“Too often, past governments have judged success only by what they spent, rather than what difference that spending made to people’s lives. Yet changing lives is the whole point.”

Prime Minister Bill English did not shy away from acknowledging past government failures in his pre-Budget speech last week. With a focus on social investment, English was sending the message he had already made many times as Finance Minister: it is not the spending that matters, but its effectiveness.

If you ever get bogged down by academic debates and political commentary around social investment, the above quote is worth keeping in mind. The simplest understanding of social investment is that it refocuses success from measuring spending to measuring results.

It is important to keep that in mind, because the more you look into social investment, the more complicated and nuanced the public debate gets.

The most novel aspect of social investment is the use of data to identify those most likely to suffer poor life outcomes in order to target and tailor social services. Data will also be collected to measure effectiveness in order to identify the programmes that make a real difference, and those that do not.

Social investment is not without its sceptics. One critique is that reducing society’s most vulnerable to fiscal costs and data points is dehumanising and lacks empathy. Critics see a data-driven approach as potentially ignoring the complexities of people’s lives.

But effective social policy cannot be based on good intentions alone. And it is difficult to see how the new approach is any less empathetic than the current approach of the government spending money then turning its back.

The difference between social investment and older approaches is that now both the government and public will know when things are not working and whether unintended consequences are emerging.

Besides, analysts might be knee-deep in data, but they will not replace the hard-working and compassionate people working on the frontline.

There is, of course, much more that could and should be said about social investment. And much more to be done to really see the approach move from theory to practice. The Initiative will be discussing both in the coming months.

In the meantime though, it is easy to see why it is not just data nerds talking about social investment, but anyone who believes New Zealanders should be served better in their times of need.