6. Enable a public management system that learns and empowers community voice

This chapter describes the importance and potential of building a public management system that learns and engages communities to achieve meaningful outcomes in our approach to persistent disadvantage. We outline the role of a public management system that learns, and summarise the overall limitations with the current approach to learning in the public management system. We describe how a public management system that learns effectively will support the shifts in principles needed to achieve wellbeing for all in Aotearoa New Zealand (see Table 4 in Chapter 3), outlining why it is essential to support a locally led, whānau-centred and centrally enabled approach (see Chapter 5), before setting out our recommendations.

A public management system that learns

The final shift we discuss is the well-known, but still unaddressed, need for a step-change in how the Aotearoa New Zealand public sector uses evidence and learns. Learning is particularly important for tackling complex public policy problems such as persistent disadvantage, because “[w]hat worked for one person may not work for another. What worked in one place in one time may not work in other places. What worked at one time may stop working as the context changes” (Lowe & Plimmer, 2019, p. 15).

Learning is also closely related to notions of accountability. As discussed in the previous chapter, current accountability settings in Aotearoa New Zealand strongly incentivise being seen to take action (“pseudo accountability”) and avoiding failure, and they downplay the importance of learning (Wilson & Fry, 2023). A learning system can support two-way learning and accountability between the public management system and communities in addressing persistent disadvantage.

We set out the need to actively centre the needs of individuals, families, whānau, and communities as part of learning approaches, and we provide several examples of organisations approaching learning in this way. Because these examples are currently piecemeal and ad hoc, and not adequately supported by the centre, we have identified several pieces of learning system “infrastructure”, such as collective learning mechanisms and governance arrangements, needed to support learning on the ground. These aspects fulfil the “locally led, whānau-centred” part of the equation.

At the same time, we have examined opportunities to strengthen the “centrally enabled” part of the learning system. This examination sets out the need for the public sector to take learning seriously, through the establishment of a dedicated leadership and stewardship function for learning, investment in the learning system workforce and data infrastructure, and through exploring a centre of excellence model to enable collective knowledge generation and to ensure programmes remain meaningful.

Analysis commissioned for this inquiry found learning in the public management system tended to be ad hoc and concentrated within central government agencies (FrankAdvice, 2023). Learning is often ad hoc, because the system does not collect the performance information it needs due to a lack of demand for monitoring, evaluation, research and learning, as well as a lack of capability.

When learning does take place, it often occurs at the agency level, far from the people doing the work. Evaluations can happen long after an actual intervention, so the people doing the work do not have timely access to the information they need to learn and improve.

In addition, current learning approaches are often focused on discrete policies or initiatives, rather than taking a systems approach to support collective change by building new capabilities and ways of working.

To break the cycle of persistent disadvantage, the public management system needs to work differently, to:

• generate, synthesise and share what it is learning across the system (with policies and mechanisms in place to ensure this happens and that what is being learned is acted on);
• include diverse views and perspectives to bring decision making closer to those experiencing persistent disadvantage, by engaging with people who are affected by government decisions, so they have input into shaping those decisions, as well as judging the impacts; and
• support policymakers to take action now and in the future, to improve the lives of people experiencing persistent disadvantage, and to take an intergenerational lens, which includes ensuring the impacts of decisions over time are evaluated (FrankAdvice, 2023, pp. 6–7).

Finding 13

Learning in the public management system tends to be ad hoc and concentrated within central government agencies. The system does not collect the performance information it needs, due to a lack of demand for monitoring, evaluation, research and learning, as well as a lack of capability.
When learning does take place, it often occurs at the agency level, far from the people doing the work, and long after an actual intervention. This means the people doing the work do not have timely access to the information they need to learn and improve.

Building a learning system that supports the critical shifts the public management system needs

As Lowe and Hesselgreaves (2021) note, “public service in complex environments is not a process of implementing a programme which has been shown to ‘work’ in other places. Instead, public service is a process of continuous, ongoing learning. It is everyone’s job to learn, all the time, at whatever scale of public service system they work” (Lowe & Hesselgreaves, 2021, pp. 56–57). Therefore, a key strategy should be to “enable that learning to happen effectively” (ibid., p. 57).

The public management system needs to be connected to what is happening on the ground; it needs to receive real-time feedback about what matters for individuals, families, whānau, and communities, what changes are needed, and whether the support they receive is helping them. A learning system centred around individuals, families, whānau, and communities can help incorporate the values of He Ara Waiora that we recommend need to be embedded in the public management system.

In Chapter 5, we recommended that, to effectively address persistent disadvantage and honour rights to rangatiratanga under te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Government needs to support the development of locally led, whānau-centred and centrally enabled initiatives (Recommendation 14).

The Southern Initiative and the Auckland Co-design Lab, in a report for the Child Wellbeing and Poverty Reduction Group in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), stated there is a mandate to shift in this direction, “but from our experience agencies are still grappling with the how (The Southern Initiative & Auckland Co-design Lab, 2022, p. 2).

The learning system has a critical role to play here. It can help to shift the beliefs, values and assumptions needed to support system change, alongside more structural changes in relationships, power dynamics, and the rules and norms covered by earlier recommendations in this report.

However, just strengthening the current ad hoc approaches to learning will not be sufficient – the learning system also needs to evolve.

The learning system is part of the infrastructure needed to support the way of working outlined in Chapter 5. Learning by doing in the community is needed to understand what it will take to effect change, and working at the national level, to bring together policy, practice and investments to make change happen. Learning helps to prioritise wellbeing, by supporting the system to be more responsive to the needs of individuals, families, whānau, and communities, broadening the values of the system, integrating learning and innovation, and prioritising the voices of people experiencing disadvantage (see the principles set out in Table 4, Chapter 3).

In addition to expressing concerns about the failure of the public management system to collect performance information, our More Effective Social Services inquiry endorsed the need for more real-time information and evaluation so commissioning organisations and providers of social services “…could respond to trends promptly and so achieve significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness” (NZPC, 2015a, p. 198). This inquiry found that in standard evaluation models, considerable time often elapses before evaluation influences commissioning, contracting and operational decisions.

Most of the learning and experimentation that already happens in the public management system is treated as a discrete event. Research is undertaken to find the answer to a social problem, and a potential solution is piloted. When piloting is complete, the system assumes it knows what works and what will work for other communities. Learning as a distinct phase – such as when designing a new policy or programme – is not effective when dealing with the lived reality of how services and policies interact in the context of people’s lives and in specific places (Lowe & Plimmer, 2019). Improvement comes from an ongoing process of learning and adaptation, not from one-off innovation efforts. This does not mean we should stop longer-term studies that carefully evaluate the full impact of policies and services. Rather, we need to complement them with more real-time information to quickly identify what is working to address persistent disadvantage, and what is needed to enable more of this to happen.

Detailed, real-time learning and feedback can also be used to provide assurance to ministers and funders that a particular approach is working, by demonstrating the system is responsive (while ensuring they are aware change often takes place over a much longer period). It can support decision makers to deepen their understanding of what it takes to break the cycle of persistent disadvantage.

FrankAdvice conclude that it helps the public management system:

… to transform the ways in which it works to address persistent disadvantage … the learning system itself must transform – ie, it must actually act as a system, rather than continue to act as isolated components, with gaps between those components. It should be purposefully designed, not left to chance. (2023, p. 5)

FrankAdvice (2023) found that a functional learning system requires knowledge generation, knowledge use, leadership, accountability, and capability and capacity across and at all levels of the public management system (ibid., p. 25).

Some of these components, such as leadership and accountability, are isolated (or missing) from the current learning system, or they need strengthening. Other elements need to operate differently, such as by making knowledge generation more inclusive and empowering, to help support wellbeing in the place where individuals, families, whānau, and communities live.

Finding 14

The learning system needs to be locally led, whānau-centred and centrally enabled, like the most effective approaches to providing assistance to people in persistent disadvantage. To do this, it must:

• invest in learning by doing and understand the lived realities of individuals, families, whānau, and communities experiencing persistent disadvantage and what matters to them;
• support the system to undertake collective sense-making to learn, decide and act together at different levels; and
• include a strong leadership and stewardship function that creates a mandate for the learning system shifts required, and to support central government to enable more of what works.

The learning system needs to start by understanding the aspirations and dreams of individuals, families, whānau, and communities, and what they need to help them make these a reality. The learning system also needs to simultaneously work across the public management system to understand how it can empower communities, institutions and agencies to use policies, regulations, investments and commissioning differently, to enable more of what works on the ground.

To support the learning system to work on the ground, the public management system needs to do the following.

• Recognise that people, families and whānau know what matters for them.
• Invest in learning how to strengthen the system at all levels.
• Actively involve people, families and whānau in innovation, learning, and policymaking.
• Measure the wellbeing impacts that matter for individuals, families, whānau and communities.

Individuals, families, whānau, and communities know what matters for them

The inquiry’s interim report found that people experiencing persistent disadvantage, their families and whānau, including rangatahi, were best placed to lead on improving wellbeing and equity, and what we need to do to so “…support organisations can learn how to apply a strengths-based approach to help them achieve their aspirations” (NZPC, 2022a).

This means the system needs to start by learning about their strengths and what matters for them, rather than starting from a focus on services and deficits.

Effectively supporting people experiencing persistent disadvantage and addressing their needs requires “a level of familiarity with the detail of peoples’ lives as they are lived” (Lowe & Wilson, 2017), as expressed by the people themselves. The way agencies assess people’s needs often relies heavily on the agencies’ pre-established view of what is required and fails to capture the detail of what individuals and whānau say they need to improve their lives. The current system also does not take into account whether services and policies may be contributing to harm or compounding inequity.

I’ve never come across anyone who’s tried to get to know me as a person. (Rāhera, precariat whānau member). (Rua et al., 2019, p. 7)

Building trusted relationships is necessary for understanding someone’s aspirations, identifying their strengths, and seeing the whole person. The Whānau Ora Commissioning model provides an example of how the learning system can improve the way it gathers knowledge about people experiencing persistent disadvantage and better respond to their needs. Whānau Ora takes a preventative, strengths-based approach to understanding the needs of individuals and whānau, and it ensures that the people it is serving are involved in the decisions about what support they need. Instead of decisions being made by professionals without the input of the people they are trying to help, Whānau Ora works with whānau to determine what outcomes matter to them, then collaborates with whānau, communities and partners to achieve those outcomes, assessing progress against those outcomes as success measures (Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, 2022).

Finding 15

An overly narrow emphasis on what the system has delivered to individuals, families, whānau, and communities (such as services) – especially when determined by proxy measures in administrative and survey data – is simplistic and can lead to stigmatising views of people and their experiences.

Invest in learning how to strengthen the system at all levels

A whānau-centred approach is not just about providing a better response for individuals, families, whānau, and communities, such as access to a programme or service. It is also about learning how to ensure all levels of the system are promoting equity, strengthening protective factors, acknowledging the need for healing to address past and present trauma, and enhancing the cultural and social infrastructure to strengthen whānau and communities. It takes time to build relationships for this to happen, which requires reliable long-term funding (see Chapter 5).

An example of how this can happen is Te Tokotoru (Unbreakable Three) described in Box 15.

Te Tokotoru was developed by The Southern Initiative alongside whānau and rangatahi in South Auckland. It is a systems approach to wellbeing that requires investment in responding, healing and strengthening to support whānau wellbeing. It places emphasis on indigenous- and tangata whenua-led approaches, and the value of social and cultural infrastructure to support communities to lead their own change. Te Tokotoru promotes greater investment in opportunities to support healing and strengthening, as well as the more familiar investment in responding using services and programmes.

Te Tokotoru has informed the investment approach for Te Aorerekura – National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence, by supporting everyone to work together to enhance safety and wellbeing (New Zealand Government, 2021b). The Te Tokotoru model is being used to change the social conditions, structures and norms that perpetuate harm. Action is focused on learning how the Government will coordinate and target responses to reduce harm sooner, and to elevate safe healing pathways, support community-led responses, and strengthen wāhine Māori leadership to support healing and overcome the trauma of violence.

In our interim report, we found that “additional thinking is required about how our policymaking can better incorporate a system-wide and intergenerational way of viewing and analysing issues, and how policymaking can better involve those who the Government is there to serve, particularly those in persistent disadvantage” (NZPC, 2022a, p. 97 Finding 6.15). At the heart of this finding is the need to empower communities to be part of the process of developing effective public policy, including innovation and learning.

The benefits of community empowerment are set out in the Government’s recently published Open Government Partnership Fourth Action Plan, which notes:

Effective engagement allows [people] who are affected by a decision, or interested in an issue, to be involved in policy design, development and decision making. Quality engagement helps create robust policy that reflects the values and aspirations of the community. (New Zealand Government, 2022, p. 1)

Giving people greater voice helps to reorientate the system around the needs and aspirations of whānau to address power imbalances in the system. This includes shifting the power to individuals, families, whānau, and communities to determine the support they receive, and empowering them to participate in governance and decision-making forums. This includes providing input into what the system learns about and what evidence or knowledge gets used.

Community empowerment is not just about better engagement. It “needs to transition into ‘activation’ whereby those impacted by intergenerational disadvantage are supported to both participate in and lead change…” (Inspiring Communities, sub. DR126, p. 2). Community empowerment can play an important role in rebalancing power in the public management system. Communities also need to have a say in how changes intended to support improvements in their lives are determined (for example, what indicators are used and how they are designed), what matters to them, and which issues need further investigation or review.

Shift the power to individuals, families, whānau, and communities to determine the support they receive

Whānau Ora, discussed above, is one approach that shifts power to individuals, families, whānau, and communities by moving away from predetermined support to supporting them to achieve their aspirations. Another example is the new health localities being created by Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) which give iwi and communities “…a strong voice in deciding what’s needed in their local area; and get different health and wellbeing organisations working together better to improve people’s healthcare experience” (Te Whatu Ora, 2023).

Empower communities to participate in governance and decision-making forums

There is also a need to ensure the voices of people experiencing persistent disadvantage are included in governance and decision-making forums. This includes the voices of children and young people. There are initiatives in Aotearoa New Zealand that have included a breadth of voices in determining what counts as evidence or knowledge. For example, Ngā Tohu Waiora is a set of over 500 indicators being developed as part of He Ara Waiora (McMeeking et al., 2019). The indicators were developed through an extensive wairua-based process led by Māori and supported by government to ensure the measures focus on what is important to individuals, families, whānau, and communities.

Involve communities in determining what the system learns about and how

The Disability System Transformation and the Enabling Good Lives programme (recently transferred from the Ministry of Health to Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People) is another example of involving the community it is trying to serve in decisions about what the system learns about and how. Through adhering to the Enabling Good Lives principles of self-determination, and being mana-enhancing and person-centred, the disability system transformation programme recognises the capability of the disability community, and the need to engage people with disabilities fully in the development of disability policy and services. The workstream involves a “strong governance and oversight role for disabled people and whānau over what is monitored and evaluated, how these activities are done, and what the information is used for” (FrankAdvice, 2023, p. 28).

Measure the wellbeing impacts that matter for individuals, families, whānau and communities

As discussed in Chapter 5, the use of narrow transactional contracting approaches often results in focusing on “units of service” or outputs, instead of wellbeing outcomes. Measuring how much assistance the system has delivered does not tell you how well services are meeting the needs of people experiencing persistent disadvantage. Nor does this approach help the public management system to improve the support it provides for individuals and their whānau. To understand what is helping people to improve their lives requires observing and documenting the performance of the social services system from a whānau perspective, which ensures that “the measures used to collect data [are] guided by what matters to whānau” (Te Puna Aonui and Manaaki Tairāwhiti, 2022, p. 10).

In their submission on the interim report, the ChangeMakers Resettlement Forum talked about the need for a broader set of information to determine success in government-funded programmes.

Reliance on numbers as standard measure for success and outcomes for government funded programs is insufficient… Focusing only on numbers as an indicator for success misses out other necessary information such as programme quality, social impact and community contribution. (sub. DR150, p. 5)

The choice of indicators to monitor performance needs to enable learning (how best to provide a safe and effective service), as well as meeting accountability requirements (transparency on how funding is spent). For example, the Vanguard method distinguishes between “individual measures” and “system measures” (Vanguard Consulting, n.d., p. 35). Individual measures help show whether a service is helping individuals or whānau (for example, is the service helping people spend more time with their friends and family, find employment, or cook meals for themselves). System measures help to identify and remove obstacles that prevent delivery of assistance (for example, how much demand is coming in, how many care packages are going out, what is the cost of care packages, and how much time is it taking to provide people with the support they need).

In Aotearoa New Zealand, Manaaki Tairāwhiti (the Place-Based Initiative (PBI) discussed in Box 1 in Chapter 5) documents what whānau have said they need (individual measures) and how systems enable or prevent these needs from being met (system measures) to identify systems barriers and opportunities to improve how systems work for them. Box 12 outlines the key whānau and system measures used by Manaaki Tairāwhiti.

Table 5 Key whānau system measures used by Manaaki Tairāwhiti

Note: The whānau example only describes the whānau need for transport.

Source: Adapted from Te Puna Aonui and Manaaki Tairāwhiti (2022).

The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency has also developed a reporting framework for Ngā Tini Whetū, a whānau-centred early support pilot designed to strengthen families and improve the safety and wellbeing of children (Te Puni Kōkiri, n.d.). The framework involves measuring what matters most for whānau, as well as measuring progress against criteria that funders have identified for the pilot (Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, 2022, p. 92).

Collecting data and drawing insights is an iterative, ongoing process. It can take time to establish what measures are needed for a learning system that is centred around whānau, as evidenced by the experience of Manaaki Tairāwhiti:

Collecting data and insights into how systems are working for whānau is an iterative process. As more insight into whānau voice is collected, Manaaki Coaches look at opportunities to improve what and how information is collected.

For Manaaki Tairāwhiti, it took six years to create Urungi, a digital platform used to collect, collate and share insights into whānau voice.

Finding 16

To support the learning system to work on the ground, the public management system needs to:

• recognise that individuals, families, whānau, and communities know what matters for them;
• invest in learning how to strengthen the system at all levels;
• actively involve individuals, families, whānau and communities in the innovation and learning process; and
• measure the wellbeing impacts that matter for individuals, families, whānau, and communities.

When dealing with complex problems like persistent disadvantage, no individual, organisation, agency or sector has all the levers and solutions needed to achieve a positive change. A collective approach is needed to make sense of what is being learned and what action is needed to support individuals, families, whānau, and communities. Chapter 5 describes how central government can enable a collective approach to happen – such as creating opportunities for a wider diversity of perspectives and capturing insights and evidence of what works on the ground, in order to support two-way learning and accountability.

Collectively making sense of what has been learned is a way to embed the set of values identified by He Ara Waiora and discussed in Chapter 2. For example, this approach can help create kotahitanga (unity), by bringing people together to help coordinate work by sharing data and insights and building a shared purpose. Whanaungatanga (positive relationships) can be strengthened by developing solutions together with individuals, families, whānau, and communities.

This approach also ensures that the system shares and makes use of all the information being generated. The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services talked about the frustration of their members in collecting valuable information about the needs and experiences of the people they serve that just gets shelved, instead of being used to learn and improve.

Social service providers hold deep insights into the experiences of disadvantage within our communities and spend considerable time completing quantitative and qualitative reporting to inform government agencies. Our members convey frustration at the level of contractual reporting and evaluation they prepare which appears to be used to trigger further funding and then shelved, rather than leveraged for broader evaluative and monitoring purposes. This impacts trust and reflects disregard for the valuable knowledge and contribution made by the social services sector in addressing policy priorities and social concerns. (sub. DR120, p. 5)

Similarly, Lowe and Hesselgreaves (2021) point out that the public management system already collects a vast amount of information, which means it is not necessary to start afresh each time – instead:

… we can draw on knowledge from other times and places. This is the approach of evidence-informed practice (as distinct from evidence-based practice or policymaking). Evidence-informed practice treats knowledge from other places as useful material to inform practitioners’ ongoing learning, rather than as “best practice” to be applied, and it has similarities to forms of learning practised by indigenous Australians. (p. 64)

To support a shift to two-way learning and accountability between communities and central government, the system needs to:

• develop collective learning mechanisms for communities and central government to collectively make sense of what is learned;
• create the right governance that includes national-level and community-level representatives; and
• build stronger connections with communities to underpin both of the above.

Collective learning mechanisms are required

Funders, providers and communities need to learn together to enable them to draw on what has been learned in the past, and to use this information to decide what they need to change to improve their current policies, initiatives or practices.

Learning together builds trust, which creates the space for autonomous action. Autonomous action enables ongoing adaptation to context, which, in turn, provides the material for further learning. The purposeful creation of this kind of virtuous cycle is the effect of learning as a meta-strategy, enacted by funding and commissioning for learning. (Lowe, 2021, p. 182)

This is not something that will just happen organically. Organisations delivering support services themselves need access to supporting backbone functions, as discussed in the previous chapter, to take the lead in identifying what they might need from central government. In addition, central government can help locally led approaches to work as effectively as possible, by supporting collective learning about what works for whānau and how the public management system can better enable this.

The Manaaki Tairāwhiti Urungi system, and the South Auckland Social Wellbeing Board’s local evidence and insights approach provide examples of how backbone functions (see Chapter 5) can support a culture of learning together – that is, a culture led by the people they are supporting, and used to inform opportunities for systems change. Both these PBIs work with whānau and front-line staff to collect, collate and synthesise real-world experiences (that is, practice and place-based evidence) to identify system-level gaps, barriers, inefficiencies and inequities.

In the case of Manaaki Tairāwhiti, system change starts with Manaaki coaches identifying system barriers (see Box 16). The South Auckland Social Wellbeing Board uses an in-house local evidence and insights team to capture learning and build the case for change to inform local and national decision making, and then works with agencies to implement systems change.

The Early Years Implementation Learning Platform (convened by The Southern Initiative and the Auckland Co-design Lab) is another example of collective learning. The platform is a mechanism to ensure its programmes remain meaningful, and is supporting agencies to grapple with how to make a shift towards centrally enabling whānau-centred and locally led ways of working (see Box 17).

The two examples above show how a local learning system can be used to support a locally led and whānau-centred way of working to support whānau experiencing persistent disadvantage. The governance boards of both PBIs take this information seriously and provide an important validation role (Wilson & Fry, 2023). Unfortunately, actions to address systems challenges at the national level have been minimal (Fry, 2022), which suggests the need for a mandate for national systems to actively work with local learning systems and to make the changes needed. However, there are only two PBIs in Aotearoa New Zealand to support local learning systems. The public management system will need to consider what infrastructure is needed to put in place local learning systems across the rest of the country.

Create governance that supports the learning and includes the national and community level representatives

One of the key outcomes of a learning system is to “[make] sure people and organisations actually do it” (FrankAdvice, 2023, p. 15). This means that “decision makers need to be accountable for making evidence-based decisions, drawing on advice based in knowledge generated by a learning system… Accountability helps ensure knowledge generated becomes knowledge used”. This helps create transparency in the public management system by making it clear what is and is not working and whether decisions reflect this (ibid, p. 23).

Effective governance and leadership models can support investment in learning and make learning two-way. These governance and leadership models can create opportunities for people working in communities to escalate information to decision makers, on what is being learned about what matters and is making the biggest difference for whānau, and what is helping to make change or stopping change from happening. The insights can help prioritise what work is needed at the national level to adjust policy, practice and investment to enable change to happen in communities. The insights can also support people leading transformation efforts at the national level to work alongside those closer to the reality on the ground, in ways that accelerate change. This can also ensure a range of perspectives are represented, including those of individuals and whānau, organisations, agencies, and sector representatives (including iwi and community leaders).

Leadership and governance bodies need to support the mindset and culture shifts required to promote collaborative ways of working across the system, and they need to meaningfully involve individuals, families, whānau, and communities.

These kind of leadership and governance bodies should hold themselves accountable for ensuring investment in learning occurs alongside the day-to-day work of supporting communities. Table 6 provides examples of different leadership and governance groups operating in Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK. Although each group has been shaped by the people they are supporting and the community they are working in, they share common features.

The groups have a mix of community level and national public sector representatives, and all have made investments in infrastructure and people to support learning. The South Auckland Social Wellbeing Board and Manaaki Tairāwhiti Governance Group have independent chairs who represent the communities they serve. The Plymouth Alliance for Complex Needs has a leadership team where decision making is unanimous.

Table 6 Examples of leadership and governance groups created to support whānau-centred, locally led and centrally enabled approaches

Sources: Human Learning Systems (2021); Manaaki Tairāwhiti (2023); South Auckland Social Wellbeing Board (2023).

Stronger connections between the public management system and communities (including voluntary, iwi and hapū groups) are needed, to build trust and help the system learn from people experiencing persistent disadvantage. Community groups play a role in supporting and representing people who experience persistent disadvantage, but do not currently have the same level of representation or direct access to ministers as the business sector (ComVoices, 2022).

Representation for groups or other community stakeholders could be created on key governance forums across the social sector, including the Social Wellbeing Board. Membership would need to come from people experiencing persistent disadvantage, to ensure their voice does not get lost or weakened.

Current attempts to improve engagement with communities may not be working

The public management system is trying to be more accessible, responsive, and accountable to individuals, families, whānau, and communities (including children and young people). Suggestions for how to increase participation in decisions made by the public management system have been made by the Open Government Partnership Fourth Action Plan (New Zealand Government, 2022b), the review of the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy (DPMC, 2022), and the Long-term Insights Briefing on Enabling Active Citizenship (PSC, 2022a).

However, according to the Expert Advisory Panel on the Open Government Partnership, the commitments set out in those documents need to be followed through with the support of “stronger political and strategic leadership from the government” (New Zealand Government, 2022b, p. 5). These include building community engagement capability of public service staff, addressing any financial barriers that prevent or limit participation by individuals, families, whānau, and communities, and revitalising citizen-led democracy (Review into the Future for Local Government, 2022).

Finding 17

To support a shift to two-way learning and accountability between communities and central government, the system needs to:
• develop collective learning mechanisms for communities and central government to make sense of what is learned;
• create the right governance that includes national-level and community-level representatives; and
• build stronger connections with communities to underpin both of the above.

Recommendation 16
Resource better community engagement
The Government should resource the Social Wellbeing Board to ensure Tiriti partners and community stakeholders can be active partners in development, decision making, implementation and learning, in relation to policies and programmes to reduce persistent disadvantage.

Leadership for learning in the public management system

Now we turn to the “centrally enabled” part of the learning system equation. Leadership is critical to making sure everyone plays their part in a learning system. Although the public management system already has a system lead for the policy system – who is responsible for improving policy capabilities, systems, processes and standards – there is currently no equivalent for learning. Our view is the Government should create a leadership and stewardship function by mandating an appropriate agency to set requirements for learning and improvement in the public management system that is whānau-centred, locally led and centrally enabled.

A similar conclusion was reached in a review of learning within the Australian public sector (Bray et al., 2019). The review identified an absence of a strategic approach to evaluation in the Australian public sector had led to “a failure to oversee the evaluation effort and the quality of evaluation; the dispersion and frequently under-utilisation of evaluation skills, along with limited capacity to build them; and a tendency for evaluation findings to be narrowly considered and soon lost from corporate memory” (ibid., p. 13).

The review concluded there was a strong case for a centralised evaluation role within the Australian public sector and within government agencies to set priorities, identified gaps in evaluation effort, ensured evaluation findings were used in decision making, and shared insights across the public management system.

We consider that dedicated leadership and stewardship is needed to:

• support a shift towards locally led, whānau-centred and centrally enabled ways of working;
• ensure the public management system is playing its centrally enabling role by ensuring national-level policy and investment decisions are based on what matters most to individuals, families, whānau, and communities; and
• invest in the capacity and capability of the system to learn.

We have considered the kind of activities a leadership function for learning could usefully undertake, as well as where such a function could be housed. In our view, the purpose of a leadership function for learning is to ensure everyone plays their part in strengthening learning across the public management system. This includes generating the knowledge the system needs to learn, being accountable for using what it is learning to inform decisions, and ensuring there is sufficient capability and capacity to learn across all levels of the system (FrankAdvice, 2023).

Knowledge generation needs to determine the support needed by people experiencing persistent disadvantage, by listening to them and trying things out. Achieving this requires drawing on a wide range of knowledge created across the system. In the current public management system, narrow forms of evidence often dominate (such as data from surveys and administration data, over the voice of whānau), strengths-based approaches are infrequent, there is insufficient collective learning between communities and central government agencies, and the use of kaupapa Māori and other culturally appropriate methods is lacking (ibid., p. 22).

The system needs to be accountable for using the knowledge generated by the learning system to inform the changes needed to support whānau experiencing persistent disadvantage. At present, the public management system lacks key elements that could support accountability for learning. There is no leadership function which might be equipped with powers to impose accountabilities (ibid., p. 23).

The lack of leadership and accountability create gaps in capability throughout the public management system. Incentives within the public management system, including the fear of failure, are likely to contribute to these gaps (ibid., p. 24). A shift to a learning system that is centred around individuals, families, whānau, and communities will also require the system to improve its practices at all levels, from central government agencies to learning on the ground in communities.

The learning system needs sufficient resourcing to support the generation and use of knowledge in decision making. Leadership is needed to ensure the system has the capacity to learn. This could require identifying where additional investment is needed and ensuring investment is used to support a whānau-centred, locally led and centrally enabled approach to learning.

Although there is no consensus on what stewardship of a learning system looks like, FrankAdvice (2023) identified the monitoring and evaluation system introduced in Canada in 2009, as a good starting point to identifying the potential elements needed. The elements they recommended include:

• a leadership agency, which would establish a government-wide evaluation policy, specify requirements and standards for how the learning system should operate, build capability and capacity in the learning system across the public management system;
• a review function to monitor whether central government is enabling learning; and
• a separate centre of excellence to support the public management system to learn together by providing expertise, sharing knowledge, and facilitating learning across all levels and with communities.

We consider these elements to be a good mix of establishing and monitoring expectations, as well as providing support for agencies to strengthen their learning activities and participate in system wide learning. However, we also note that overseas models cannot be imported without adapting them for Aotearoa New Zealand’s unique political, social and cultural landscape. The learning system would need to give effect to te Tiriti and indigenous values. FrankAdvice conclude that “[m]aking space for tangata whenua to lead and hold power in a learning system could take a number of forms, from governance arrangements through to organisational and individual capability within agencies...” (ibid., p. 38).

Finding 18

An effective learning system needs six key components: knowledge generation; knowledge use; leadership; accountability, capability and capacity. Some of these components are missing, and others need strengthening. A leadership function is needed to ensure all six key components are present, at all levels of the public management system, and are supporting a system that is locally led, whānau-centred and centrally enabled.

Where could the learning leadership function be located?

There are three broad options for locating a leadership function in the Aotearoa New Zealand public management system. It could be housed in a new standalone entity, in an existing agency, or introduced as a new system lead role created under the Public Service Act 2020.

There are already several central government agencies that could host the leadership function for the learning system. Creating another central government agency may not be necessary. Possible candidates include Treasury, Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission (PSC), the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), and the Social Wellbeing Agency. Submissions to the inquiry’s interim report suggested placing the leadership role in an existing central government agency and suggested PSC or DPMC (NZPC, 2023a).

We see a key role for central agencies to embed wellbeing outcomes across the public management system. It makes sense to place the leadership function for the learning system alongside this work. The learning system will be an important contributor in shaping what information is used to inform the performance of the public management system, as well as collecting the information needed to understand how well existing services are working for people experiencing persistent disadvantage.

Table 7 presents the key attributes a leadership function for the learning system would need to have and examples of where expertise currently resides within the public sector. It shows that existing agencies all have their own strengths and weaknesses in terms of their ability to host the learning system leadership function.

Table 7 Attributes of a learning system leadership function

Source: Adapted from FrankAdvice (2023).

In Canada, the leadership of their monitoring and evaluation system was placed in the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (equivalent to the New Zealand Treasury). The Canadian monitoring and evaluation system was successful in contributing to expenditure reviews, but was less successful in supporting improvements in the performance of operations (Lahey & Nielsen, 2013). The decision about where to locate the leadership function needs to ensure the learning system balances managing expenditure alongside improving operations.

DPMC and the Social Wellbeing Agency already have several functions that are complementary to supporting a learning system leadership function. DPMC hosts the Child Wellbeing and Poverty Reduction Group that is responsible for leading the government’s Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy across the public service and leads the stewardship of the policy system: the Policy Project.

The Social Wellbeing Agency has expertise in the tools and processes needed to learn. In particular, their recent work has focused on using strengths-based approaches, undertaking mixed methods research that combines qualitative and quantitative data collection, and working with communities to learn about the use of services (Social Wellbeing Agency, 2023).

FrankAdvice concludes that “…a new standalone agency created for the purpose is likely to have the greatest impact. It would be designed specifically to carry out its tasks (including leadership arrangements to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi) and to embody the values of He Ara Waiora, would bring together a high level of expertise into a single place, and would have a high degree of independence” (FrankAdvice, 2023, p. 35).

Recommendation 17
Create a leadership and stewardship function for learning and improvement
The Government should create a leadership and stewardship function to set requirements for learning and improvement in the public management system and mandate an appropriate agency. The requirements of this function should include:
• ensuring the voices of individuals, families, whānau, and communities experiencing disadvantage are used to inform what support and help is needed and how it should be provided;
• supporting the public management system to innovate, test and adapt to find out what works to break the cycle of persistent disadvantage;
• tracking the adoption of new systems settings, behaviours and practices that prioritise equity and support the changes needed on the ground in whānau and communities;
• ensuring the public management system acts in a timely manner on what is being learned – for example, by adapting services, sharing learning where relevant, removing any obstacles, or creating new services to meet unmet demand; and
• supporting the public management system to anticipate needs across the life course and between generations so that government can do more to prevent persistent disadvantage from occurring, instead of just addressing it when it does happen.

We consider that in order to address the longstanding systemic weaknesses in learning capabilities across the public management system (FrankAdvice, 2023; NZPC, 2015b), a government-wide learning policy should be established that applies to all government agencies. At a minimum, it should specify responsibilities for undertaking ongoing learning activities, the purpose of these activities, and make clear the responsibilities of government to work with Tiriti partners and community stakeholders to develop and implement learning activities.

The learning policy should encourage the public management system to take the following actions.

• Invest in growing capability across all levels of the public management system, including leadership and learning infrastructure at the local level. This includes sharing and synthesising knowledge across the public management system, with policies and mechanisms in place to ensure this happens – so that a repository of knowledge for addressing persistent disadvantage can be built.
• Support the system to reorganise how it works at different levels, to enable locally led ways of working and to do things differently.
• Learn about what matters to individuals, families, whānau, and communities by listening to them (that is, not to rely just on system-level indicators) and bring decision making closer to whānau. The learning system needs to include diverse views and perspectives. This would involve engaging with people who are affected by government decisions, so they can have input into those decisions as well as judge the impacts.
• Undertake two-way learning that is ongoing and involves national- and community-level learning about what change is needed and how central levers can be used to support change to happen. Collective learning needs to be ongoing, to help inform decisions that work to improve people’s lives now and contribute to strengthening the lives of current and future generations.
• Create a learning system platform at the national level to capture learning about barriers and opportunities related to policy and investment settings, including acting on community intelligence (this is not commissioning an evaluation).
• Ensure the public management system invests in the time needed to understand people’s lives, especially when dealing with persistent disadvantage and intergenerational trauma.
• Give permission to reconfigure investment to meet the needs of individuals, families, whānau, and communities.

Specify requirements and standards for how the learning system should operate

To support high quality evaluation, monitoring and other learning activities, the leadership function should specify requirements and standards of practice for the public management system to meet in their learning activities. These requirements and standards could include:

• ensuring the voices of individuals, families, whānau, and communities experiencing disadvantage are used to inform what support and help is needed, and how it should be provided;
• supporting the public management system to innovate, test and adapt to find out what works for people experiencing disadvantage;
• ensuring the public management system acts in a timely manner on what is being learned – for example, by adapting services, sharing learning where relevant, removing any obstacles, or creating new services to meet unmet demand;
  
• building new internal capabilities and mindsets, making changes in regulations or policies, and shifting investment approaches; and
• supporting the public management system to anticipate needs across the life course and between generations, so that government can do more to prevent persistent disadvantage from occurring, instead of just addressing it when it does happen.

Establish a review function to monitor whether central government is enabling learning

Central government agencies will play an important role in enabling learning to be locally led and whānau-centred. It would be expected that agencies have learning system responsibilities as part of their normal accountabilities. They should be required to demonstrate (for example, in annual reports and budget documents) they are investing in learning and enabling learning to happen on the ground with our communities.

To hold agencies to account, we consider the leadership function needs to have its own powers to report on how effective the learning system is at achieving goals set out in the learning policy, how well the learning system is performing, and what action is being taken to address system level issues identified. For example, the Canadian Auditor-General has provided independent oversight by examining the use of monitoring and evaluation across the system (Lahey, 2010). These powers, (which could be established in legislation) would be similar to the way the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment reports on procurement practice, or the way PSC reports on whether agencies are meeting their Official Information Act 1982 obligations.

A separate centre of excellence to support the systems to learn together

Making a paradigm shift to become a learning system will be challenging and will need dedicated support. As Lowe and Hesselgreaves (2021) noted, “[i]t is no surprise that those who have adopted this [learning system] approach emphasise the amount of effort required to maintain the practice of learning in every interaction. Essentially, this approach means potentially taking any aspect of routinised practice and changing it to become thoughtful and considered” (p. 60). As FrankAdvice (2023) concluded, “the public management system is stronger at generating knowledge than synthesising it” (p. 30).

The learning system will require a source of expertise that agencies can draw on to improve their practice in generating and using knowledge, and to support the sharing and synthesising of knowledge across the public management system. Support could also be provided to agencies, providers and communities, to improve their understanding of different evaluation approaches, and how they can implement them to support learning.

Although the key role of the centre of excellence would be to support system-wide learning practice, it could also play a role in supporting the sharing and synthesis of knowledge. This could include providing a central location for storing and accessing knowledge, such as:

• the Hub, hosted by the Social Wellbeing Agency in Aotearoa New Zealand, which contains government social science research;³⁹ and
• the UK’s What Works Network (n.d.) that aims to improve the way government and other public sector organisations create, share and use evidence in decision making.

Learning partners can help organisations to build their capacity to learn

A centre of excellence could support the public management system to develop and maintain a learning culture. In particular, it could help organisations to concentrate on supporting whānau and ensure they are not overwhelmed with additional demands for ongoing learning.

One way to achieve this is by bringing people in the system together in the context of the centre of excellence, as described above. For example, Lowe and Hesselgreaves (2021) describe the use of a “Learning Partner” to provide support for organisations (or systems) to undertake each stage of the learning process, and to guide them through a cycle of trying, learning and adapting. The Learning Partner would “[help] organisations to build their own capacity to learn, typically by adopting action learning and action research (ALAR) approaches…, which includes experimentation, data gathering, sense-making, reflection and reflexivity” (p. 70). The Learning Partner can “also perform convening roles to build relationships between people, organisations, and systems, so that shared learning can take place” (ibid.).

Finding 19

Key elements for government-wide policy that would build learning capability and capacity in learning across the public management system are:
• clear requirements and standards for how the learning system should operate;
• a review function to monitor whether central government is enabling learning and improvements are occurring; and
• a separate centre of excellence to support the public management system to share expertise, knowledge, and facilitate learning across all levels of government and with communities.

Recommendation 18
Establish a government-wide learning policy
To strengthen the learning system the leadership and stewardship function should:
• establish a government-wide learning policy;
• specify requirements and standards (or alternatively, guidance) for how the learning system should operate and to guide good practice for agencies;
• establish a review function to monitor whether the public management system is enabling learning; and
• create a centre of excellence to provide expertise, share knowledge, and facilitate learning across all levels of government and with communities.

Finally, we note investment in the capacity and capability of the public management system to support learning will be required. This includes investing in the capability of the learning system workforce, and the capacity to collect data for measuring wellbeing and disadvantage over the life course and between generations, and within communities.

Invest in the learning system workforce

Increasing the use of learning in the public management system is likely to increase the need for learning practitioners (such as evaluators, facilitators, learning partners and data analysts), including those skilled in kaupapa Māori and other culturally grounded approaches.

The learning system leadership function could be responsible for developing a learning practitioner workforce capability plan, covering areas such as:

• ensuring a workforce pipeline – including, for example, working with external parties (such as tertiary education providers) to promote evaluation as a career;
• supporting the capability of the existing workforce (for example, partnering with professional bodies such as the Australian and New Zealand Evaluation Association); and
• developing competency frameworks for practitioners employed directly within the public management system (similar to the policy advisor competency framework resources developed by DPMC’s Policy Project).

We recommend that insights should be gathered from other public workforce initiatives on how a workforce function for a learning system could operate – for example, from the Workforce Development Council model for developing skills needed by industry using vocational education and training, or from agencies that have responsibilities for workforces (such as health).

Recommendation 19
Invest in the capability and capacity of the learning system
The Government should invest in the capability and capacity of the learning system, including:
• the development of practice-led learning to support new ways of working;
• the learning system workforce, including learning partners; and
• the structures and support needed to help the system check whether its programmes remain meaningful.

The inquiry’s accompanying report A quantitative analysis of disadvantage and how it persists in Aotearoa New Zealand concluded that Aotearoa New Zealand needs to expand the measures used to understand the patterns and nature of persistent disadvantage. The report calls for the development of a broader range of “being left out” measures (in particular, social connection, discrimination, sense of identity and belonging, and community participation) and longitudinal information to understand persistent disadvantage across the life course and between generations (NZPC, forthcoming). In particular, the learning system needs to be able to support the public management system to anticipate the future needs of individuals, families, whānau, and communities.

Improving existing data and evidence will be needed to support the implementation of a number of the recommendations made by this inquiry. These include supporting the setting out of wellbeing objectives (Recommendation 4), measuring levels of material and non-material wellbeing as part of establishing a social floor (Recommendation 8), and measuring changes in persistent disadvantage, which is part of the Social Inclusion Act (Recommendation 13).

One way of doing this is to increase investment in longitudinal studies, such as Growing Up in New Zealand. This would enable the learning system to measure wellbeing and disadvantage over the life course and between generations. Options could include investing in a new cohort study, extending existing surveys (such as the Living in Aotearoa survey), and using government administration data held by agencies and linked together by Statistics New Zealand in the Integrated Data Infrastructure. New datasets need to be able to measure changes in people’s lives over a longer timeframe and intergenerationally (households currently remain in the Living in Aotearoa Survey for six years), and they need to focus on capturing the complexities and interconnection factors associated with living in persistent disadvantage. In addition to further funding for longitudinal studies, increased resourcing could be considered for Statistics New Zealand surveys and the Integrated Data Infrastructure.

This could involve stronger partnerships between government agencies and tertiary education providers. The work could become part of Te Ara Paerangi – Future pathways work programme, which is designing a research, science and innovation system to support the wellbeing for all current and future New Zealanders. Phase 2 of the work programme includes establishing national research priorities to “meet the most important challenges and opportunities for Aotearoa New Zealand’s social, environmental and economic wellbeing” (Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, 2022, p. 8).

Prioritise work programmes that capture community-level data

As discussed earlier, building trusted relationships between the public management system, individuals, families, whānau and communities will require the sharing of knowledge. It may also require support for communities to generate their own culturally grounded knowledge and evidence for what works in their context. Knowledge should be shared across communities in accessible ways.

Some submitters (sub. DR95, 119 and 150) felt that national data collections are unable to provide sufficiently disaggregated and timely data at the community level, which can mean the voice of communities is often missing from current national datasets, or issues arising in these communities are not reported quickly enough. Dr Sandy Callister concluded that “…national measures, targets, and indicators mask the critical variables of ethnicity, location, age differences and socio-economic status. Without data specificity it is hard to drive transformational change at a local level…” (sub. DR89, p. 4).

It may be possible to redevelop existing surveys to provide more detailed information about persistent disadvantage experienced by particular individuals, whānau and/or communities (for example, defined by ethnicity, location and/or age). There is already work underway to prioritise data investment in Aotearoa New Zealand for certain population groups. For example, the 2022 New Zealand Government data investment plan identifies creating more detailed data for sub-national populations, including iwi/Māori, ethnic groups, disabled groups, family composition and geographical areas, as a data investment priority (New Zealand Government, 2022a). The Living in Aotearoa survey has boosted sampling to ensure good Māori representation, as well as representation of more deprived areas.

However, there will also be communities with populations that are too small to be easily captured using national surveys. An example is the Tairāwhiti region, which decided to create its own wellbeing survey (see Box 18). Where this is the case, it may be possible to provide support to these communities to collect their own data about their own needs and strengths.

Finding 20

Aotearoa New Zealand needs to expand the measures used to understand the patterns and nature of persistent disadvantage by developing a broader range of “being left out” measures (in particular, social connection, discrimination, sense of identity and belonging, and community participation) and longitudinal information to understand persistent disadvantage across the life course and between generations.

In particular, the learning system needs to be able to support the public management system to anticipate the future needs of individuals, families, whānau, and communities.

Improving existing data and evidence will be needed to support the implementation of a number of the recommendations made by this inquiry. These include supporting the setting out of wellbeing objectives; measuring levels of material and non-material wellbeing as part of establishing a social floor; and measuring changes in persistent disadvantage, which is part of the Social Inclusion Act.

Recommendation 20
Invest in data collection
The Government and government agencies should invest in data collection for measuring wellbeing and disadvantage over the life course, between generations, and within communities, including taking the following actions.
• Commit to long-term investment in the Living in Aotearoa survey (or equivalent surveys) and the Integrated Data Infrastructure, to expand its measures (for example, a broader range of “being left out” measures – particularly about social connection, discrimination, sense of identity and belonging, and community participation) and set up longer-term panels to allow wellbeing and disadvantage to be measured over the life course and between generations.
• Resource Statistics New Zealand, in collaboration with others, to prioritise work programmes that capture community-level data. This could include improving existing surveys and using existing government administration data to provide more detailed information about persistent disadvantage among specific communities (for example, by ethnicity, location and/or age), or by working with communities to help them collect their own data and information.