Existing budget processes reinforce the status quo. Policymakers interested in using evidence to inform their budget decisions face two main challenges. It typically focuses attention on incremental changes to existing spending, such as increasing or decreasing funding for all agencies by 2 percent, while the impact of the programs administered by these agencies receives little scrutiny. The traditional budget process often frustrates policymakers. The challenges to creating a better budget process Embed evidence requirements into agency contracts and grants to ensure that research guides program activities.Require agencies to justify requests for new funding with rigorous research on program effectiveness.Create a comprehensive inventory of funded programs and assess the evidence of each intervention’s effectiveness.This issue brief, part of a series on evidence-based policymaking, highlights three key steps that governments can take to more effectively use data to inform the critical budget decisions they make each year: A better method, which some governments are beginning to implement, incorporates this information into an evidence-based approach to budgeting. Despite increased data on “what works,” many governments continue to allocate their resources based on anecdotes and inertia, funding the same programs year after year with limited knowledge of the outcomes they achieve. The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the availability of research that has rigorously tested the effectiveness of many social programs. Nonetheless, the importance of using taxpayer resources wisely has never been greater, particularly given the ongoing budget stresses facing many state and local governments. While efforts such as performance-based and zero-based budgeting have been helpful, these initiatives have often had only a limited impact on the way funding decisions have been made. Overviewįor many years, policymakers and citizens have expressed concerns about the effectiveness of public programs. The other components are program assessment, implementation oversight, outcome monitoring, and targeted evaluation. Editor's note: This brief is one in a series about the five key components of evidence-based policymaking as identified in “ Evidence-Based Policymaking: A Guide for Effective Government,” a 2014 report by the Pew-MacArthur Results First Initiative.
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