135 | It’s the Evidence, Stupid: GAO’s Report on Evidence-Based Policymaking and What Comes Next

This episode features audio from an in-person roundtable discussion at the 2024 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fall Research Conference. The roundtable focused on the five-year anniversary of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (Evidence Act) and a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on federal agencies' ability to assess their capacity to collect and use evidence. The panelists also discussed what needs to happen next to further strengthen the use of evidence in the federal government. The roundtable featured remarks from Erika Rissi, Nick Hart, Melinda Buntin, Rachel Snyderman, and Paul Decker. Rissi is the chief evaluation officer of the National Science Foundation, where she is also the Head of its Evaluation and Assessment Capability Section. Hart is the president and CEO of the Data Foundation. Buntin is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Carey Business School. Snyderman is the managing director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Program. Decker is the president and chief executive officer of Mathematica. You can also read a short blog by Decker summarizing key themes from the roundtable here: https://mathematica.org/blogs/advancing-and-enhancing-evidence-based-policymaking Listen to a past episode of On the Evidence featuring a discussion about the five-year anniversary of the Evidence Act with experts from government, think tanks, research organizations, and academia: https://mathematica.org/blogs/building-on-the-evidence-act-to-increase-the-positive-impact-of-federal-policymaking Listen to a past episode of On the Evidence featuring Robert Shea, an expert on performance improvement in government who served on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, a group whose recommendations informed the Evidence Act: https://mathematica.org/blogs/robert-shea-on-the-federal-governments-progress-in-using-evidence-to-improve-programs-and-policies