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Steven Joyce
Wellington, May 17, 2017
Finance Minister Steven Joyce has today released the full government response to the Productivity Commission’s report on More Effective Social Services.
The government is well-aligned with the Productivity Commission’s recommended direction.
We have made a number of changes to our methods of investing in and evaluating social services since the Commission’s report was released.
Changes to investment
These include implementing the social investment approach, establishing a Minister Responsible for Social Investment and setting up the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki.
The Commission delivered its report in September 2015. It provided 89 findings and 61 recommendations, including (a) empowering the client by increasing the amount of choice that clients have about what, who, when, where and how they access services (b) improving service delivery to those with complex needs and who have low capacity to co-ordinate and access services (c) improving commissioning and contracting processes (d) operating the investment approach at a cross-programme and cross-agency level (e) creating a system that learns, innovates, and uses data and (f) improving monitoring of performance at both the programme and system level.
The full response released today provides a good stocktake of where we are up to and what is yet to be done.
This government is very focused on improving the lives of New Zealanders through the development and application of the social investment approach.
The Government response can be found here.
Steven Joyce is Finance Minister of New Zealand.