Social investment effort here to stay
News
National’s hallmark ‘‘social investment’’ policy has a new focus after a change of government.
The data-driven and highly targeted social policy, which was developed to lift people out of poverty and reduce social welfare’s fiscal burden, has been reframed as a broader ‘‘investing for wellbeing’’.
And the little-understood, yearold Social Investment Agency (SIA) has a renewed licence to operate.
SIA acting chief executive Dorothy Adams said the agency was advertising for new staff.
It was a clear signal the small agency was here to stay, and an answer to the question which hung over the SIA after the 2017 election, as the new Labour Government mapped out its approach to welfare.
‘‘Why we have survived a new administration – even with a very National label – is that it’s a longrun game about really understanding that the government is investing in the right things that improves lives,’’ Adams said.
That much hadn’t changed, but there were some subtle differences.
National’s ‘‘unhelpful’’ discussion around names and addresses of people requiring welfare were no longer being held.
This push for individualised data was a trust-losing exercise for the previous government, exacerbated by a privacy botch-up on a data sharing platform for charities in April 2017.
A highly-encrypted data sharing pipeline remained the SIA’s most developed project, and it was hoped to give social service providers access to a breadth of information – with client consent.
‘‘What we are trying to do is even up the playing field, rather than more data coming into government, we want to ... pump more data out to service providers.’’
But the distrust remained: NGOs baulk at the word ‘‘investment’’, Adams said.
To offer reassurance, the agency was currently on a three-week roadshow explaining its intent.
‘‘We do not need identifiable data, we don’t need it for any of the analytics we do … If I’m looking at a group of you, to understand how you’re getting on, what your outcomes look like, I don’t need to know your name and details.’’
Another change: The emphasis on fiscal measurement left the building with National ministers.
‘‘That is a key difference. If you ask Minister [Carmel] Sepuloni, she would say that would be the number one.’’
But the love of big data remained, and what it revealed was the subject of a talk Adams gave for the Presbyterian Support Northern lecture series yesterday.
SIA had married its initial study of the fiscals of social housing with qualitative data, quantifying the benefit of social housing.
Social housing was found to improve quality of life, be less crowded, less mouldy and in better condition. But placement in social housing didn’t make anyone warmer, as that was likely connected to income.
‘‘The one interesting finding that we’re going to look into some more, is people’s feeling of safety worsened as a result of going into the social house.
‘‘That’s a nice example where you have the data telling you something, but the data on its own will not tell you, ‘why is that going on?’.’’
For Adams, it’s these insights that will underpin social investment’s worth. ‘‘Ultimately, success will be starting to turn the curve on those social outcomes, when we’re starting to see people’s lives improve as a result of government intervention.’’
The Presbyterian Support Northern lecture series, in Wellington and Auckland, continues until a closing lecture by Minister of Social Development Carmel Sepuloni on July 20. Tickets are available at www.psn.org.nz/lecture-series