The Obama Administration has repeatedly used the annual budget formulation process to establish new directions and policy direction for Federal government evaluations and evaluation offices. This presentation will discuss the suite of evaluation proposals offered in the FY 2016 Budget, including items for specific Federal agencies and initiatives intended to broadly apply to Federal evaluations. Specific areas to be discussed will include funding availability, funding flexibility, and information collection requests. The discussion will focus on challenges the proposals seek to address for the evaluation community, provide context for the Administration’s evaluation vision moving forward, and highlight policies the Budget does not address.

1. 1
Looking Forward to the Future
of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
April 28, 2015
Eastern Evaluation Research Society
“Let’s Get Real: Evaluation Challenges and Solutions”
38th Annual EERS Conference in Galloway, NJ
Nicholas Hart
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

2. Challenges in Federal Evaluation
• Encouraging production and use (supply/demand)
– Building and maintaining support from agency leaders
– Providing evaluations in a timely manner for decisions
– Facilitating access to data the government already collects
(and ensuring quality)
• Identifying appropriate level of flexibility for initiatives
given mixed capacity across Federal agencies
• Engaging stakeholders within agencies, Congress, and
the public
• Linking existing efforts, especially performance
measurement mandates with evaluation efforts
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart

3. Administration Proposals for FY 2016
1. Funding
– New fund requests
– New set-aside requests
– Contract flexibility
2. Rapid Evaluation
– Behavioral Insights
– Improving Data Access
3. Use
– Program Scaling
– “Tiered Evidence” for Grants
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart

4. Funding Proposals
• Sample of new evaluation funding requests:
– Double funding for early education and childhood evaluation
– Triples funding for Ed’s First in the World Fund (+$200m)
– Create American Technical Training Fund to evaluate job-
training models (+$200m)
– New Child Support Research Fund (+$1b/10 years)
– First time proposals for energy assistance evaluation and
innovation funding (+$200m)
– Early intervention demonstration projects for the Social
Security Disability Insurance program (+$400m)
– MCC economic development approaches (+$350m)
– PEPFAR Impact Fund for AIDS data collection and program
evaluation (+$300m)
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart

5. Funding Proposals
• Set-aside authority:
– Funding set-aside requests for select Education, HHS,
and Labor programs
• Funding Flexibility
– Increase funding flexibility for evaluation and survey
contracts.
– Would apply to HHS (ASPE, ACF), DOL (eval, BLS), DOJ
(NIJ, BJS), Commerce (Census), and HUD (OPDR).
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart

6. Rapid Evaluation Proposals
• Behavioral Insights
– Team focused on assessing behaviorally-informed
interventions using low-cost RCTs
• Access to Administrative Data
– Expanding access
– Invest in infrastructure
– Plan for future improvements
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart

7. Evaluation Use
• Program Scaling
– DOL re-employment services
– HUD’s Jobs-Plus program
– Apprenticeships
• “Tiered Evidence” approaches
– ED’s Investing in Innovation Fund (i3)
– USAID’s Global Development Lab
– Social Innovation Fund (SIF)
– ED’s Leveraging What Works grants
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart

8. What’s not included
• Framework for integration of evaluation
activities with performance measurement or
strategic planning efforts
• Evaluation directives or mandates
• Baseline capacity survey or analysis
• Uniform approaches
• Explicit methodological preferences
• PRA modifications
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart

9. Thank you.
Nicholas Hart
nhart@omb.eop.gov
www.whitehouse.gov/omb
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Looking Forward to the Future of Federal Evaluation Efforts:
Addressing Identified Challenges
Hart