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STS507 Vince G. et al.
7. Reflections
The wider environment matters, but demonstrating value matters more
The explicit system mandate is useful in our discussions but having
examples and successes to point to helped demonstrate the benefits of our
potential contributions. Activities like the algorithmic transparency review are
very valuable for helping focus analysts in other agencies on the obvious need
for collaboration.
The early focus of the IDI on adding large amounts of data over building a
perfect infrastructure has led to a huge growth in the use of integrated
administrative data in government policy. This would not have been possible
without jumping on opportunities provided at the time. All this work
progresses best when there is an imperative to act and so we took a deliberate
decision to be opportunistic.
As a result the IDI became central to the process for bidding for new money
in the social sector. Evidence from analysing IDI challenged critical
assumptions that had historically underpinned public policy. People working
in social agencies now have both a sense of considerable untapped potential
and wanting to contribute to helping the IDI develop further.
NSO’s need to be a part of the user community, and significant
technical challenges need community solutions
With so much changing about how Government agencies intend to go
about their work, there is a question of how perfectly Stats NZ needs to be
able to answer questions around what is possible and what is needed, before
it can start to add value. There used to be a lot of dialogue about
understanding user need in NSOs. It seems these days “what is needed” isn’t
sitting there to be discovered – user need is being continuously created, and
NSOs need to figure out how to be part of this continuously evolving
conversation.
In our work with agencies trying to predict the impact of long-term policy
changes and in working with communities to help illuminate cause and effect
playing out in very local environments we have encountered limits to what
data can explain. Which of the limits are inherent and which can be overcome
with different approaches will need well focussed collaboration to understand.
Everyone is more inclined to document great success than efforts that didn’t
work but it seems that these limits need to be found by trial and error. This
will be a better process when everyone can see what has worked and what
hasn’t.
8. Concluding Remarks
The famous physicist Heisenberg said that “Whenever we proceed from
the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have
to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word “understanding””.
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