The Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab) at the University of Oxford, in partnership with the Policy Innovation & Evaluation Research Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and with Newcastle University Business School, will on September 5th and 6th of this year be hosting the second annual conference on outcomes-based intervention models:

Governments and international donor agencies around the world have become increasingly focused on outcomes – the positive results that programmes produce in the lives of service users and citizens – rather than the volume or quality of activity. This ‘outcomes-based’ model encompasses a range of approaches. The conference will focus on models that encourage collaboration across sectors, such as outcomes-based commissioning, social impact bonds, outcomes funds, and place-based approaches.

We are interested in exploring how well these approaches work in practice. We want to strengthen the understanding of when and how this focus on outcomes can be effective for delivering public services, and whether it can be more effective than other options. We aim to ensure that this emerging knowledge is used to equip government policy-makers with more and better tools to tackle complex social issues.

In keeping with the 2018 conference, we will once again bring together the most distinguished academic and practitioner voices from different countries and disciplines for an in-depth exploration of the practice and evidence base around the implementation of outcomes-based models of public service provision from across the world. The conference will be of interest to academics, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers and will include contributions from international experts and interactive group sessions alongside more traditional academic paper presentations.

The keynote speaker will be Professor Stefan Dercon, and there are a number of other distinguished experts and practitioners featured in the (incomplete, nonetheless packed, but as yet still provisional) schedule; however, we can inform you that PSTA stalwarts Benjamin Taylor and Robert Pollack are among them.

The participation fee is £200 (2-day full fee), £100 (1-day full fee) or £50 (student fee), and includes lunch on both days as well as a conference dinner in Oxford on the evening of 05th September; you can book your places now, via the University of Oxford online store. The GO Lab is also offering a limited number of free places for UK public sector commissioners; if you are a public sector commissioner working in the UK and would like to attend the conference, drop them a line at golab@bsg.ox.ac.uk. Further details and logistical information can be acquired at the GO Lab webpage announcing the conference.