“There has never been greater urgency for actionable evidence to inform decision-making to serve the needs of the American people. To achieve our nation’s great promise, relying on high-quality, credible evidence must become the core of how we operate.” President Biden made this statement in a Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on 30 June 2021 titled, “Evidence-Based Policymaking: Learning Agendas and Annual Evaluation Plans”. President Biden’s memo increases the voice for all M&E professionals that work with US Government agencies.
The memo provides additional guidance and requirements to fulfill The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act). It emphasizes the need for:
- evidence generation for all government decisions
- learning agendas in all agencies
- evaluation as a critical government function (like cost control, competitive procurement, financial audits, etc.)
The memo is very encouraging for evaluators and ends off with some useful tools. It discusses (i) the requirement for federal agencies to designate Evaluation Officers, Statistical Officials, and Chief Data Officers, (ii) institutionalize data collection, analysis, and adaptive management practices, (iii) agency learning agendas and annual evaluation plans, and (iv) agency resources for evaluation.
The memo has some useful tools in its appendices, including:
- An overview of methodological approaches
- Examples of evidence-building questions
- USG definitions of different types of evaluations
Khulisa’s name has been synonymous with leading monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practice, since 1993. We provide support to governments, the donor community, NGOs, and the private sector to improve institutional monitoring capacity, which in turn improves the potential for evaluation. Capacity building is not new to Khulisa. As leaders in the field, we aim to improve program evaluations and empower M&E professionals through direct and indirect capacity building. To read more about Khulisa’s stance on why evaluators should build client capacity, read our article on M&E Capacity building.
