How the government is Measuring What Matters

These are the words of then-Treasury secretary John Fraser appointed under the Abbott government. In fact, for decades governments have recognised their core purpose should be improving the wellbeing of the people. "Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times," was how Conservative British prime minister David Cameron identified the task back in 2010.

The majority of Australians agree - 80 per cent of us believe government decision-making should be guided by the wellbeing of the population.

How have nations tackled this challenge? The first step is usually to get a better picture of how their people and environment are doing. This was done by Cameron, who introduced a measure of national wellbeing, and by Republican French president Nicholas Sarkozy, who set up a commission to identify the limits of GDP and find metrics that better captured the country's overall progress beyond economic growth and inflation rates. In fact, over half of the OECD countries have a wellbeing framework.

So it was a no-brainer for the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, to follow this international practice by establishing the Measuring What Matters (MWM) framework last year in Australia.

Many Australians might be surprised such a measure didn't already exist. Did the government really not have a good tool for gauging how people were doing beyond a handful of economic indicators? Did they not have a central resource to help them prioritise where there was the greatest need and get ahead of potential problems before they became far, far worse? They did not. This is why we need to measure what matters.

MWM started as a dashboard of indicators to identify how we were faring as a nation in areas like safety, health, sustainability, social connection and prosperity.

The problem was we only had recent data on some of these areas, others hadn't been measured in years or even decades. This is one of the most important parts of bringing this kind of data together - it shows you what you are missing, and where you need to start paying more attention.

What do you do when you find you are missing vital information? You invest in collecting it. And this is exactly what the government has done - both investing in data collection to fill some of those gaps, and handing over the technical work of running the dashboard to the technical experts, the ABS.

The last survey showed the proportion of our lives spent in full health has been trending down and that chronic conditions are increasing. It also showed nearly half of us do not feel safe being out at night.

Think about the benefits to our daily lives that could be achieved as government uses this data to focus on long-term approaches to improve these outcomes.

Using this data doesn't just offer immediate help by highlighting where Australians are struggling - it also paves the way for future benefits. A broader focus on wellbeing allows us to tackle issues early, address them more effectively, and save money in the long run.

For instance, by tracking the rate of chronic conditions, a small uptick can prompt better policies now, preventing the issue from escalating into a major, costly health crisis in 10 or 20 years. Or if we're properly tracking the number of Australians experiencing poverty, the government can implement initiatives to tackle the issue early and avoid higher rates of emergency room visits, crime, and poor educational outcomes. Again, not only is this good for society as a whole, it helps reduce costs for governments.

So far the government has been taking the common sense approach with the MWM framework.

The next steps, however, will be trickier. Data alone will not change outcomes - the challenge is to embed this framework into government decision-making so it genuinely improves outcomes. There is a dedicated MWM team working on exactly this. What this means in next steps could range from the big-ticket election issue items, to improvements in governance that go largely unnoticed.

The ABS will continue to regularly collect the MWM dashboard data and every three years the government will release a comprehensive Measuring What Matters statement examining trends in wellbeing, how we are tracking over time, where we're doing well and where we need to do better.

It is not just a vital task Chalmers has embarked on with MWM, but a common sense way of improving the effectiveness of government and supporting the needs and wellbeing of all Australians - it would be madness if they did not do that.