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…
Social Investment Unit: Briefing to the Incoming Ministers
This 2017 Briefing to the Incoming Minister sets out why social investment matters, and what a successful social investment approach could look like. The components to enable a social investment…
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…
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…
Report writing guidance
This guidance is aimed at any local government officer involved in the report writing process: writers, reviewers, managers and governance professionals. It supports officers to provide robust,…
‘Narrative and storytelling’, from Evidence-based policy making in the social sciences
Storytelling is important, including to the creation of policy or legislation, because it helps deal with the ‘why’ of a policy, not just the ‘how’. Although evidence-based policy is a popular…
Narratives as tools for influencing policy change
Narratives are critical to policy, but some pitfalls should be avoided. Policy professionals should avoid a ‘knowledge fallacy’, that people will agree with a policy if they just have more knowledge,…
What is the value of a policy proposal?
Cost-benefit analysis (CBAx) is an important component of good policy advice, setting out not just what a proposal will cost, but the value it will achieve. It helps identify the benefits of a…
