Effective social policy and service delivery requires a learning system. Imagine if…New Zealand had an effective learning system to generate and capture evidence to inform spending decisions for social policy. A good learning system will include evidence about ‘doing the right things’ as well as ‘doing things right’.

In this Insight we discuss three promising practices that New Zealand could adopt.

New Zealand needs to be deliberate in creating a learning system to generate and capture evidence to inform spending decisions for social policy and investment. Central Government spends around $34 billion (11% of GDP) on social services and another $31 billion on transfer payments such as New Zealand Superannuation and welfare benefits. We know relatively little about what works when, for whom and under what circumstances and we lack an institutional system to address the gap in our understanding. We don’t know which spending is good value for money, which is ineffective and if any is downright harmful. These gaps in understanding are helping drive the Government’s implementation of a social investment approach, the focus of an NZIER Insight to be published in December.