Day 1
Registration opens
In-person participants will be able to register at the reception of the Blavatnik School of Government and enjoy tea, coffee and pastries with other in-person attendees and speakers.
In-person welcome
Welcome & housekeeping remarks from the Government Outcomes Lab team.
Theme: Outcomes measurement and value for money
Roundtable 1.1 Conversations on measurement and public value
In this session, we will host a conversation on a diverse range of frameworks, tools and data for measuring outcomes.
The conversation will be guided by three key considerations:
- how do we define value?
- how do we operationalise value in policy programmes and decision-making?
- practical advice for policymakers and practitioners
By weaving together the conceptual frameworks and their practical applications emanating from across the world, the conversation explores the pathways for advancing thinking and practice of measuring social outcomes.
Watch the recording of this session here.
Presentations
Shweta Dey’s presentation will focus on the theme of measuring outcomes and public value and discuss potential levers to strengthen the role of public finance in value creation. Drawing on …
Shweta Dey
New South Wales Treasury
This paper focuses on:
a) understanding complex needs, the data that shows/locates that need, and how the data needs to be triangulated across agencies,
b) understanding the socio-economic dimension of …
Stan Gilmour
Thames Valley Police
UEF//House of Effectiveness have together with Sosped Centre and Hospital district of Centre Finland Health Care created an evidence-based evaluation tool for assessing monetary impact of social quality.
The social …
Miikka Vuorinen
Sosped Center
Tomi Mäki-Opas
UEF
The presentation attempts to open the black-box of the depoliticized “impact narrative” ostensibly promoted by international organizations. Although the notion of impact has been progressively established as the silver bullet …
Mathilde Pellizzari
FAIR & Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Mines Paris
Over the last two decades, UK organisations initially from the first and third sectors, but increasingly also from the second and fourth sectors, have had to respond to societal concerns …
Diana Bozhilova
Northeastern University London
Following the launch of the world's first Social Impact Bond (SIB) in Peterborough in the United Kingdom in 2010, SIBs have been deployed in reducing reoffending across many countries. However, …
Reiji Ikeda
Ministry of Justice of Japan
The Output-Outcome Monitoring Framework (OOMF), being implemented by Government of India, represents a step towards outcome-based monitoring. This is a paradigm shift from measuring simply physical and financial progress, to …
Akhilesh Kumar
Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO)
Bijeta Mohanty
DMEO
The Crown Land estate in New South Wales (NSW) is a vast portfolio of more than 580,000 parcels of land covering some 34 million hectares that equates to 42 per …
Dr Nandita Das
New South Wales Government
Chair:
Dr Mara Airoldi
University of Oxford
Chair
Theme: Outcomes-based contracting
Roundtable 1.2 Fit for purpose? Stretching and flexing the impact bond model: evidence and insights from across the world
No two impact bonds are the same. As more organisations are embracing this funding model, we are seeing it used flexibility to address a wide array of social challenges in often very different social, economic and political systems. This has significant consequences for the way impact bonds are designed, implemented, and evaluated. What are the key features or ‘active ingredients’ of impact bonds that are being stretched as projects are being developed in new contexts?
This interactive roundtable discussion will take stock of the latest practice in the adoption of impact bond approaches across the globe, and explore with a diverse set of experienced practitioners, policymakers and scholars the ways in which this innovative funding tool is being adapted to respond to different country and policy contexts. How are policymakers and practitioners seeking to use the impact model in new geographies and policy areas? And what can we learn from these impact bond iterations about mechanisms of change and future sustainability, beyond the life of a particular project.
Watch the session recording here.
Dr Eleanor Carter
University of Oxford
Abha Thorat-Shah
The British Asian Trust
Dr Chih Hoong Sin
Independent
Chair
Presentations
Social impact bonds (SIBs) are often conceived of as a single commissioning model, but in reality they take many different shapes and sizes.
What different forms do they take, why, …
James Ronicle
Ecorys
Neil Stanworth
ATQ Consultants
We all talk about the details of Social Outcomes Contracts, but what if the concept is not just completely new to you, but to your whole country? Where do you …
Björn Vennema
Social Finance NL
Lisa Jansen
Social Finance NL
The speakers will present the genesis, the key challenges (and related strategic and operational solutions) and the solutions adopted to deliver a public-private initiative for financing a work inclusion project …
Filippo Addarii
PlusValue
Vincenzo Lo Cascio
Italian Ministry of Justice
In this discussion, representatives from the UNESCO Sport Section will share insights from their experience developing pilot projects designed to build international capacity and awareness of outcomes-based financial instruments. These …
Daniel Greenways
UNESCO
Our understanding of what SIBs ‘are for’ and what ‘good’ looks like is starting to change. However, this understanding still tends to be rooted in the contexts in which they …
Tim Bidey
Traverse
Nancy Fouad Merheb
Overview of the project and relationship to core conference themes
The NSW Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the Office of Social Impact Investment (OSII), is delivering two health-related social …
Samantha Reid
NSW Ministry of Health
Miranda Lee
NSW Treasury
The Village Enterprise Development Impact Bond was a pilot outcomes fund aiming to prove that it is possible to tie donor payments to poverty outcomes and that doing so can …
Celeste Brubaker
Village Enterprise
Research question and main issue addressed:
Critical elements in social impact bonds (SIBs) are often ‘stretched’ during their development, meaning that projects tend to resemble conventional approaches to commissioning and …
Mikkel Munksgaard Andersen
Copenhagen Business School
To date, 204 impact bonds have been launched in 31 countries. As the impact bond market matures and a growing number of contracts conclude, researchers are increasingly asking: What comes …
Hilary Olson
University of Southern California
Welcome to the Social Outcomes Conference 2022
The Government Outcomes Lab's Executive Director Nigel Ball will welcome online and in-person participants to this year's conference. We will also be joined by Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government.
Nigel Ball
Social Purpose Lab
Professor Ngaire Woods
Blavatnik School of Government
Politics of Social Change: Harnessing power for positive impact
We face today a multidimensional crisis: the intersection of a global public health pandemic, increasing gaps in income and wealth, continued racial and gender inequalities, and the decline of democracy, all happening in front of the backdrop of worsening global warming. This multidimensional crisis is fundamentally a crisis of “power concentration.” To help tackle this crisis, changemakers need to develop a deep understanding of the innerworkings of power, which is an essential ingredient for effecting social change.
In this talk, Julie Battilana will discuss the fundamentals of power, debunk the common myths surrounding it, and discuss how to harness power for positive impact. By explaining what power is and what it is not, this discussion will help the audience understand what it takes to successfully navigate the politics of social change. We will discuss how to identify one’s own sources of power, and see power not as dirty business, but instead energy that can be used for good. This talk will dive into what changemakers must know about power and how to use that knowledge to change our social and economic systems to make them more fair, more green, and more just.
Panel discussion
Following Prof Battilana’s keynote, a discussion panel will explore how understanding power dynamics might inform a topic of interest to all our audience: cross-sector partnerships to improve social outcomes. Improving social outcomes for populations requires addressing a multitude of problems: conflict and its aftermath, poverty, sanitation, housing, health, education and social exclusion. When it comes to fixing these ills, many people and organisations can claim a role. Governments, businesses, NGOs and individuals themselves all have important parts to play. On the surface, they may be united in their pursuit of better social outcomes, and easily distinguished from those pursuing narrower ends. Yet those working towards social change rarely have identical goals. They may have different views about what needs to change, how change should happen, and who should be involved.
This panel will try to make sense of how those studying or working within cross-sector partnerships might understand the power that ebbs and flows within them, and how that understanding might be used to drive improved social outcomes for populations. We will ask:
- How can changemakers make change happen with, and through, government bureaucracies, where power structures are often rigid?
- Should governments and their agents be persuaded to give up some of their power to those closer to social issues, who might be better able to drive more meaningful change?
- Can private power be harnessed towards positive social change, or must it instead be constrained in pursuit of broader public goals?
- Can the populations most affected by complex social problems take power, or must they be given it – and what do they do with it when they have it?
Watch the recording of the session here.
Professor Julie Battilana
Harvard University
Pepper Culpepper
Blavatnik School of Government
Vera Monteiro
São Paulo Law School
Mehreen Shahid
Safe Delivery Safe Mother
David Knott
TNL Community Fund
Nigel Ball
Social Purpose Lab
Chair
Theme: Procurement and Social Value
Deep Dive 1.1 Achieving wider wellbeing through public procurement?
We have pushed governments to buy more efficiently for decades. Now, facing enormous public crises, we also want our governments to use the purchasing power in public contracts to achieve wider economic, social, and environmental policy goals. Is public procurement ready for this important role? In this session we consider the promises and practical challenges associated with ‘sustainable public procurement’, ‘buying social’, ‘community benefit clauses’, ‘social value’, and similar movements around the world.
This session will include a short panel discussion on what government might do to enable Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations to help achieve wider social and community benefit outcomes in public contracts.
Watch the recording of the session here.
Presentations
So far, Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) has been implemented mainly through environmental policies and a few labour policies in the social dimension.
With this paper, we intend to discuss whether …
Raquel Carvalho
Overview of the project or approach to be discussed in the presentation
Our presentation will cover:
Main reflections and insights from the work to date
Main reflections include:
- Health …
Mat Ilic
Catch22
Jonathan Bland
E3M
Julian Blake
Stone King
In 2021, the UK became the first nation in the world to mandate the evaluation of Social Value in procurement at the central government level (PPN06/20); a policy further adopted …
Sandra Hamilton
University of Manchester
The last couple of years have put unprecedented pressures on the healthcare systems due to COVID-19, a surge in ailments due to climate change, changing public behaviour, skill shortages and …
Vaishali Baid
Action Sustainability
Martin Toomey
NHS Supply Chain
This paper highlights transparency gaps in the growing use of public spending through contracts to achieve economic, social, or environmental policy goals in local areas. These goals are in addition …
Dr Ruairi Macdonald
Faculty of Law, University of Oxford
Dr Clare FitzGerald
King's College London
Chair:
Claire Dove CBE
UK Government
Chair
Theme: Place-based partnerships
Deep Dive 1.2 Learning to let go: how can central government (re)build local governance capacity to support the levelling up agenda?
Evidence from efforts at local regeneration from around the world suggests that if the UK Government’s levelling up agenda is to achieve all that it promises, it will require a fundamental reshaping of the relationship between central and local government, to facilitate the key role that local and regional institutions have to play. In the UK, the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has left a lack of local governance capacity that will need to be addressed if places are to bridge inequalities. Devolution has become almost synonymous with the Government’s flagship domestic policy agenda, but past efforts suggest a reluctance for government to relinquish control.
In this deep dive panel, we will explore how central government might best support local institutions to (re)build local governance capacity. We will examine evidence for the importance of local governance in international examples; discuss original GO Lab research on central-local relationships in past efforts to join up public services in the UK, expanding on a framework for local governance models; explore practical examples of these different models in an effort to better understand their potential to support better governance; and consider how the government should move forward.
Watch the recording of the session here.
Presentations
The Home Win and Place-Based Renewal team at the Blavatnik School of Government have been examining the lessons that efforts to level up Britain’s regions can draw from international success …
Ian Taylor
University of Oxford
Susanne Frick
Government Outcomes Lab
Camden Council's overarching approach to public service delivery centres around improving life for residents and people in the borough, and as such a focus on people's wellbeing outcomes. This approach …
Michal Shinwell
Camden Council
The Refugee Transition Outcome Fund (“RTOF”) is one of the streams of funding that has been made available through The Treasury Shared Outcome Fund. This was designed to encourage departments …
Conor Sullivan
Bridges Outcomes Partnerships
Over the last 25 years, the UK Government has launched over 50 initiatives to attempt to join up local complex public service provision. Michael and Felix will explore how central …
Michael Gibson
University of Oxford
Dr Felix-Anselm van Lier
University of Oxford
One of the challenges of the energy transition is the phasing-out of coal in carbon-intensive regions. In Germany, the federal government has declared to phase out coal by 2038 and …
Benjamin Klement
Fraunhofer IMW
Chair:
Ciaran Martin
Blavatnik School of Government
Chair
Theme: Outcomes-based contracting
Deep Dive 1.3 Beyond impact bonds: unlocking investment for outcomes-focused social programmes
Outcomes-based partnerships, such as impact bonds, are often seen as a way to attract funding from diverse investors for socio-environmental initiatives. How effective have approaches such as impact bonds been so far in unlocking impact investment to help tackle entrenched social problems? Beyond impact bonds, what other outcomes-focused mechanisms are emerging to fund cross-sector partnerships for better social outcomes?
In this session we will explore how to use outcomes-focused funding to better align social and financial objectives while dealing with multiple (and often conflicting) goals of stakeholders. We will attempt to foster understanding of the perspectives of various investor groups, including philanthropic foundations, impact investing funds, and financially-oriented organisations.
We hope insights could be of use for unlocking sustainable investment across policy areas worldwide.
Watch the recording of the session here.
Presentations
While philanthropic foundations in the United States are increasingly participating in impact investing, little is known about how they choose to invest in particular models or projects. This study sought …
Megan Goulding
USC Price Center for Social Innovation
The impact investing market is increasing by size and market players – in Europe and worldwide. The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) estimates the market size at USD 715 billion …
Luigi Corvo
University of Milan Bicocca
In the Netherlands, care is financed through a complicated arrangement of health care insurer, national government and municipalities. At the HIB Standing Strong which will be launched in summer 2022 …
Ruben Koekoek
Social Finance NL
Daphne Salvino
Development Impact Bond (DIB) is seen as a remarkable innovative financing mechanism for leveraging resources from the private sector and increasing the overall performance of technical cooperation projects. The number …
Giorgi Todua
UNIDO
Social Impact Bonds (SIB), one of the most common forms of outcomes-based approaches, has had some success in achieving two key goals that it was originally set out to do: …
Sikai Chen
Tri-Sector
Nadia Samdin
Tri-Sector
Overview of Project:
The Gauteng Partnership Fund (GPF), as an entity of the Provincial Department of Human Settlements, is a funding and implementing agent, responsible for integrated, sustainable human settlement …
Mandy Jayakody
Gauteng Partnership Fund
Simphiwe Ndlovu
Gauteng Partnership Fund
Chair:
Salim Bensmail
Meridiam
Chair
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