It is still probably too early to reach any definitive conclusions about the effects of logic modelling practices on policy advice, public management, and good government in New Zealand, Australia, or anywhere else, partly because their recent association with performance-related reporting documents has triggered a bit of backlash against these methods. Despite these setbacks, various forms of logic modelling are likely to continue evolving (though probably with different names) so long as individual analysts and managers continue to find them useful. The same is likely to be true of recent good-practice developments in the same ‘cohort,’ such as managing for outcomes, systems-based evaluation, and project management. As public policy and management fashions move on to the next set of enthusiasms, now is a good time to pause and look at the core messages that underpin logic modelling and related practices: the principle that means and ends and their linking theories cannot easily be separated, and the principle of citizen-government co-production of outcomes.

This chapter has argued that logic modelling practices, combined with systems modelling, can help policy, implementation, and evaluation professionals harness these core insights and put them to use both within their own professional realms and also as a bridging device across functional realms in the public sector. Even if logic models are not the best solution to any single challenge posed by the outcomes-based approach to public policy and management, logic modelling may be worth further attention due to its distinctive capacity for crossing functional boundaries and speaking a language that unites the notoriously fragmented areas of policy, management, implementation, evaluation, and even politics. As the practice develops, it is not inconceivable that logic models may provide a common platform from which policy designers, public managers, project managers, and evaluators, as well as politicians and citizens, may begin to develop a shared understanding of government policy – what it is trying to accomplish and how – and a vision of where they fit in the overall chain of effective co-production. By this train of logic, the multi-dimensional package of principles and methods known as intervention logic or program logic deserves continued attention and development wherever governments are seeking to work across functional areas, across departments, and with citizens to convert public resources into public goods.