While OMB will have the central coordinating implementation of the recently enacted Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, it will be up to individual agencies to make it “more than just another set of requirements,” says a summary of a recent panel discussion on the law at the National Academy of Public Administration.
“If OMB and Congress truly want to institutionalize an evidence-driven culture, efforts will be needed to connect evidence and data to the management of actual programs, including at the state and local levels,” it says.
Among other provisions, the law requires agencies to build a capacity for building evidence and the use of data for key policy-making decisions and opening more data to the public in an accessible format while strengthening privacy and confidentiality protections.
OMB’s responsibilities will include creating a cross-agency chief data officers council to share best practices and to “connect people within and across agencies and ensure the agencies frame research and evaluation questions that matter,” it says. Steps could include, for example, using the Federal Data Strategy “to help meaningfully bridge institutional silos” and having OMB budget examiners help drive implementation.
However, individual agencies will have to “define what they want to know and where the data is located that can answer these questions. The annual agency strategic objectives reviews could be one locus for identifying questions, but some of the questions will reach across agency boundaries and will need a cross-agency advocate to raise and answer them.”
Agency priorities could include “developing evidence-building plans/learning agendas that encompass the major questions agencies need to answer about how to deliver on their missions; applying that learning agenda to identify and commission the research needed to fill evidence gaps and deepen the knowledge base for its efforts; and applying the growing body of evidence to continuously improve results,” it said.
