Good on Paper Isn’t Good Enough: Designing Government Programs That Deliver Real Value for Taxpayers

Governments are increasingly squeezed from all sides. On one hand, they are expected to deliver programs that generate strong and meaningful economic outcomes. On the other, they face thinning budgets and fewer resources. At the same time, public trust has eroded over the years, partly due to programs that are costly, slow to deliver, and unaligned with real market needs.

This results in a simple but uncomfortable reality: public tolerance for failure is at an all-time low. Governments need to course-correct, and not through rhetoric or lofty announcements, but through demonstrable results that earn trust back over time.

Within this context, effective program design is not just a question of smart policy; it is about economic performance, opportunity cost, and accountability. Programs must be designed—and continuously redesigned—to work in practice, not just on paper. Above all, they must deliver clear and tangible return on investment for the taxpayers who fund them.

The Economic Cost of Poor Program Design

When programs fail to deliver—or fail to generate returns that outstrip their cost—the impact extends beyond unspent or misspent dollars. Poor design creates broader and often lasting economic drag, where every underperforming program carries a real opportunity cost.

Take for example, the case of a program aimed at creating employment opportunities for youth: from an operational perspective, time spent by employers navigating complex application processes or unclear eligibility rules is time not spent hiring or training; from a policy perspective, funding allocated to a low-impact initiative is funding not available for programs that could generate stronger economic and labour market returns.

From a delivery standpoint, excessive activity-based reporting requirements placed on delivery partners consume capacity. Instead of spending time on high-value activities like stakeholder engagement, impact analysis, or program improvement, teams are bogged down in low-value administrative work.

Viewed in isolation, these obstacles are frustrating. Viewed collectively—that is, across organizations, programs, and regions—they compound, and quickly. In an era of constrained public finances, governments must focus on the real value that programs produce in practice, not what they claim to deliver in theory.

Evaluating Execution, Not Ambition

Most publicly funded programs are grounded in legitimate and important policy goals: stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship, reducing labour-market mismatches, integrating underrepresented groups into the workforce, or expanding access to essential services. These objectives are critical for a productive economy and a cohesive, well-functioning society.

However, where many programs fall short is not ambition, but execution.

Often, programs are designed around best-case assumptions rather than real economic behaviour, market conditions, and actual organizational or technology limitations. They tend to assume strong and sustained uptake, seamless coordination across organizations and partners, effective data sharing and efficient reporting, strong and consistent internal capacity, and stable market conditions over the life of the program.

In reality, complexity accumulates, timelines stretch, markets shift, and results lag.

These are core issues that stem from a failure to design programs for reality, and a failure to continuously evaluate and adapt as conditions change. Programs that deliver real economic impact are built around how markets respond to incentives, how participants make decisions, how teams work together, and how systems operate in practice.

Designing for Real-World Outcomes and Impact

Programs that perform well tend to share several defining characteristics.

First, they are rooted in a clear and defensible economic need. The problem being addressed is tangible, visible, and measurable, not an abstract aspiration. Outcomes are explicit and linked to concrete indicators like employment growth, productivity gains, business formation, technology adoption, or IP development. Such impacts can be effectively measured and, importantly, clearly communicated back to taxpayers.

Second, effective programs are designed around real user and stakeholder behaviour, not ideal scenarios. When access is time-consuming, confusing, or administratively burdensome, uptake will fall off, regardless of funding levels or intent. In economic terms, unnecessary complexity acts like a tax on participation; it also disproportionately affects smaller businesses and individuals with fewer resources—ironically, the very groups that many programs aim to support.

Third—and critically—successful programs embed rigorous evaluation frameworks directly into delivery. Success is defined early, baselines are established, and indicators focus on outcomes, not activity.

Processing applications or allocating funds is not impact. These are activities that may contribute to outcomes, but they are not outcomes themselves. Impact is what changes

because a program exists; opportunity cost is what is forgone when resources are allocated to one intervention versus another. Demonstrating impact to taxpayers means that both of these considerations must be designed into programs from the outset.

Measuring ROI—and Trade-Offs—for Taxpayers

Governments are increasingly—and rightly—expected to demonstrate value for money. Put otherwise, taxpayers want to understand what they receive in return for each dollar invested, and what alternatives were foregone by the investment choices made.

As one public official framed it to me: “If I have one dollar, where is that dollar best spent to produce the most impact?”

Measuring return on investment does not mean applying private-sector profit logic wholesale to public programs. Public programs serve broader objectives, and “bottom line” analysis cannot and should not be applied to them. However, like private organizations need to generate returns for shareholders, public programs should deliver demonstrable and reasonable economic and societal value for taxpayers.

At a minimum, taxpayers should be able to clearly understand:

· what a program was intended to achieve

· what it was expected to cost

· what it actually delivered

· what it actually cost

· what additional benefits were generated

· what outcomes would have been foregone in its absence

· what outcomes might have been achieved through different resource allocation

This analysis is essential for prioritization, program redesign, and, where necessary, sunsetting initiatives that are not or no longer delivering enough value. Beyond that, it is fundamental to rebuilding public trust. Governments cannot spend their way to public confidence; trust must be earned through consistent, demonstrable results over time.

Performance, Accountability, and Public Trust

Public trust is shaped by outcomes, not intentions. Continued investment in programs that underdeliver, or cannot demonstrate real or sufficient impact, erodes confidence in the institutions that design and administer them.

Conversely, governments that design programs with clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and market-aligned incentives signal commitment to the broader public interest. Improving program performance also requires continued iteration and discipline;

that is, adjusting for real economic behaviour, testing and re-testing assumptions, measuring outcomes honestly, and sunsetting initiatives based on evidence.

In an environment of fiscal constraint and heightened public scrutiny, focusing on outcomes and opportunity cost is a hallmark of mature governance. Public value is not created by the number of programs launched, but by the outcomes that they produce. Good on paper is not enough; governments must design programs for real-world impacts and deliver results that taxpayers can see, feel, and benefit from.