University of Otago mathematics and statistics graduate and Families Commissioner Len Cook recently made that point in a talk at a day-long seminar at the university in honour of Otago statistician Associate Prof John Harraway.
His talk was titled "Reflections on how politics, people and science shape the trustworthiness of social policy and practice".
Dunedin-born Mr Cook said there had long been a strong focus, since at least the time of the Blair government in Britain, on monitoring the fiscal performance of social agencies.
But "we need to focus" on monitoring their performance with the people they were required to help.
Robust performance-monitoring systems and checks and balances for the public were in place in respect of the police, but the same protections were not available in some social agencies for "consumers of our social services" — beneficiaries — who had "little consumer power".
People on benefits could not say "I can live without my benefit" and had very little influence on the implementation of social policy.He had written to the Ministry of Social Development and asked how many forms filled in by clients had been lost in the previous year, and how that compared with the previous five years. He was told such statistics were not kept.
A more transparent approach to overall performance monitoring was needed, and some "serious questions" should be considered.
And "deep thinking" was needed on innovative ways to make improvements. Some agencies, such as Statistics New Zealand and the Inland Revenue Department, had long focused on "continuous quality improvement" but that was not so with some others.
There should be a "good scientific basis" for evidence used to assess performance and he believed "quite a few opportunities" to make improvements were being missed.
Mr Cook was government statistician of New Zealand (1992-2000) and national statistician and director of the Office for National Statistics, United Kingdom (2000-05).
