Policy Watch: Spring Updates from the White House 

Building a Culture of Evidence through the President's Budget Request, a New Engagement Framework, and Grant Guidance

By: Katie O’Toole, Consultant for Evaluation Policy Task Force

The Biden Administration released its President's Budget Request, kicking off the federal appropriations cycle, and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a request for information on a new public engagement framework as well as finalized revisions to federal grants guidance.

FY 2025 President's Budget Request 

On March 11, 2024, the White House released the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 President’s Budget Request. The Budget Request outlines the Administration’s policy priorities and serves as the official start for the FY 2025 budget cycle.

The FY 2025 Budget Request emphasizes evidence-informed policymaking through investments in implementation of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, including explicit investments in evaluation capacity. The President’s Budget also makes critical investments in the data infrastructure needed to execute priority evidence-building activities.

Notable investments in the FY 2025 Budget Request include:

• Hiring qualified evaluation staff in targeted agencies, including funding for 2 additional FTEs in the Treasury Department’s Office of Strategy, an increase of $1 million at the Department of Interior (DOI) to bring on evaluation staff, and hiring an Evidence Lead at the Department of Justice to support the Evaluation Officer;
• Investing in agencies’ evaluation functions, including a new independent program evaluation fund at DOI, increased support for longstanding evaluation offices at the Department of Education (USED) and the Department of Labor (DOL), as well as for the General Services Administration to provide evaluation support to agency partners;
• Evaluation set-asides and funding flexibility, such as continued support for the pooling of 0.5% of set aside funds for most Higher Education Act programs at USED and 0.75% of appropriations at DOL for evaluation set-asides, as well as a request for funding flexibility for DOL and the Department of Health and Human Services to support strategic, long-term, and flexible evaluation planning.
• Support for executing Learning Agendas, including through support for the National Science Foundation’s Analytics for Equity Initiative, which funds researchers to produce rigorous empirical research and actionable recommendations in equity-related topics aligned to agency Learning Agendas.

The investments in the FY 2025 Budget Request build upon progress demonstrated over previous years. The Budget Request’s Analytical Perspective Chapter Building and Using Evidence to Improve Government Effectiveness details efforts to enhance program evaluation functions within federal activities and attests to the value of investments in evidence-building activities. However, there are still opportunities to bolster the use of program evaluation in federal management and programmatic decision-making – including by elevating effective engagement, cultural competence, and the role of evaluation to build a culture of learning.

Informing a New Public Engagement Framework

On March 20, 2024, OMB published a request for information to inform the development of a government-wide framework to advance public participation and community engagement that supports federal decision-making. Among other functions, OMB intends for the framework to broaden participation in federal outreach, embed public participation and community engagement across government functions, and ensure government is inclusive, transparent, accountable, and responsive.

AEA’s Evaluation Roadmap for a More Effective Government, Statement on Cultural Competence, and Evaluator Competencies provide valuable resources to support this framework, providing insight into building culturally responsive evaluation and evaluative thinking across government agencies. Beyond existing AEA public resources, AEA’s diverse membership can contribute valuable expertise to support more inclusive, meaningful engagement mechanisms. The deadline to submit feedback to OMB is May 17. Additional listening and public feedback sessions will be planned in the future before the deadline.

Revisions to Federal Grants Guidance

On April 4, 2024, OMB published final revisions to its Guidance for Grants and Agreements, which provides guidance for grants management and implementation to all federal agencies. The update aims to simplify compliance and includes provisions to support states and localities in strengthening data and evaluation capacity. OMB also published reference guides to support implementation, including a guide dedicated to evaluation activities.

Key revisions include modifications of the language around allowable costs for data and evaluation, as well as increased focus on importance of data and evaluation in program development and implementation. In December 2023, AEA joined a coalition of organizations applauding OMB’s proposed updates and encouraging more robust use of data, evaluation, and evidence across the federal grantmaking ecosystem. Those updates were included in the final updates from OMB.

Summer Evaluation Institute 

Register by May 27 to save!

The Summer Evaluation Institute offers professional development workshops for evaluators, applied researchers, grantmakers, foundation program officers, nonprofit administrators, and social science students. We are offering half-day workshops with interactive classroom training, plus a pre-event day of additional programming.

Workshop topics include:

• Creating data dashboards
• 6 steps for building your own workshop or course
• Evaluative thinking
• The Eval Matrix©
• Logic models
• AI-enabled Evaluation Basics

Learn More 

Student Case Competition

AEA hosted its U.S. Student Evaluation Case Competition virtually on Saturday, April 13. Out of the total 15 teams, 12 teams actively participated in the competition. Currently, the judges are reviewing the submissions that were received. A virtual post-competition celebration has been scheduled for Thursday, April 25. The winning team and runner-up will be announced in June, and the winning team recognized at Evaluation 2024.

2023 AEA Awards Recipients

In 2023, AEA reintroduced our awards program and presented these distinguished honors at Evaluation 2023. For the next few issues of the newsletter, AEA will spotlight the recipients of last year’s awards. This month we spotlight the Alva and Gunner Myrdal Practice Award winner, Robin Lin Miller, PhD!

Robin Lin Miller, PhD is a Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University, where she directs the doctoral training program in ecological-community psychology and is associate director and co-founder of the master’s degree and certificate in program evaluation. Her evaluation career reflects a 36-year commitment to the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ populations and others at high risk of HIV infection. She began her career as an evaluation specialist for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) in the earliest years of the HIV epidemic and established its first organization-wide Department of Evaluation. Dr. Miller has evaluated diverse community-designed and led programs in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean for adolescents, Black gay and bisexual men, ex-offenders, bisexual girls, transgender women, and male sex workers, including structural and human rights interventions to promote access to HIV prevention and care and reduce structural stigma. She has also performed policy-related work on conversion therapy, serving as the lead evaluation scientist on the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Therapeutic Approaches to Sexual Orientation Distress. The latter report is heavily cited in passed and pending legislation banning conversion therapy practices on minors in multiple U. S. states. She is well-published, having authored more than 100 academic publications, in addition to non-academic evaluation products and reports. Dr. Miller has been a member of the American Evaluation Association since 1992 and played multiple leadership roles in the Association, including serving as Editor of the American Journal of Evaluation. She is a 2022 recipient of the Exemplary Project W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and Engagement Scholarship Consortium.

“I have long believed in the need for a global evaluation agenda that is relevant and responsive to communities most affected by HIV, and which prioritizes studying community-led initiatives using inquiry practices that meaningfully engage communities from start to finish. The importance of generating local practice-based knowledge under the fraught circumstances in which so many of my colleagues operate, especially those working in settings that criminalize same-sex sexual relationships, is imperative to our ultimate success in ending the HIV epidemic and addressing the stigma that drives it. I am grateful for this award because it recognizes the challenges and ethical imperatives of the engaged and inclusive approaches to evaluation that I so deeply believe in.”  

Visit the AEA website to learn more about these exemplars in our field. Learn more.

Journal Spotlight 

New Directions for Evaluation (NDE): Join Us for a New Directions for Evaluation (NDE) Listening Session!

The New Directions for Evaluation (NDE) editorial team invites all AEA members to join us in a listening session about expanding access, inclusion, and engagement in NDE.

Join us for a 90-minute conversation exploring the questions:

• What supports and hinders engagement with NDE?
• How can evaluation journals improve access, inclusion, and implementation to best serve the evaluation field?
• What topics would you like to read about in NDE?

Our goal is to use what we learn at the session to explore ways to better support AEA members, NDE readers, and prospective authors.

We will hold two sessions (both exploring the same topics). Registration required.

• June 6, 2024: 11:00 am Eastern Time. Register here.
• June 13, 2024: 6:00 pm Eastern Time. Register here.

Contact NDE Co-Editor-in-Chief, Sarah Mason with any questions.

AEA Publishing Corner

Share your accomplishments with AEA! We are excited to introduce the AEA Publishing Corner, which will spotlight work published by our members. If you have a recent publication or professional accomplishment you would like to share, please submit it here.

Congratulations to Veronica Thomas and Patricia B. Campbell for the publication of their most recent book, Evaluation in Today’s World: Respecting Diversity, Improving Quality, and Promoting Usability published by SAGE.