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Introduction
Federal agencies may face new and complex challenges when building and using evidence to inform their decisions. Evidence refers to knowledge gained through systematic efforts to understand either an organization's efficiency and effectiveness or the context and communities in which it operates. An organization's Evidence Capacity is its ability to produce and use evidence to inform its work.
This spotlight series focuses on work within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and describes ACF’s efforts to extend and deepen its Evidence Capacity. The ACF Evidence Capacity Support project, led by Mathematica and partner Child Trends, helps the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation work with offices to develop evidence-building plans, conduct needs assessments, and analyze administrative data. Learn more about each spotlight in the series by clicking on it below:
Purpose
The purpose of this series is to show how ACF offices built their capacity to use evidence to answer programmatic questions. It discusses the challenges that these projects addressed and the strategies used to address them. The series may be of interest to program offices in ACF, as well as other federal agencies seeking to meet the goals set forth in the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018.
Key Findings and Highlights
Using Evidence to Engage Audiences on an Emerging Issue (PDF). OPRE in collaboration with the Office of Human Services Emergency Preparedness and Response (OHSEPR), engaged key audiences to deepen understanding of disaster displacement in disaster human services delivery. After reviewing and synthesizing research on disaster displacement and post-disaster human services, OPRE, OHSEPR, and the Evidence Capacity Support project team encouraged practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and the public to apply the evidence in their work.
Managing Complex Inputs to a Learning Agenda (PDF). OPRE collaborated with the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) to manage complex inputs for a learning agenda. The spotlight describes how the Evidence Capacity Support project team helped develop tools and processes to summarize key findings and gaps in specific portfolios of work. ACF’s refined Welfare and Family Self-Sufficiency Learning Agenda strengthens OPRE and OFA's infrastructure to plan for future research, evaluation, technical assistance, and other learning activities.
Refining Program Data to Support Learning (PDF). ACF’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), collaborating with OPRE and the Evidence Capacity Support project, assessed factors that affected the usefulness of data reported by organizations receiving Direct Services to Survivors of Torture grants. By assessing this program data, ORR worked to enhance its infrastructure for performance monitoring. Based on the assessment, ORR took initial steps to improve the usefulness of data reported by organizations receiving these grants.
Supplementing Programmatic Data to Better Understand Program Operations (PDF). ACF’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), collaborating with OPRE and the Evidence Capacity Support project, sought to understand how organizations in the Voluntary Agencies Matching Grant Program establish and use partnerships to meet the grant program’s requirements. This spotlight describes the challenges of relying solely on programmatic data to answer an agency’s learning questions and provides recommendations for federal offices facing similar issues.