OMB has announced it will continue a program evaluation initiative it funded during the fiscal 2011 budget process at $100 million in order to support rigorous program evaluations and proposals to increase the capacity to carry out program evaluations across the federal government for fiscal 2012.
As part of the fiscal 2012 budget process OMB said it would allocate a limited amount of funding for agencies that voluntarily show how their fiscal 2012 funding priorities are evidence-based or otherwise subject to rigorous evaluation, provide OMB with an evaluation plan and assess agency capacity to support evaluation, and suggest pathways for strengthening that capacity, among other criteria.
To provide an incentive to agencies to evaluate their programs, the evaluation initiative funds will be added to agency top lines at the end of the budget process, according to OMB memo M-10-32.
It said agencies should identify their major budgetary priorities and assess the adequacy of evidence supporting those priorities, and for any new initiative or significant expansion of an existing program, agencies should:
Provide credible evidence of the effectiveness of the program or specific subset of the program for which fiscal 2012 funding is sought, including prior evaluations and/or describe how the agency plans to demonstrate or validate impact, or otherwise learn from the initiative, and how the agency plans to act on the new information – or otherwise explain why these approaches are not appropriate.
