evidence

The recently released, highly touted Federal Data Strategy Action Plan turns out to be a key building block for the newly-released implementation guidance for the Evidence Act. That the Federal Data Strategy is but a single (albeit important) building block within this guidance shows how the Office of Management and Budget is sending a message to agencies that it is out to fundamentally change how the government will operate in the future.

A recent Government Executive article by Ed O’Brien, an associate professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, observes that “people assume they can and will use more information to make their decisions than they actually do, according to the research.”

OMB’s guidance to agencies on the development of their FY 2015 budgets promises that “OMB will issue a separate memo at a later date that encourages the increased use of evidence and evaluation, including rigorous testing of innovative strategies to build new knowledge of what works.” This encouragement comes on top of a foundation already under development in many agencies. 

In meeting varied missions, government executives confront significant challenges. Responding properly to them must be guided and informed by the harsh fiscal and budgetary realities of the day. It can no longer be simply a wishful platitude that government do more with less. Leaders need to change the way government does business to make smarter use of increasingly limited resources—leveraging technology and innovation to be more efficient, effective, anticipatory, adaptive, and evidence-based in delivering missions and securing the public trust.

This is the third blog post in a series that sums up highlights of sessions held as part of the annual meeting in mid-November of the National Academy of Pubic Administration. The moderator for this session was Jon Baron, President, Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy. Panelists Grover J. “Russ”Whitehurst, Director, Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings Institution; Former Director, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education Naomi Goldstein, Director, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S.

Using “lightening round” presentations, nearly a dozen presenters shared their stories. Andy Feldman from the Department of Education, who coordinated the event, noted that the goal wasn’t innovation for innovation’s sake, but rather to use innovation as a tool to tackle mission-related performance challenges: “We’re here to focus innovation on our agencies’ biggest challenges and opportunities.” Delegated Deputy Secretary of Education John King also welcomed attendees, urging them to put ideas into action.

Over the past decade, the federal government has systematically increased the use of evidence-based, data-driven approaches in decision making, sometimes called “Moneyball for Government.” These efforts embrace traditional fields such as program evaluation, but now include the use of open data, business analytics, and social and behavioral sciences for describing problems, predicting needs, and testing new approaches.