The new office in Treasury would assess policy programs and ensure taxpayers stop funding initiatives that aren’t working

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

If your child is struggling to read, would you consider enrolling them in weekly reading sessions at your local library with trained instructors?

Well, according to a randomised trial in England, that type of program has already been tried and it produced zero improvement in literacy skills.

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Labor is pledging to transform Canberra’s policy-making by introducing similar high-quality evaluations of commonwealth government programs to ensure taxpayers stop funding initiatives that aren’t working.

The shadow assistant treasurer, Andrew Leigh, says if Labor wins the election it will create an “Office of the Evaluator General”, to be based within Treasury, to conduct rigorous evaluations of government programs. These would preferably be randomised trials whereby one group is exposed to the new program and another sticks with the existing policy.

The evaluator general will be funded with $5m per year, starting in 2019-20.

“Increasingly, policymakers in other nations are testing programs through randomised trials, with the same kind of control group used to evaluate new pharmaceuticals in clinical drug trials,” Leigh says.

“When Australian policymakers develop programs in early childhood, health, crime and employment, we often look to those overseas randomised trials.

“But while there have been a handful of local randomised policy trials – such as Victoria’s Journey to Social Inclusion experiment and the Early Years Education Program – relatively few Australian policies are subjected to rigorous evaluation.

“The Auditor General, the Productivity Commission, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the former Coag Reform Council and the Grattan Institute have all called for better evaluation of Australian government programs. The test-learn-adapt approach is vital to making progress on major challenges such as wage inequality, social mobility and Closing the Gap.”

Leigh will announce the plan in a speech to the Australian National University on Tuesday.

He will tell the audience at the ANU that half of Australia’s politicians and one-third of British politicians worry that randomised trials are unfair because voters are chosen at random to receive a new policy intervention – but rejecting randomised trials on the grounds of unfairness seems at odds with the fact that that is exactly what already happens with “pilot studies”.

Leigh has credited the work of economist Dr Nicholas Gruen who has explained the value in creating an institution which could develop true expertise in evaluation.

“As Australia faces challenges such as inequality, climate change and indigenous disadvantage, it’s time we raised the evidence bar,” Leigh says in speaking notes seen by Guardian Australia.

“At a time when government budgets are under pressure, there’s no excuse for continuing to fund programs that don’t work.”

The evaluator general will collaborate with existing evaluation bodies such as the Office of Development Effectiveness inside the department of foreign affairs and trade. It will also work with the Evidence Institute for Schools, a body Labor has promised to create within the department of education and training.