Organisation: The Government Outcomes Lab
This session took stock of efforts in different social, economic, and political contexts around the word to develop or strengthen system-level conditions for the development of social outcomes contracts. We looked at the experience of countries as diverse as Colombia, India, the Netherlands, the UK and Japan. We asked: what are the structural barriers limiting the adoption of outcomes-based contracting in the provision of public services? What can we learn from the experience so far? How can we move from pilot to ecosystem when it comes to social outcomes contracting.
The first session saw participants explore the comparative perspectives in different contexts to develop or strengthen system-level conditions to support social outcomes contracts. The panelists agreed that ecosystem development requires bringing a variety of players together, but to be sustainable, it requires additional features like maintaining learning and knowledge within the ‘constellation of players’. Rafaella de Felice (GSG) shared that “we need a common language but we have the key: impact. Impact is a very powerful incentive to connect across partners, to overcome the Babylon of different languages and it is also the core mechanism for outcomes contracts.”