What was announced in the 2016 Budget?

The Commonwealth Government has announced a $96.1 million Try, Test and Learn Fund to finance innovative policy interventions to help people find jobs and avoid getting trapped on welfare.

The new interventions will target groups of people who have the capacity to work and are at risk of long-term welfare dependency.

The groups of people will be identified through the finalisation of the actuarial report and accompanying data soon to be available through the Australian Priority Investment Approach to Welfare.

Under the Priority Investment Approach, the Government has commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers to undertake an actuarial analysis of the social security system to identify risk factors driving long-term welfare dependency. This will help the Government to better assess the effectiveness of policy designed to decrease welfare dependency.

New insights to be gained through the Priority Investment Approach will allow for the design and assessment of innovative policies which can increase the chances of sustained employment and self-reliance.

Under the Try, Test and Learn Fund, the Department of Social Services will seek evidence-based proposals for policy interventions from relevant Commonwealth agencies and external experts and from the not-for-profit and non-government sector who will all have access to the relevant data.

Annual actuarial valuations and open data platforms will be used to track the effectiveness of policy interventions and ineffective approaches would be ceased and funding re-directed.

More information

For more information about this measure and other Department of Social Services’ Budget measures, visit the Department of Social Services website (www.dss.gov.au).

For information about the 2016 Budget, visit the Australian Government budget website (www.budget.gov.au).

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Try, Test and Learn Fund

The first cycle of the Try, Test and Learn Fund is open from 9 December 2016 to 24 February 2017.

In the first instance, the Government seeks ideas on how to help people who may be at risk of being on welfare for the long term to find, retain and flourish in long-term employment. Priority groups for this cycle are young carers, young parents and young students at risk of long-term unemployment.

For more information, and to submit an idea, see: https://engage.dss.gov.au/

The Try, Test and Learn Fund will support trials of new or innovative policy responses to help people live independently of welfare. The Fund will seek to support groups who have the capacity to work and are at risk of long-term welfare dependence. It will also help to ensure that Australia’s safety net remains sustainable for future generations.

As announced in the 2016-17 Federal Budget, the Try, Test and Learn Fund is the Government’s first response to the Australian Priority Investment Approach to Welfare. It will help to achieve the objectives of welfare reform and the Priority Investment Approach in developing a modern, relevant and flexible welfare system.

The Try, Test and Learn Fund is not a standard Government funding round and is driven by an outcomes-focused commissioning approach to policy development. Ideas will be welcomed from the community sector, government, academics, business, individuals and other groups, including partnerships between these stakeholders.

The Fund’s submission process has been designed to be accessible, transparent, collaborative, and supportive of new and innovative approaches. The most suitable ideas will progress to a process of co development, the selection of a delivery partner, and then delivery and evaluation. Users and communities will be central to the design and delivery of Try, Test and Learn Fund policies.

Another central focus of the Try, Test and Learn Fund is the generation of new insights and empirical evidence into ‘what works’ to reduce long term welfare dependence. The delivery of each Try, Test and Learn Fund policy will test an hypothesis about how we can change behaviours, pathways or systems to improve workforce participation. The impact of Try, Test and Learn Fund policy responses will be monitored using a range of evaluation methods to garner these insights. The lessons learned will be used to inform and improve Government policy.

The Fund is expected to open for ideas several times over multiple years, allowing organisations and individuals additional opportunities to submit proposals. This flexible and iterative policy design process aligns with the Government’s innovation agenda.

Read more

• Minister’s Media release
• DSS Engage
• Stakeholder engagement
• Try, Test and Learn Fund — 2016-17 Budget factsheet

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1.     Overview

This document captures the key themes and outcomes from the Try, Test and Learn Fund consultation workshops held on Friday 21 October 2016. The workshops were organised by the Department of Social Services (DSS) to seek stakeholders’ input on the design of the Try, Test and Learn Fund.

Thirty-two stakeholders were in attendance including large, medium and small service providers, academia, social enterprise, corporate sector representatives, local councils, and social impact organisations. The workshops were facilitated by an independent facilitator from EY.

Workshop participants were invited to take part in half hour teleconferences with DSS staff prior to the workshop to answer any initial questions and gauge stakeholder priorities regarding the Fund.

The workshops were the first step in an ongoing consultation and collaboration process between the Department and external stakeholders. The design of the Fund will not be static but will continue to be refined over its lifetime. As such, priorities and themes raised by stakeholders will strongly influence the initial design of the Fund at its December opening, but will also continue to be used to inform the evolution of the Fund over time.

2.   Purpose and structure of workshop

The purpose of the workshop was to seek stakeholder views on the processes and operations underpinning the Try, Test and Learn Fund. The Department sought opinions from stakeholders about how the Fund could be innovative, inclusive and build new evidence on effective ways to support people at risk of welfare dependence.

The Fund aims to be innovative but must also adhere to Commonwealth funding frameworks and probity requirements, and follow a relatively streamlined approach to accommodate a large anticipated volume of idea proposals. Like any new process, designing the Fund comes with challenges and opportunities. Including stakeholders in the design is critical to understanding and addressing them. 

While the Department entered the workshop with an open mind about processes, stakeholders were provided with some key parameters and starting points:

        ·         It is expected that the initial tranche of the Try, Test and Learn Fund will open in December 2016.
 

        ·         A broad proposed framework for the Try, Test and Learn Fund was provided as the starting point for discussion. The framework included:

o    An ideas generation phase seeking ideas for policy proposals through different channels

o    An intensive policy co-development phase for a selected shortlist of ideas

o    A funding process to seek a provider to deliver ideas.
 

    ·         The first tranche will focus on three groups identified by the Priority Investment Approach model: young carers, young parents, and students at risk of long-term reliance on unemployment payments. Future tranches could focus on other groups and the Department was keen to speak with stakeholders about how future groups could be identified.

3.   Stakeholder priorities and feedback

Stakeholders’ views are summarised into themes below.

General design issues

·         Open, flexible and outcomes-focused definitions of priority groups will better support impactful policy responses, including early intervention, than narrow, prescriptive definitions

·         Existing or previously trialled ideas should be eligible for funding as well as new ideas, where they could be usefully scaled up, reintroduced or applied in new contexts and where evaluation will add new information about what works for whom

·         Meaningful co-design, and especially end user involvement, is very important across all stages of policy development, from issue definition and ideation through to implementation

Multi-stage approach to ideas generation and funding

·         The multi-stage approach has implications for pathways to funding but participants were open to new processes balancing collaboration and transparency with competition

·         The ideas generation stage will afford an opportunity for stakeholders to break down silos and collaborate and share ideas, perhaps eventually through brokering of partnerships

·         Information on the end-to-end Fund process should be available to stakeholders before they enter the ideas generation stage, particularly as the multi-stage approach is novel

·         Some participants proposed that the multi-stage approach was not innovative enough, such as the language and practice of funding ‘rounds’ compared to the private sector

·         It may be more effective to make systemic changes to support priority groups than to fund multiple small ideas, leading to the prospect of trials of such systemic changes

Ideas generation processes

·         There is a tension between defining the goal of initiatives sufficiently well to provide structure and guide thinking, but not so narrowly that it constrains creativity and innovation

·         Similarly, DSS should provide an initial ‘problem’ definition to stimulate ideas, but stakeholders should refine the problem and trial outcomes based on their expertise

·         Channels for submission should be actively and broadly promoted, while written proposals initially should be simple such as a one-page template with guided responses

·         External stakeholders should be engaged in the assessment and selection of ideas

Implementation and evaluation

·         As with the ‘problem’ definition, taking too prescriptive an approach to outcomes definition constrains thinking and fails to capture the full value that providers can deliver

·         While designing policy responses to ‘fail fast’ is a virtue, performance indicators and measures of success need to acknowledge the time needed for change to occur

·         Evaluation is integral to the Fund’s intent and so it should be integral to the ideation and design processes for policy responses, including methods like randomised controlled trials.

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Try, Test and Learn Fund

The Australian Priority Investment Approach to Welfare allows the Government to review the Australian population as a whole and to identify groups at risk of welfare dependence and disadvantage. This new way of looking at the social security system will help the Government to target funding towards programs and policies that support people to move into education or employment, and to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs over time.

The $96.1 million Try, Test and Learn Fund will trial new or innovative approaches to assist people who are at risk of long-term reliance on welfare into stable, sustainable employment.

The Fund is not a traditional Government funding round; the submission process has been designed with stakeholder input to be accessible, transparent, collaborative and supportive of innovation.

The Fund will target people who may have the capacity to work and are at risk of long-term welfare dependency. In the first tranche of the Fund, the groups to be targeted are young carers, young parents and young students at risk of long-term unemployment.

See the priority group data for a snapshot of some of the findings on these groups. Further data and analysis concerning the priority groups is under development and will be published on this website in the near future.

We are looking for your new or innovative ideas on how we can improve workforce participation or capacity to work for people within these three groups. The Try, Test and Learn Fund Handbook provides detailed information about how the Fund works, including the submission process and how ideas will be selected for further co-development and funding. You should also read the accompanying Questions and Answers which provide further clarification on the Handbook information.

Once you are ready to submit your ideas, visit the Submit an idea page.

We encourage collaboration in the generation of ideas for the Try, Test and Learn Fund. If you want to read others’ ideas, visit the View ideas page.

To assist the ideas generation process, we are organising a Policy Hack in Melbourne, tentatively scheduled for February 2017.  The Hack is an opportunity for you to work alongside others to develop innovative policy ideas that may be funded under the Try, Test and Learn Fund.

If you would like to attend, expressions of interest for the Hack are now open.

We also want to hear from those who want to contribute but don’t wish to attend the Hack or submit an idea for a particular support or service. If you want to discuss the barriers faced by people in the priority groups, or what you think works to support people in these circumstances, then come and join the discussions.

We strongly advise you to read the available supporting material before submitting your idea. The Try, Test and Learn Fund Handbook, Questions and Answers, and additional supporting material can be found on our important information page. This page will be updated as additional material becomes available. If you want to be notified of updates, subscribe to our newsletter.