Could randomised control trials save government?

ALSO: Air travel beset by anti-competitive behaviour; climate plan could worsen inequality; and an insulation standards backtrack

Summary:

• Australia’s new centre for evaluating government programmes, and greater use of randomised control trials, could be a model for New Zealand to follow

• This week alone has brought two new reports highlighting failures of competition in aviation

• New data shows the costs of tackling climate change may fall disproportionately on the poorest

• A backtrack on insulation standards could create short-term savings, but only at the expense of greater long-term costs

How to prove that government programmes work

Do we still have a state apparatus capable of solving social problems? The question has often been posed in recent years, following the last Labour government’s well-publicised struggle to achieve some of its goals. A growing trend of thought holds that government agencies and ministries are unable to deliver programmes effectively, as they are too distanced from the communities they serve, too siloed, and have too weak an understanding of what does and doesn’t work. The Auditor-General has repeatedly criticised the limited reporting that agencies provide about the actual impacts of their spending.

While some of these criticisms can be overstated, and there are pockets of excellent performance, few would doubt that government could do with a clearer sense of which of its programmes are effective. So it was interesting to read this week a leading Australian columnist, Ross Gittins, write in the Sydney Morning Herald (paywalled) about the virtues of randomised control trials (RCTs).