How can the US federal government bring new perspectives of evidence generation and evaluation to improve programs and policy? I’m Matt St. John, Program Evaluation Specialist with Guidehouse and Evidence Act advisor to the US Department of State (DOS), and I would like to share one initiative that I am working on with my colleagues …
My name is Terell Lasane, and I am the Assistant Director, Center for Evaluation Methods and Issues (CEMI) in the Applied Research and Methods team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Language matters. And that’s particularly true when unpacking the Evidence Act. Early on in my evaluation career, I evaluated public programs for state, local, and federal entities. When I worked with these organizations, I always emphasized that fulfilling reporting requirements for accountability provided unique opportunities for program learning, and that these functions should be paired together whenever it was appropriate to do so. The actionable intelligence that could be garnered from evaluation activity is supported by the Evidence Act, and the legislation provides a valuable framework for marrying accountability with program learning and program improvement. Evaluation practitioners have long recognized the importance of this marriage for better government at all levels.
Hi! I’m Natalie Donahue. I am the Chief of Evaluation in the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ Monitoring Evaluation Learning and Innovation (MELI) Unit and am the Washington Evaluators (WE) Past President. The Evidence Act has had a great impact on federal evaluation practices. Over the past five years we’ve seen federal agencies create learning agendas, increase capacity-building efforts, update (or, in some cases, create) evaluation policies and accompanying guidance documents, and increase collaborative efforts around evaluation – both internally and with other agencies.
My name is Valerie Jean Caracelli, and I am a Senior Social Science Analyst in the Center for Evaluation Methods and Issues, Applied Research and Methods team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. As we greet the 5th year anniversary of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, it is useful to reflect on federal evaluation and its use in decision making prior to the passage of the Evidence Act. In 2013 a series of evaluation questions were introduced into a generalizable survey of federal civilian managers and supervisors to obtain their perspectives on several results-oriented management topics, including the extent of and barriers to evaluation use. The survey results indicated just over a third (37 percent) of federal managers reported that an evaluation had been completed in the past 5 years on any program, operation, or project they were involved in. GAO concluded that agencies’ lack of evaluations may be the greatest barrier to their ability to inform program management and policy making.
My name is Sana Ahmed Wilder, and I’m a program evaluator for the U.S. Small Business Administration. A five year old’s birthday is a big deal. It may be the first they’ll actually remember, a milestone celebrating increased independence, and the last one before launch into formal education; yep, I’m talking Kindergarten. So, a very happy and important 5th birthday to the Evidence Act!
My name is Nicole Germano, and I serve as the Washington Evaluators’ Communications Chair. By day, I am an evaluation contractor at the Department of State. This week, Washington Evaluators will be sharing a series of posts related to the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, in celebration of the legislation’s fifth birthday. The Foundations for …
Hi! My name is Monique Liston, Chief Strategic Officer at Ubuntu Research and Evaluation. I am a race liberation strategist and evaluator based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Vidhya Shanker here, from Rainbow Research. Previously, I explained intersectionality—despite cooptation by contemporary organizations vying for funding—as a centuries-old concept borne from subjugated knowledge and liberation struggles as valuable for situation analyses. Today, I examine intersectionality’s value in relation to certain dimensions of program theory.
Hi! I’m Jess Littman, MSc in M&E candidate at American University and Evaluation Associate at Educate!, a social enterprise which works to prepare youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy. We’re running a series of internal evaluations of our new distance learning models. These were piloted in Uganda, initially in response to COVID-19 and school closures, and are now growing into a scalable, sustainable way for thousands of youth to participate in remote skills training. The main vector for both youth participation and data collection is the mobile phone, and a major design and evaluation challenge so far has been the gender gap in mobile phone access.
Hello! Our names are Alejandro Imbach and Mine Pabari. We are independent evaluation consultants, focused on participatory, learning and utilisation evaluation. Mine is a member of the International Evaluation Academy (IEAc).
