Mimicking the way pharmaceutical companies use data to develop new drugs could help save the federal government millions of dollars while also making spending fairer, according to the assistant Treasury minister.
Andrew Leigh will use a National Press Club speech on Tuesday to help launch the Australian Centre for Evaluation (ACE), a body funded in the May 2023 budget with an initial $10m over four years to design better policies.
“If it was easy to close life expectancy gaps, educational gaps or employment gaps, then past generations would have done it already,” he will say, according to a copy of his speech. “The fact that these challenges persist means that good intentions aren’t enough.”
Scientists have long deployed randomised trials to test results of a treatment against a control group. For instance, almost 275 years ago, the Scottish physician James Lind used oranges and lemons against cider and even sea water to prove the benefits of providing sailors with citrus to fight scurvy.
“In the decades since randomised trials became broadly accepted as the best way of evaluating medical treatments, millions of lives have been saved,” Leigh said. “That isn’t because every treatment that has emerged from the laboratory has worked. It’s because medicine has subjected those treatments to rigorous evaluation.”
Leigh said the commonwealth alone spent at least $52m in 2021-22 on external consultants to evaluate programs’ effectiveness. Costly pilot studies, for example, can be avoided with the use of small control groups or analysis of existing data already on hand.
The 2019 Thodey review found the Australian Public Service’s approach to program evaluation to be “piecemeal in both scope and quality, and that this diminishes accountability and is a significant barrier to evidence-based policymaking”.
Leigh said the centre with its 14 staff would work with other departments to set priorities. “Early indications are that there’s strong enthusiasm from a number of agencies, including employment,” he told Guardian Australia.
“We’re keen to work with states and territories, which was part of the thinking behind the name,” and even extend to non-government groups, Leigh said. He was also “keen for ACE to grow”, provided it met its own evaluation criteria.
“The first test will be that ACE is doing rigorous evaluations, including randomised trials,” he said. “The second test will be that evaluation findings are being reflected in government policy, with ineffective programs being adjusted or ended and effective ones being scaled up.”
Leigh said better evaluation wouldn’t merely improve governments’ productivity, it would also “create a more equal nation”.
“When government fails, the most affluent have private options – private transport, private education, private healthcare, and private security,” he will say in his speech.
“It’s the poorest who rely most on government, and the most vulnerable who stand to gain when government works better. Disadvantaged Australians don’t need ideology, they need practical solutions that improve their lives.”
