Transparency and Trade-Offs in Policy Discourse: A Case Study of Social Service Contracting

Jane Higgins

One of the key terms used in policy discourse about public sector restructuring has been “transparency”, with the usual argument being that lack of transparency in the public sector causes costly inefficiencies and a lack of clarity for departmental outputs and performance indicators.

This paper proposes to use the criterion of transparency to evaluate public policy discourse itself, and to argue that one of the defining aspects of such transparency is a sensitivity to policy trade-offs. The basis for this approach is the idea that good policy debate requires that analysts contribute to the intellectual structure of public policy discourse. The paper uses a case study (a particular model of state funding to the voluntary sector) to argue that while it is natural for policy makers to stress the benefits of their proposals, this approach does not make the costs of certain policies transparent to some New Zealanders.

The paper concludes that transparency in policy discourse - making the trade-offs visible - is a good discipline for policy because it provides a robust intellectual structure for debate and encourages the location of policy analysis within a real social and historical context.