Events
Evaluation and Evidence Training Series
This training series is a continuing partnership between the Office of Management and Budget’s Evidence Team (OMB) and OES. All trainings will be held via webinar on Zoom for Government. These workshops are for Federal Executive Branch employees only. Register online for upcoming workshops and see resources from past workshops at the MAX.gov site. A PDF of the FY2021 training schedule is available here.
Upcoming Federal Workshops
Using Evidence to Inform Agency Priorities (Hosted by OMB Evidence Team)
Highlight ways that agencies can use evidence to inform agency priorities, both mission and operational.
- January 27, 2021 from 3:00 to 4:30 pm
Building Logic Models for Evaluation
Hands-on practice in developing and using a logic model to inform evaluation activities.
- February 18, 2021 from 3:00 to 5:00 pm
Evidence Act – Lessons from the First Two Years of Implementation
Discuss agencies’ experiences and lessons learned from the first two years of implementation of the Evidence Act.
- March 10, 2021 from 3:00 to 4:30 pm
Past Federal Workshops
Introduction to Quasi-Experimental Designs
Introduction to impact evaluation designs, other than randomized controlled trials, to understand program impacts.
- December 8, 2020 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Understanding Null Results
Discuss and dispel misconceptions about evaluations that show no evidence of impact or provide evidence of no impact, and highlight uses for null results.
- November 2, 2020 from 3:00 to 4:15 pm
How to Conduct Randomized Controlled Trials
This session helped participants learn how to conduct randomized controlled trials, and addressed common challenges and misconceptions.
- August 17, 2020 (virtual).
Evaluation 101
In partnership with the Office of Management and Budget’s Evidence Team, OES offered Evaluation 101, an introduction to evaluation for Federal staff. This workshop, conducted three times, served as an introduction to evaluation as a method to answer important questions, including what evaluation is, what questions it can and cannot answer, and how it can help agencies better understand their programs, policies, and operations.
- January 23, 2020
- April 8, 2020
- July 30, 2020
- October 5, 2020
- January 19, 2021
Creative Uses of Administrative Data
OES hosted a virtual session on creative uses of administrative data. This session highlighted creative and innovative ways that agencies have used administrative data to conduct evaluations and build evidence.
- June 15, 2020 (virtual)
Evidence Act Toolkits: A Guide to Learning Agendas and Annual Evaluation Plans
OES staff shared a summary of the motivation for toolkits to assist agencies in building Learning Agendas and Annual Evaluation Plans, as well as highlighted specific tools and resources developed. For more information on the toolkits, please visit oes.gsa.gov/toolkits.
- February 24, 2020 at GSA
Exploring Ways to Identify Resources and Opportunities to Support Evaluation Activities
OES and the Office of Management and Budget’s Evidence Team co-hosted a workshop on identifying the resources needed to support evaluation activities. Agency partners shared ways that agencies have identified new or leveraged existing resources to support evaluation and build capacity in resource‐limited environments.
- February 19, 2020 at GSA
Past OES Events
What is the impact of applying behavioral insights in government?
Discussion of positive findings from a recent large-scale review
Join OES in a discussion of the impact of behavioral insights in government. UC Berkeley’s Elizabeth Linos will present their findings from a massive review of behavioral interventions in federal and local government. Members of the Office of Evaluation Sciences and the Behavioral Insights Team, along with federal experts, will share reactions and offer thoughts on next steps.
The recent paper “RCTs to Scale: Comprehensive Evidence from Two Nudge Units” analyzes how effective behaviorally informed interventions were in 126 trials across many policy areas and involving 24 million people. The researchers found an overall effect of these interventions to be statistically significant and positive at 1.4 percentage points, which translates to a relative increase of 8.1% on priority program and policy outcomes. Notably, 87% of the OES interventions analyzed were of no marginal cost or low cost, suggesting that applying behavioral insights can be very cost effective.
In addition to discussing the findings in detail, the conversation will underline the value of sharing all results — positive, negative and null — so that we are able to get a clearer and more accurate picture of impacts, and offer guidance to help us design better interventions and evaluations in the future and help give a more realistic picture of possible impacts and outcomes.
- Friday, December 18 from 12:00-1:00PM EST via Zoom.
Audience: Federal employees, academics, interested public [No press]
Using Evidence: Learning from Low-Cost Federal Evidence Building Activities
The U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES) and numerous agency collaborators presented on how the federal government uses low-cost evaluations, unexpected results, and administrative data to inform policy and program decisions. OES staff, collaborators from multiple agencies, and distinguished academic partners presented new results and lessons learned from over 10 OES evaluations in three sessions: Learning from Low-Cost Evaluations, Learning from Unexpected Results, and Learning from Administrative Data. All sessions included information and examples relevant to meeting the requirements of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act)
- October 30, 2019 at GSA