transparently focussed on outcomes and impacts.

Finally, in theory, it means the focus goes on accountability for learning. This is a normative account. But if we game social investment out, then Government get into a pattern of investing, learning, reinvesting, or disinvesting.

Of course, this is also social investment’s weakness. Politicians are happier expanding programmes. Very few dares to stop them or demand improvement.

Politics, evidence-based policy, and investment are not always easy in one another’s company.