Social Ventures Australia (SVA) has welcomed the Prime Minister’s Innovation Statement and called for a national discussion on how innovation and agility can be fostered in social policy as well as economic policy.
SVA outlined six areas of focus required to create a climate for social innovation in Australia:
- Paying for outcomes not headcount: moving towards managing by outcomes and outcomes based contracting for social services and supporting the social sector to make this transition
- Better services through opening up government data: through initiatives like government housed data-labs that allow community services to test the outcomes of their programs against control groups and publish results
- Connecting capital with cause: enabling the investment of flexible capital in social impact initiatives through, for example, mobilising superannuation funds towards social impact investment
- Education built on evidence: greater investment in education research; developing new programs for schools, testing them, and conducting research to prove what’s effective
- Enterprise for employment: better connecting marginalised jobseekers with the skills needs that exist in the market and creating more transitional opportunities in social enterprise through social procurement
- A reconciled Australia: empowering First Australians through enabling community-decision making and supporting the development of strong governance frameworks
SVA’s CEO Rob Koczkar commented:
‘If we are to be a truly inclusive and prosperous society we must make sure everyone in our community can participate in social and economic life. Persistent inequality and disadvantage in Australia is extremely costly not just to our economy, but to our community, and to the more than one million people who are stuck in the cycle of entrenched poverty.’
‘With an estimated $420 billion spent on social programs in Australia each year across welfare, health and education, it’s time to invest in the architecture that will enable social innovation to flourish and for this investment to make a real difference towards solving the social challenges we face.’
For more see Rob Koczkar’s opinion article in The Mandarin: Time for a national agenda for social innovation.
