This is our monthly policy briefing for August 2021. Each week we gather all the news, commentary and events from across the sector, then tie it all together each month. If you would like to get this in your inbox each week you can sign up to Tiny Letter.
This month saw the launch of our new Value for Money (VfM) toolkit for outcomes-based contracts, developed in partnership with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). The toolkit guides public managers planning to assess VfM of OBC programmes, or any public programme with an outcome-focus, using prospective information. For those wanting to find out more, GO Lab economist Mehdi Shiva joined the CIPFA Speaks! podcast to discuss the project. They addressed the motivation for developing the toolkit in collaboration with CIPFA, the importance of Value for Money (especially in the context of Covid-19), and the potential for VfM to drive a focus on long-term value rather than short-term costs as interventions are designed. And if you’re interested in exploring ways to improve value creation of public expenditure more broadly, the GO Lab and CIPFA have co-organised a new peer learning group, the Value in Public Finance group.
Even beyond our new VfM toolkit, assessment of outcomes-based contracts has been a running theme this month. The Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings shared an abridged paper by authors from Harvard and INSPER on the contract characteristics that affect the use of counterfactual assessment methods in outcomes-based contracts. And the OECD released a new working paper which provides an overview of the challenges and methods for evaluating blended finance instruments and mechanisms, including development impact bonds and performance-based grants.
However, without a strong grounding for outcomes-based approaches, assessment and evaluation will not get very far. This month, Avnish Gungadurdoss called for the strengthening of delivery governance in low- and middle-income countries to capitalise on the potential of results-based financing (RBF). Meanwhile, in his latest piece for the Oxford Government Outcomes Blog on efforts to develop outcomes-based approaches in Abu Dhabi, Dr Chih Hoong Sin situated the social impact bond as part of a wider strategy for embedding outcomes at the centre of how government aspires to conduct business, discussing how evidence from around the world has been adapted to the local context.
Finally, an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review questioned whether outcomes-based contracts are really the best way to capture the value of outcomes-based approaches. Max French argues that OBCs are vulnerable to gaming and perverse incentives, and suggests that we should instead move towards using outcomes as a collaborative governance mechanism.
Taking in the broader context of evidence in social programmes, Thea Snow and Adrian Brown from the Centre for Public Impact issued a call this month to make evidence the servant, rather than the master, of good policy on Apolitical. They argue that the evidence-based policy movement has lost its way, and that policymakers must give more consideration to the quality of evidence, the impact of power and institutional bias and the need for adaptation to the target context, by placing evidence alongside expertise and experience as part of evidence-informed policymaking.
One source of the experience so important to this proposition is those people who actually use the service. This article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review examines how listening to constituents can lead to systems change. It presents some of the ways in which organisations can collaborate with the users of their programmes, including by embedding service users in research, creating space for them to interrogate findings and offer feedback, and connecting them to legislators to directly influence policymaking.
In her latest blog reflecting on the Commissioning Better Outcomes Fund evaluation, Sam Magne considers the lessons that can be learned from the Ways to Wellness SIB, and asks whether scenario planning could have better prepared the stakeholders for the challenges that arose during delivery.
Meanwhile, ahead of the latest iteration of the International Network for Data on Impact and Government Outcomes (INDIGO) Hack and Learn event, Laura Bonsaver talked to GO Lab Data Steward Juliana Outes Velarde and Gautam Krishnamurthy, Senior Consultant at the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Ashoka University (and leader for two of the Hack and Learn challenges). They discussed why the GO Lab launched the INDIGO initiative, and how the Hack and Learn event works in practice. INDIGO was also used by researchers to inform their article in the European Research Studies Journal, which analyses the factors in SIB projects which impact on outcomes success.
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