Problems are best solved by continuing to find solutions

24/9/2017

I am interested in the tension between professional judgement and managerial practice.

One of the key planks of managerial practice is an evidential approach to public policy. My concerns about evidential approaches are fourfold.

First, I worry about the confidence officials have in their information systems.

Time and time again, the Government has been told that it has not been a good steward of its primary data sets. Yet, an evidential methodology is primarily based on high-quality data.

Second, I worry that no one acknowledges that evidence and professional judgment are mutually interlinked and do not constitute a public policy choice. Judgement without evidence is morally indefensible; evidence without judgement is useless.

Therefore, any evidential methodology needs to be led by the public professions (e.g., doctors, nurses, care and protection professionals, social workers, refugee and refuge workers, probation officers, teachers, firefighters, soldiers, sailors and airmen and airwomen, police, engineers, transport planners, scientists) – not the managerial and policy class of the core public service.

Third, I also worry that policy people forget that the lives of individuals and families are shaped by – though in no way dictated or determined – the larger circumstances and history in which they find themselves.

Yet, the Government has invested so few dollars in understanding the historical, institutional and cultural barriers that create inequality, marginalisation and discrimination. There are a few exceptions, for instance, the Dunedin Study.

Finally, I worry that an evidential methodology blinds us to the fact that policy people are rehearsing the old and timeworn philosophical distinctions between “is” and “ought”. For instance, it does not follow from that mere fact that something “is” the case that something “ought” to be the case.

My point is this: neither an evidential or scientific fact nor a reliable judgement can tell a Minister what they ought to do. To pretend otherwise is to make a massive leap from description to prescription. To pretend otherwise is to ignore Hume’s Law and forget that public policy arises and is a function of a political system, where political decisions are taken, and the political context is everything.

I orea te tuatara ka puta ki waho.