Bill English wants government agencies to make better use of their data.

Finance Minister Bill English is frustrated over lack of progress on domestic violence and other social problems, despite programmes costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

English said that the public service was having "no impact" on some costly social problems such as domestic violence.

The Government's social investment unit, which has a budget of about $6 million over two years, is spearheading a Government drive to make better use of data and software tools.

The Government had made agencies focus on whether they were achieving results, rather than just on "churning money", English said.

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"But now we are at a stage where some of those results are starting to flatten out," he said.

"They are going to need new tools based around 'data' and measurement."

The social investment unit currently sits between the Social Development Ministry and the Treasury, but English said it would probably become "a bit more independent" as its role grew.

The Government wanted agencies to make better use of data, so they could for example better direct assistance to young males with depression and a high risk of welfare dependency.

"In the next few months we are going to go through a process of working out how much of that process needs to be centralised, but certainly some of it does," English said.

"The data infrastructure for sharing data about a common population should be centralised. We are not going to let three departments – Health, Education and 'welfare' – all build their own."

He forecast there would be "a bit of tension about that within government; how much sits in what is now called the social investment unit and how much sits in departments".

English made the comments at a technology conference hosted by NZ Tech in Wellington, where he gave the public service something of a dressing down.

Government agencies were still "pretty poor" at working together, he said.

At one point during his speech he said the Salvation Army was "the only agency in New Zealand that seems to be bothered about whether we get results".

He later explained he would keen to see universities better analyse government data.

"I am a bit surprised that given how much information we are putting out that more of them don't do it, or get together to organise it," he said.

English expressed frustration that prison numbers were rising again, noting that cost $100,000 per year "per bed", and attributed that in large part to domestic violence which he said took up half the time of frontline police.

"We have really had no impact, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on programmes, on the incidence of domestic violence in New Zealand," he said. "Really no impact at all."

The increased role for the social investment unit would not necessary mean a much bigger budget, he said. "These functions are not expensive but they are pretty powerful."

The Government had produced a "statistics portal" last week mapping the location of "high risk" populations, he said.

That followed on from the work done last year to analyse the effectiveness of government spending on children under five, he said.