What is social investment?
Social investment is about better enabling people, whānau, families, and communities to achieve outcomes and thrive, by using data, evidence and different ways of working.
Social investment:
How do we take a social investment approach?
We are 'doing' social investment when we:
Commissioners and funders of services should also have an understanding of the range of services contributing to the desired outcomes, and the impact of each so they can prioritise investment where it is needed most.
A social investment approach encourages contracting for outcomes (results) rather than outputs where appropriate.
Isn’t social investment about proving that you’re getting the best monetary return on investment?
Social investment is about getting the best value out the investments we make in social services. While the way we measure value is often in dollar terms that does not mean we should think about the return we get on a social investment only in terms of things we can easily put a monetary value on.
Social investment is essentially about getting better outcomes and improving the lives of New Zealanders. Improved outcomes for individuals flow on to families and whānau and communities, which is great for them, great for us and great for New Zealand.
What is SIA doing to ensure the rest of government is taking a social investment approach?
Some initiatives and services will lend themselves to a social investment approach more than others - social investment is not a ‘fix all’ solution and there will continue to be instances where traditional delivery of social services serves the intended purpose.
As a central agency we are responsible for building the capability and methodologies to review the effectiveness of funding across the social sector, improve service delivery, and increase visibility of what the government spends and where.
SIA is also responsible for supporting other agencies to apply a social investment approach with guidance, standards, outcomes contracting and commissioning support, evaluation models, and data and analytics.
Will SIA release information on how to best evaluate, measure and report back to government agencies?
Yes, we are working on a range of guidance for service providers and government agencies which will be released in due course.
What do you mean by contracts for outcomes as opposed to contracts for outputs?
Outcomes are the result of interventions/adjustments to interventions that support people.
Outputs are the direct products, services or activities delivered by a programme.
For example, an outputs approach to helping people into work would pay a provider for the number of training sessions they deliver, whereas an outcomes approach would focus on the number of people who get into sustained employment.
What data infrastructure are providers expected to have to show they're taking a social investment approach?
Data, evidence and infrastructure form the backbone of the social investment approach – together, they provide for safe and secure data sharing that enables the government to understand where it should focus its efforts. They also enable providers to understand their impact and what else they need to do.
A key push under social investment is to reduce the amount of reporting and data being sought by government agencies from providers.
We recognise that the amount of information sought by government presently is burdensome for NGOs and is not necessarily adding value relative to the work required to provide it. If the fact of a service intervention can be captured in the IDI, it should be possible in many cases to understand impact and reach without the need for such extensive reporting as is presently required.
We envisage that the amount of data being required under government contracts will reduce and the insights we are able to provide about impact achieved will increase under social investment.
What do we (providers) need to show you as the data and evidence that our programme works? Do we need an SROI report?
The use of external ‘SROI’ reports is not a good proxy for tracking actual outcomes as intended under social investment. It is undesirable for agencies or commissioners to require SROI reports as an alternative to the application of social investment methodologies and SIA is available to advise.
SIA will be working on standards to set out the range of ways that initiatives and services can be measured and valued – and make clear that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
How is outcomes contracting and contract consolidation a social investment approach?
Outcomes contracting focuses on achievement of outcomes rather than delivery of outputs, giving providers more flexibility to innovate in how they choose to support people.
Outcomes contracting fits well with social investment because it requires identification and measurement of outcomes and specific populations of interest, and it encourages data-rich feedback loops.
Contract consolidation isn’t in itself a social investment approach, but by doing it through outcomes contracting, we can encourage the focus to shift from individual outputs (which tend to be focused narrowly on the porfolio or agency from which they were commissioned) to overarching outcomes. This frees up providers to deliver in the way they know is most likely to work.
How is the Social Investment Agency empowering communities?
We support decisions being made at a regional, or even whānau and individual level about what services are needed to meet local needs.
SIA promotes investment in early intervention and prevention, taking a joined-up approach across multiple government domains, to enable holistic community-led services that target people who need help the most.
SIA is also open to new approaches – the overly risk-averse approach traditionally taken by government agencies (while it has its place, especially in universal services) is part of the reason change is needed.
