OMB will provide funding for program evaluations

The Office of Management and Budget is providing funding to federal agencies that are willing to conduct voluntary, high-priority evaluations of their key programs.

In a governmentwide July 29 memo, Peter R. Orszag, OMB's former director, said funds would be available to agencies that demonstrate their fiscal 2012 budget priorities are based on credible evidence and subject to a rigorous evaluation. OMB will be looking for evaluations that emphasize effective strategies, interventions and activities within programs, Orszag said.

OMB also would allocate funding to conduct new evaluations of program effectiveness that could begin in fiscal 2012, the memo said. Agencies should provide details about the questions their studies would address; their research methodology; any past analyses and how the review could shape future policy decisions.

The total amount of available funding has not been determined yet, according to an OMB spokeswoman.

"Running rigorous evaluations takes money, but investments in rigorous evaluations are a drop in the bucket relative to the dollars at risk of being poorly spent when we fail to learn what works and what doesn't," OMB Acting Director Jeffrey Zients wrote in a Monday blog post.

The initiative continues an effort that began last year. As part of the fiscal 2011 budget process, OMB allocated roughly $100 million to support 35 program evaluations and capacity-building proposals across the government.

The July 29 memo noted many important programs have not been formally evaluated, while examinations that have been conducted rarely shape budget priorities or agency management practices.

"Many agencies lack an office of evaluation with the stature and staffing to support an ambitious, strategic, objective and relevant research agenda," Orszag wrote in the memo. "As a consequence, some programs have persisted year after year without adequate evidence that they work. In some cases, evaluation dollars have flowed into studies of insufficient rigor or policy significance."

The memo encouraged programs to develop multiple approaches to the same problem to determine the most cost-effective or efficient method. Agencies also should describe their staffing and available budgets for conducting program evaluations and identify any impediments in their authorizing or appropriations statutes that could limit their ability to carry out the reviews.

Most activities related to procurement, construction and national defense will not be eligible for the funding and evaluations inspectors general conduct, and drug and clinical medical trials are excluded.

"The fact that we have rarely evaluated multiple approaches to the same problem makes it difficult to be confident that taxpayers' dollars are being spent effectively and efficiently," Zients wrote on the OMB Blog. "Finding out if a program works is common sense and the basis upon which we can decide which programs should continue and which need to be fixed or terminated. This guidance will help us do just that."

Agencies that want to be considered for additional funding should provide their submissions to OMB via a template form included in the memo by Sept. 27.