The OMB Evidence Team on Evidence-Based Policymaking and Federal Evaluation

[Diana Epstein]

The Evidence Act and our other efforts around evidence-based policy making, it is culture change in many respects and that is hard in a big organization in the federal government, but having an Evaluation Officer at each agency does really clearly signal we care about this, we think evaluation is important, and it's an activity that needs to happen.

[Rick Stoddard]

I’m Rick Stoddard from Mathematica, sitting in for J.B. Wogan, and welcome back to On the Evidence.

This episode is another in an occasional series on the show that we call Evidence in Government, where we talk about what’s happening in the halls of government and the role evidence can or should play in decisions that could improve people's lives.

My colleague Mike Burns leads these episodes, and he is Senior Director of Communications and Public Affairs here at Mathematica.

Our guests for this episode are Diana Epstein, Erica Zielewski, and Danielle Berman, three of the four leaders at the Office of Management and Budget’s Evidence Team, a group whose stated goal is to improve integration of evidence and evaluation in budget, management, operational, and policy decisions.

Mike spoke with our guests about how their team embraces the successes and addresses the challenges of the Evidence Act, what roles they play in interagency collaboration, and the process and progress of encouraging culture change around evidence-based decision-making in the federal government.

As mentioned, Diana, Erica, and Danielle are three of four members of OMB’s Evidence Team leadership. The fourth, Erika Liliedahl, was not able to join us for this conversation, but our guests wanted to ensure her integral role in their work was acknowledged.

We hope you enjoy this conversation.

[Mike Burns]

Diana, Erica, Danielle, thank you so much for joining me today. Just right off the bat, could you tell us a little bit about what your team does and the kinds of support you provide for agencies in their work building evidence capacity?

[Erica Zielewski]

Yes, thanks. That's a great question. So, what don't we do? When people ask me what my job is, I tell them that I kind of do anything and everything to help make sure that government uses the best possible evidence to make decisions. So broadly I think our team works in kind of four interrelated but distinct areas. The first is we really work to increase agency capacity to build and use evidence in decision making. We also work to expand external support for the federal evaluation community. We have a whole body of work focused on increasing demand for evidence and its use. We recognize that this can't just be the supply side, we have to work on the demand side as well, and then finally, we know that we're in a really unique position at OMB, and so we leverage that to enable cross governmental evidence and evaluation initiatives. So internally what that looks like is we serve as kind of subject matter experts and program evaluation within OMB and within the Executive Office of the President, from helping our political leadership understand the state of evidence on a particular issue or topic, to infusing other priorities like the equity work or the customer experience work with evidence to doing speaking engagements, we really cover a lot of ground and I'm sure as many other folks say, no two days really are ever the same. Externally, so kind of outside of OMB and EOP, at a cross governmental level, we offer workshops and trainings to staff across the federal government and we also run an internal to government website where we have a ton of resources and tools and things to help the workforce get their work done. And then at an agency level, each of us has a handful of agencies that we work really closely with and kind of do whatever we need to to help them with their highest priority needs. So for some agencies, that can be serving as a subject matter expert on a panel when they're interviewing job candidates, for others it may be helping them to connect with other evaluation staff in a different agency on a shared topic or project. In most cases it really means that we're in regular touch and communication with our Evaluation Officers so we know what their needs are and how we can help. We have limited bandwidth but we try, as much as we can, to help connect these folks to other experts in other agencies who can provide their help. So, from my perspective, I really see myself as a facilitator and I structure my portfolio and I think my colleagues would agree, to help agencies get good work done.

[Mike Burns]

Well, it certainly sounds like you have your hands full, Erica. Could you tell me a little bit about how you found your way to the OMB evidence team?

[Diana Epstein]

Sure, so I'll go ahead and get us started. So after grad school I started my career as an evaluation contractor, so working on studies at both the federal and state level, eventually made my way to an evaluation office at a small government agency, the Corporation for National and Community Service. That's the agency that administers AmeriCorps, among other programs. And while I was there, I came to OMB on a part-time detail, working on a special project related to evaluation technical assistance. And honestly, I found the work so engaging and exciting that I ended up staying and I've been here ever since. It's been about seven years now and it's been just really an amazing part of my career journey to be here.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you, Diana. So –

[Diana Epstein]

Oh, I think Erica and Danielle –

[Mike Burns]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Erica Zielewski]

Yeah, I was just going to say, I think you're going to hear a little bit of a repeat, I mean I also started working for an evaluation contractor, doing work for federal clients, but also doing work for nonprofits and philanthropy and found myself, through the Presidential Management Fellows Program, which is a fantastic program, in the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, in the Administration for Children and Families in HHS, which is ACF's research and evaluation office. While I was there I did a lot of really interesting projects but I kept coming back to these government wide solutions and so when a posting opened up for the Evidence Team, I was really excited to come to OMB and really think how I could do work that would advance the federal evaluation enterprise. I also at the same time did a detail with the Chief Statistician's Office in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in OMB, focused on the Paperwork Reduction Act and streamlining processes for information collection requests.

[Danielle Berman]

And I can jump in and share my origin story as well. I started out at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, working on research and evaluation there for the range of nutrition assistance programs that they administer. And I also did a brief stint on a rotation at the office that Erica just mentioned at OPRE. And what I saw was that while this work is fascinating and critically important, no matter where I was, we were running into similar challenges to get the work done and to do it effectively, so when I saw this opportunity with the OMB Evidence Team, I thought that is a great place to go to try to address some of these shared challenges and make the work better across the board.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you, Danielle and Erica. So speaking of the work, I am quite familiar with evaluation.gov, but our listeners might not be. Could you tell us a little bit about evaluation.gov and how folks, whether they're in government or they have equities in government's use of data and evidence, use that site as a resource.

[Danielle Berman]

Sure, happy to. So evaluation.gov provides this great one-stop shop where folks can easily find all of the different products and the people involved in this work of implementing the Evidence Act and building evidence for policy making, so if people wanted to find agency learning agendas, their annual evaluation plans, their evaluation policies, any of that, that's all there, easy to find right at their fingertips. We also have all of our memos and various resources there that we can talk more about, and you can find out who the Evaluation Officers are at the major agencies across the government. But probably the coolest thing about the evaluation.gov webpage is the learning agenda questions dashboard, which is this great Tableau dashboard that you can filter and you can search to go through all of the learning agenda questions across the government, even questions from these cross-government learning agendas that have been developed, to find out what evidence agencies are looking for, what questions they're asking. And you can find the ones that align with your area of interest or expertise. And I should also put in a plug while I have, while we're talking about this, that if you want to stay up to date on new content and features that are, that we're working on for the website, there's a newsletter that folks can subscribe to and they can also follow us on LinkedIn.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you, Danielle. Sign me up. You mentioned the Evidence Act and implementation of the legislation. I want to circle back to that, because I know you all play a lead role, if not the lead role, in helping with implementation. But I know you also play a leading role in interagency collaboration as part of OMB. Are there specific interagency efforts or groups that your team is involved with?

[Diana Epstein]

Sure, maybe I could start by talking about the Evaluation Officer Council, and that's an interagency group that's composed of the Evaluation Officers from the 24 CFO Act agencies, or the 24 largest agencies, and then their deputies or plus ones. Our team chairs that council, we meet every month, and it's a forum for peer learning among the evaluation officers and for them to have a regular venue to exchange information with us at OMB as well. I think this council has played a particularly important role in building a community of folks for this function, the Evaluation Officer, that largely didn't exist before the Evidence Act. It's allowed them to have a peer group to strategize with, to work through challenges and to share successes. We can talk more about this later perhaps, but the history and maturity of evaluation varies widely among federal agencies. Some have had really strong evaluation work happening for years, for others it's totally new. This has been a challenge for the council as well, since we do have such widely varying experiences, but it's also been this tremendous opportunity for council members to learn from each other. I think it's had, it's made a difference to have a person who is elevated to this role of evaluation officer to signal that this is a function and a set of activities that we care about and this council is one way to bring them together. Danielle and Erica?

[Erica Zielewski]

This is a great question and I think we appreciate the kind of unique position we have at OMB to really kind of play a role in these interagency efforts. Something I'm really excited to talk about is that, starting last year, I had the opportunity to co-chair, get ready for some government word stuff, the Subcommittee for Equitable Data’s Subcommittee on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Sex Characteristics, or SOGI data, which was charged with developing the federal evidence agenda on LGBTQI+ equity and supporting agencies to develop SOGI data action plans. So in June of 2022, Executive Order 14075 on advancing equity for LGBTQI+ Americans placed an emphasis on evidence as kind of a key facilitator and driver for advancing equity for and improving the lives of this population. So, the working group that I co-led had over 40 SMEs from across government, including many with lived experience and we were really charged with implementing some of those key initiatives in this data and evidence space, so earlier this year, in January, we released the federal evidence agenda on LGBTQI+ equity, which was the first time that the federal government articulated a roadmap for federal agencies to build evidence to better serve LGBTQI+ people in areas like healthcare, education, employment, housing, criminal justice, and through their SOGI data action plans, agencies are now really doing the hard work to undertake those activities to build evidence towards those priorities. Tying back to what Danielle said earlier, these questions are also posted on evaluation.gov in the learning agenda dashboard, so people can go and check out and see kind of what questions we as a federal government have to advance equity for LGBTQI+ people. And I think what's so exciting about this effort beyond the actual work that we did which is obviously very exciting, is that it demonstrated how this kind of learning agenda, development process and framework, and this kind of concept of a learning agenda can be used in other ways. And it think it really demonstrates kind of the multiplying affects we've seen from the Evidence Act across government.

[Danielle Berman]

And I can share one additional example. Just to talk about briefly one interagency project that I'm involved with that is also a really great opportunity. So we are working on a national evaluation of a subset of the American Rescue Plan Act programs. And so the American Rescue Plan, was this major once in a generation infusion of funds to help ensure an equitable recovery from the pandemic and so this national evaluation has been launched to build evidence on the effectiveness of these programs, especially with that goal of advancing equity as they are implemented. So it's this multifaceted project, we're leading it in partnership with the Office of Evaluation Sciences at GSA, through a contract, and we're also tapping the expertise of leading evaluators from a number of federal agencies, all of the agencies that have relevant programs involved in this study. And given the size and scope of these ARP investments, it's just so important that we learn from this experience and generate evidence that then can be used to inform equitable program design, equitable program delivery, and ensure that we have evidence on hand when things like this happen or when we have a major new initiative that we're pulling from the best evidence to do it well. Also, one additional interesting factor, or feature of this, is that it serves as this proof of concept in a way. In conducting a federal program evaluation that looks across programs that are administered by different agencies, normally when we're doing a program evaluation in the government, it's an agency doing it related to a particular program within that agency and so this is unique in working across all of these different programs and asking questions about how they interact on the ground to contribute to shared outcomes, to test common approaches and strategies, or to reach overlapping recipient communities. So it's just getting underway, it's been less than a year and we are on the cusp of really launching into some really fascinating work with the study.

[Mike Burns]

That's great to hear, Danielle. And, Diana, just something you mentioned stood out to me about the Evaluation Officer Council. Have there been any notable shifts, whether in policy, practice, or culture at agencies since the Evidence Act formally established the evaluation officer position? Or any shifts in the broader community as well?

[Diana Epstein]

Sure, so as I mentioned, the history of evaluation among our federal agencies does vary widely, but now having a single designated Evaluation Officer at each of our 24 largest agencies, has I think been a really important step forward for the evaluation enterprise as a whole. This, the Evidence Act and our other efforts around evidence-based policy making, it is culture change in many respects and that is hard, it can be slow in a big organization like a federal agency, in the federal government, but having an Evaluation Officer at each agency does really clearly signal we care about this, we think evaluation is important, and it's an activity that needs to happen. And we're also seeing more Evaluation Officers designated at bureaus or sub agencies, we're also seeing many agencies develop their own evidence or evaluation councils or communities of practice. So, I think it's a really encouraging sign of progress, in terms of both broadening the scope and the reach of evaluation throughout the government.

[Mike Burns]

I want to take a step back for a minute and focus on the Evidence Act because that is a big piece of what you all are working on and it really is of interest to Mathematica and the broader evidence data community as well. So, the purpose of this act broadly speaking, just for our listeners, is to advance evidence building in the federal government by improving access to data and expanding evaluation capacity. And the Evidence Act requires changes to how the federal government manages and uses the information it collects and emphasizes strong agency coordination for the strategic use of data. What would you highlight as the Evidence Act's biggest success so far and also its biggest challenge?

[Diana Epstein]

The Evidence Act built on long-standing federal systems and processes for evidence building and use. But it's clearly advanced this work is some important ways. So for one, it brought a more strategic focus to how agencies think about the big questions they have, and the evidence they need to build to answer those questions. Prior to the Evidence Act, we had good evidence work happening in some places, but it was typically pretty ad hoc and not systematic across agencies.

Another big success has been designating senior staff to lead these evidence related functions. Evaluation Officers, Chief Data Officers, and Statistical Officials. So like I said, it matters when we have someone whose job it is to be in charge of these activities. Beyond just having designated staff, these folks are collaborating together, they're breaking down traditional silos. We said from the start that no single person or single office can do this work alone. People have to work together to figure out the right questions to ask, the evidence-building method to use to answer those questions, the data they need and the analytic tools to produce useful results. It's been really encouraging to see how much collaboration is happening, whether that's between Evaluation officers and Chief Data Officers and Statistical Officials, or among evaluation and program staff for example, or other functions too. In terms of challenges, I'll be honest in saying there are many. The law did not come with new appropriations so agencies have had to do this work largely with the resources and the people they already had. There's also a pretty major culture shift for some agencies. To be truly data driven and evidence based, that doesn't come easily or quickly.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you, Diana. And you kind of got to my next question there. Before you had, you touched on the fact that this isn't a uniform journey, it's differed across agencies for any number of reasons, some are further along than others. But is there anything that really stands out from your perspective as to what agencies are succeeding at and maybe any specific things that they're struggling with on this evidence journey?

[Danielle Berman]

Sure, I can jump in on that. So as Diana mentioned, it is really important to acknowledge all of the pockets throughout the government where this kind of work has been happening for a long time, but thanks to the Evidence Act, we saw agencies engage in a more coordinated way as they worked through the development of their agency wide learning agendas, they conducted capacity assessments, and they've been building out every year their annual evaluation plans and for many agencies, that process and those conversations has helped to open doors, it's built relationships, and it's strengthened networks across the organization. And that can translate into big wins. So, some agencies have been able to stand up new offices, they're hiring more qualified staff, and they are starting to make investments in critical program evaluation activities. And success can also show up in small ways, right? When leaders are posing those kinds of questions and asking about program effectiveness and asking for the evidence when they are making decisions, that's a big win. When programs are designed with stronger requirements for being evidence based, or with a built-in requirement up front to incorporate evaluation, that's also really huge in terms of that culture change. I mean agencies still struggle, right, there's a struggle to routinize these approaches and there's a struggle to get buy-in from those for whom this might be new and sometimes kind of scary. And it also takes time to build up capacity, especially when resources are fairly limited, and to bring about this culture change whole cloth across their agency. But there's good progress underway.

[Mike Burns]

Well, glad to hear it, Danielle. And thank you for that, for that response. That was very helpful. To home in a little bit on the Evidence Act, I want to look at Title I. Could you tell us a little bit about the focus of Title I and what's significant about its implementation?

[Erica Zielewski]

Absolutely, we love to talk about Title I, and we would never pick favorites, but if we were, this title specifically of the Evidence Act is really at the heart of so much of what we are trying to do. So, at a basic level, Title I really focuses on the strategic evidence-building activities and this is the place where you see the requirement for agencies to develop Learning Agendas, which lay out those priority questions that an agency needs to answer in order to more effectively and efficiently deliver on their missions. It also includes the requirements for agencies to develop Annual Evaluation Plans, which Danielle just mentioned, where agencies kind of say hey, here are the big significant evaluations that we plan to undertake in the next year and here's how we plan to do them. It also includes some really important foundational work for agencies to document their capacity to actually execute on these types of plans through the Capacity Assessment and I think more broadly, and we've talked about this a little bit already, Title I plays, I think, a really key role in elevating program elevation in statute. This is the place where we see the requirement for agencies to designate an Evaluation Officer to lead the development of these plans, but to also provide kind of leadership and guidance across the agency on designing, implementing, and using results from program evaluations. There's a lot in here but from where we sit, I think the big momentum shifters in Title I are the creation of those public facing evidence-building plans and the elevation of program evaluation through these officials and the standards. Other functions, like statistics or performance, they've had a statutory system for a long time, and the Evidence Act and really Title I, are the first time we have had that for program evaluation, even though as folks have mentioned, people in government have been doing this work for decades. We've seen this play out through implementation, right? We've said it before, but for many agencies, there was no single person whose job this was to focus on program evaluation and now there is. And we've seen this, Title I's emphasis on program evaluation really spur the creation of new evaluation functions in agency or maybe strengthen or build up what was already there. And on the evidence planning side, this was new for nearly all agencies and yet when you go to evaluation.gov, like Danielle was discussing, you can see the incredible work that they've done to really strategically think about and plan how they build and use evidence. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that Title I has some other requirements in it, among them the now sunsetted Advisory Committee for Data on Evidence Building, which did a lot of work to think about on how to advance, gathering data for evidence and things like that.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you, Erica. And so as not to pick favorites, as you said, is there somewhere folks can go on evaluation.gov to learn more about Title I or the other titles of the Evidence Act?

[Danielle Berman]

They can look on the resources page on evaluation.gov and there we have the statute is there, there's also all of the various memos that are, that have the implementing guidance are there as well. And then I think there are some good blogs as well, there's a news section where we have shorter synopses that might be a more friendly introduction than some of the lengthy memos.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you, Danielle. And you led right into my next question, for all of you, on the implementing guidance. Can you tell us a little bit about OMB's Evidence Act Implementing Guidance, what it does, any aspects that you think would be of particular interest to our audience?

[Erica Zielewski]

Of course, well, I hope all aspects of it are interesting to your audience, but I appreciate that not everybody is as deep in OMB M-memos as we are. But let me start by talking about the first piece of guidance that we released on the Evidence Act, which was in July of 2019. So several years ago at this point, and that is OMB Memo M-19-23. And this was really foundational in that it not only laid out the key requirements around designating senior officials, developing and submitting those key deliverables, like the Learning Agenda or Annual Evaluation Plans, or the creation of agency data governance bodies. This guidance also really kind of laid out the roadmap for how OMB is going to, or was going to approach implementation of the Act as a whole. And, look, there were a lot of requirements in the Act, and many of them, as we've said, especially in Title I, were really new for agencies, and across the three titles there's a lot in there and so we really wanted to be strategic and thoughtful, which is why we organized implementation into phases, you can read more about that in [OMB Memo] M-19-23, so that agencies weren't really inundated with one-off pieces of guidance for every little thing, right? We wanted to have a streamlined and thoughtful process for implementation. We also wanted to make sure that [OMB Memo] M-19-23 gave agencies a little bit of extra context on what a learning agenda is, what it includes, how to develop one, et cetera. So if you look at the guidance, you'll actually see that we have a pretty expansive, I think, discussion of kind of a how-to on learning agendas in that guidance. You didn't ask this, but I think it's important, which is that we followed the release of [OMB Memo] M-19-23, with a multi-day orientation for all of the newly designated officials so that's Evaluation Officers, that's Statistical Officials, that's the Chief Data Officers, to go over their roles and responsibilities for that particular position. For example, what does it mean to be an Evaluation Officer? So we also brought them together to kind of start to work collectively as a suite of Evidence Act officials, again, getting back to what Diana mentioned around sort of we're all in this together and part of the Evidence Act emphasis is really kind of breaking down those silos between functions in order to advance evidence-based policy making.

[Diana Epstein]

I'll follow that next with a little bit about OMB [Memo] M-20-12, which is the guidance we issued on program evaluation standards and practices in March of 2020. This is the first time that the government has had evaluation standards that apply to all agencies and it's intended to ensure that all agencies are producing high quality evaluations. The guidance was developed through an interagency process led by our team at OMB that included evaluation experts from a number of different federal agencies. We consulted the literature deeply, we engaged with other evaluation experts external to the government, to come up with the standards that all agencies should follow as they design and execute their evaluation activities. And for those who haven't read it yet, the standards are relevance and utility, rigor, independence and objectivity, transparency, and ethics. And these standards should be reflected in agencies' own evaluation policies which you can find published online. The guidance also has 10 leading practices that may be helpful for agencies as they're planning and implementing evaluation activities to fulfill the goals of the standards. And just to wrap up this one, having a consistent set of standards like this has been really important for us in terms of raising the bar for with high quality evaluation looks like across the government.

[Danielle Berman]

And I can round things out by talking a little bit about the most recent guidance, which is [OMB Memo] M-21-27, and if I may say so, it really is genuinely a good read. I know that people don't necessarily think of OMB M-memos as their choice reading but it's great, so highly recommend taking a peek at it. So notably it puts a finer point on the importance of leadership and staff with appropriate expertise and adequate time and resources to do this work well. We know that folks in the government have lots going on, wear lots of hats, and it's important to emphasize that people need the time and focus and energy to be able to do this work effectively. It also has a nifty graphic that was just shared recently on LinkedIn, that illustrates how different types of evidence serve complementary functions in answering the range of questions that inform decision making and kind of pulls all of it together in one graphic form. It also underscores the importance of authentic public participation and community engagement in ensuring that we're asking the right questions and that we're working to build evidence that reflects the priorities of the communities who are most affected by the policies and programs that evidence is meant to inform. And then one last aspect that I think should be of interest, is the focus on evaluation that underscores what Erica was saying earlier, that focus on evaluation as a critical agency function. Without privileging any particular research method, qualitative, quantitative, or otherwise, the guidance emphasizes that evaluation is a foundational tool for learning and improvement. And that's a key kind of take away from that guidance.

[Mike Burns]

Great, thank you all. So, this is clearly an ongoing process. There's a lot underway, a lot to be done. What's next? Whether in terms of implementation or if there's anything, is there anything in your view that's happening or needs to happen from an administrative or a legislative standpoint to make federal policy making even more data and evidence driven.

[Diana Epstein]

We've spent a lot of time and effort these past few years on getting evidence plans in place and on building the supply of evidence to answer those key priority questions. But we still have work to do on the demand side. So in other words, having leaders and managers demand that evidence, just as part of the way they do business and using it to make decisions. We want evidence to be useful, we want it to be used to improve government, but to do that well, we need both this robust supply of evidence and a sincere and a consistent demand for it.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you, Diana. And then in just in terms of your team, what's next for OMB evidence? Anything we should be on the lookout for from your team or across the government in your evaluation space and I won't hold it against you if you want to break any news, feel free.

[Erica Zielewski]

Alright, well I don't know if we have any news to break, but you know, as Danielle said, [OMB Memo] M-21-27 talks about learning and improvement and so we kind of turn that lens on ourselves and are always for ways to continue to kind of build on what we're doing and to grow and strengthen the federal evaluation enterprise. One area of emphasis that is of interest for our team now, and I think going forward, is really elevating and highlighting the incredible work that our Evaluation Officers and the federal evaluation workforce more broadly are doing and telling their stories, and you'll see us continue to do that and do more of that in places like evaluation.gov, on our LinkedIn page, and in other sources. In October, which is honestly sooner than we realize, we're going to announce the latest winners of our Evaluation Officer Council Recognition Program, and that is a relatively new effort, although we are now in our third year, where we recognize folks from the federal evaluation community and the [Evaluation Officer] Council in areas like demonstrating putting evidence to action, and overall contributions, and we're excited to use these awards as yet another opportunity to really highlight and elevate and lift up these fantastic folks. We're also continuing to look for ways to make it easier for evaluation offices to do their work through government wide solutions and approaches. I think you heard both Danielle and I talk about, this was an interest of ours when we came to OMB, and something I think we're super excited about is the Program Evaluation Special Item Number, or SIN subgroup, that GSA's Federal Acquisition Service recently launched with partnership from the Evaluation Officer Council, and it's a little bit wonky, but [it’s goal is] helping agencies to actually get to qualified vendors efficiently and effectively. If we can do that at a government-wide level, that is a huge, huge opportunity. So we're always looking for those kinds of things to do, and I know that Danielle's been doing some exciting things, too, on evaluation.gov that maybe you want to share, Danielle?

[Danielle Berman]

Sure, thanks Erica. So one thing that people want to keep their eye out for that has been a work in progress and we are getting closer all the time on establishing a public-facing project portal that will be housed on evaluation.gov, to make it easier for those in the government to connect with those outside in the external research and evaluation communities, around specific evidence needs and specific evidence building projects. So we have one project live on evaluation.gov, but it's in the resources page so it may be tucked away a little bit. And we will be building out hopefully in the near future, a more interactive space that people can use to identify opportunities and connect with folks within the government to address evidence needs.

[Mike Burns]

Diana, Erica, Danielle, thank you so much for speaking with me today, for all the great work you're doing. Do you want to just remind listeners where they can find you all?

[Diana Epstein]

So the best way to get in touch with us is a shared mailbox that we do check every single day, so you can always reach us at evidence@omb.eop.gov. You can subscribe to the newsletter on evaluation.gov, that Danielle talked about. Or you can follow us on our LinkedIn page. Did I miss anything, Danielle or Erica?

[Erica Zielewski]

Nope, that's how to find us.

[Mike Burns]

Thank you all so much.

[Danielle Berman]

Thank you.

[Diana Epstein]

Thanks for having us.

[Erica Zielewski]

Thank you.

[Rick Stoddard]

Thanks again to our guests, Diana Epstein, Erica Zielewski, and Danielle Berman, and thank you for listening to another episode of On the Evidence, the Mathematica podcast. If you liked this episode, please consider subscribing to catch future episodes of the podcast. We’re on YouTube, Apple podcasts, Spotify, and other podcasting platforms. You can also learn more about the show by visiting us at mathematica.org/ontheevidence.