The data said I was useless at school, so it must have been true.

I’ll be honest; I was rubbish at school and data said so. I was told (so was the wider school) on repeated basis how unintelligent I was, so it must have been true. Just so you know, I’m not bitter; life has turned just fine for me, thanks to some great mentors during my teenage years who helped ‘nudge’ me in the right direction. Why I am telling you this, well this week, I was disappointed to see how data is being used by the Federal Government.[1]

That data from the Dept. of Human Services highlighted the high proportion of welfare payments recipients in several areas across Australia. Furthermore, it also showed those who are not willing to follow a process to gain employment. There is no doubt that the welfare system needs to be examined more closely, every hardworking taxpayer should rightly care how their dollar is spent. The data is not in question, the method of using that data is my contention.

Data is powerful, really powerful, because it removes the emotion from a debate, ‘facts are facts’ after all. While I don’t disagree, there is a critical need to reduce the welfare bill to taxpayers; there are better data-driven ways to influence behaviour than labelling groups of people so publicly. In the rush to use ‘innovation’ to power the economy, why are we not looking at the social welfare challenge through different eyes?

In 2015, the Federal Government rightly sought to explore the use of behavioural economics in policy design and implementation. The concept of behavioural economics or ‘nudge units[2]’ has been widely used in the UK and US with great success. It’s about using data to gently guide citizens to help them make a better decision for themselves and others. Nudge units have helped with some of the most complex of challenges[3]; it is well known the Australian Tax Office has already had great success from behavioural economics.

 The Australian economy must transform to survive; we must want and desire our elected leaders to think differently. If we are to solve these ‘wicked problems’ of social welfare, we must be open to different thinking. The complex nature of social issues is not new; we cannot apply historical thinking to solve the growing challenge of the social welfare cost. Data remains the most powerful tool of our time; with our ability store, compute and analyse vast amounts of data at our hands, we must change our mindset in public policy.