Rating social programs in Washington State: a model for Minnesota?

People in Minnesota have been talking a lot about "government redesign," as I wrote in this piece for our Forced to Choose project.

When it comes to improving and streamlining services though, one of the big unknowns is how to value government functions. How do you know which programs are a good public investment and worth keeping? Which don't work and should be scrapped? Which services could be delivered in a better way?

These questions can be difficult to answer. Yet, in Washington state, they've come up with a formula that assigns concrete values to a host of social programs. The formula discerns a program's cost, its financial benefits and its likelihood of success. And it comes up with hard, consistently-derived numbers that allow lawmakers to compare one service to another.

Since the mid-1990s, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, a bipartisan group that conducts research for the Legislature, has been looking at "evidence-based" policy making.

"The Legislature asks us to make 'buy' and 'sell' recommendations to them," said the institute's director Steve Aos, sounding a bit like an investment adviser. "What works to reduce crime? What should we purchase as far as programs go? If they're not working, what should we sell?"

To derive valuations, said Aos, "We go through a formal process to dispassionately review the scientific evidence on what works or doesn't work. We read every research study we can. Who's done innovative things that rigorous analysis suggests work?"

One of the institute's earliest projects involved juvenile crime, which included evaluating each program by its direct cost to taxpayers and by how much society benefits if a crime doesn't occur. On a long list of juvenile justice programs, the institute assigns a high value to a comprehensive family therapy program, for example, and a very low value to Scared Straight.

The way Aos figures it, the state has saved money on this approach. When it comes to juvenile and adult justice, he said, "We think that today the cumulative effect of all those investments is that, as of 2011, there are about 1,100 fewer people in adult prisons than there would have been without the programs. That's a substantial benefit to taxpayers."

Aos says Washington State stands apart in taking such a rigorous approach to public policy, though other states and countries are interested in following suit. "I've been on the road a lot," he said. "I just got back from giving 14 talks in Australia. The UK is implementing some of what we've done."

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