Expand your mind
A curated list of readings that Frank collects to stretch your policy thinking.
Parliament’s financial scrutiny cycle
This one-page resource includes a diagram showing Parliament’s financial scrutiny cycle, which lasts two-and-a-half years. The cycle starts with the Budget Policy Statement, steps through other parts…
The most important thing is to write for everyone and to tell the story in a way that your readers understand
Written by a data presentation specialist, this article gives a number of tips for presenting data. These include: keep it simple, use annotations, aim for accessibility to promote inclusivity, and…
Policy Quality Framework
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet hosts the Policy Project. This Policy Quality Framework sets out the dimensions of quality policy advice and is useful for policy professionals…
Developing papers with the Policy Quality Framework
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet hosts the Policy Project. This checklist for peer reviewers, which helps identify what good looks like for different parts of a paper, is one of the…
Place-based public service budgets: Making public money work better for communities
In the context of austerity, public services in England have been focused on short-term crises rather than long-term solutions. This report argues that pooling central government funding in local…
Social sector commissioning: Progress, principles and next steps
In 2018, the then-Government tasked social sector Chief Executives to look into the way their agencies worked with social service providers. This 2020 report sets out some of the outcomes from that…
Let it go: Devolving power and resources to improve lives
New Zealand’s system of social supports does not meet the needs of some people, and significantly fails a small group of people. More resources are not enough to address this failure. Instead,…
Demonstrating the complexities of being poor; an empathy tool
This 2014 research report came out of the Families 100 project, which involved extensive research with 100 families experiencing poverty in Auckland. The report uses ‘composite characters’ to…
Speaking for ourselves: The truth about what keeps people in poverty from those who live it
This 2014 research report came out of the Families 100 project, which looked into the lives of 100 families who use foodbanks, to understand what prevents them from moving out of poverty. Eight key…
Learning what works for whom at what cost
Understanding what works for whom at what cost starts with asking the right questions. Questions should be framed to help a policy professional: • understand the population who will be the target of…
