Updates, events and resources on "social investment" approach

Work on the government's "social investment" approach has continued. A range of recent developments are summarised below.

Education Minister Nikki Kaye has announced the school decile system will be replaced with a new Risk Index to allow the government to "better target funding to schools with children and young people most at risk of not achieving due to disadvantage." The specific factors to be used in the index are still to be finalised however a shortlist is provided in the Q&A.

Social investment was discussed in a July 2017 meeting between UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Prime Minister Bill English and Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee in Wellington. A joint statement issued by the Foreign Ministers indicated broader cooperation on a range of policy issues, including "collaboration on our shared interests in social investment and a data-driven approach to support policy development, an intent cemented by the exchange of letters between our two Prime Ministers today."

The new standalone Social Investment Agency (SIA) became operational on 1 July 2017. This replaced the Social Investment Unit housed within the Ministry of Social Development.

A showcase Social investment: The next phase was held in Wellington on 3 July 2017. On the same day, Community Research hosted a webinar The Community Sector and Collection of Client Level Data.

Social Investment Minister Amy Adams gave a speech to the Analytics Forum, Changing lives: Our social investment approach (29 June 2017). This summarised the Government's overall approach and next steps.

A new Privacy Foundation was launched in May 2017.

The Retirement Policy and Research Centre, Child Poverty Action Group and Centre for Applied Research in Economics are hosting a summit Beyond Social Investment in Auckland on 8 September 2017.

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Recent resources

Chief Science Advisor Sir Peter Gluckman published Using evidence to inform social policy: The role of citizen-based analytics. A discussion paper (June 2017).

Superu has published Using evidence for impact and A guide to using administrative data.

New Zealand Police discuss Social Investment: What it means for Police (June 2017).

The AUT Policy Observatory published The Child Youth and Family Review: A Commentary on Prevention by Emily Keddell (June 2017). This includes discussion of the social investment approach.

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Updates

AUT’s Policy Observatory has made video recordings available of a panel held on 3 August 2017, The Risks and Opportunities of Big Data.

The Data Futures Partnership has published A Path to Social Licence: Guidelines for Trusted Data Use (August 2017).

The Social Investment Agency is working on a draft social investment framework.

The Ministry of Education has released a series of documents related to the identification and impact of factors related to the risk of students not achieving in education.

Proceedings from the "Beyond Social Investment" summit held on 8 September 2017 are now available online. This Summit was hosted/supported by the Child Poverty Action Group, and the University of Auckland’s Centre for Applied Research in Economics and Retirement Policy and Research Centre.

The Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki, has released documents relating to the Enhancing Intake Decision-Making Trial run by the Ministry of Social Development in 2016. These include a report and information on "Next Steps for Enhancing Intake Decision-Making Project 31_10_16" (scroll down to October 2017).

Treasury has produced the paper Insights - Informing policies and services for at-risk children and youth (June 2017). Insights is an online tool that allows users to examine anonymous data from Statistics NZ's Integrated Data Infrastructure. The paper provides an overview of Insights including the different parts of the tool, the approach taken, high level findings and ways the tool can be used at a local level.