3.1 ____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• Millennium Challenge Corporation invested $12,200,000 in evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity building, representing 1.5% of the agency’s $800,000,000 FY22 budget (minus staff/salary expenses).

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it (were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year)?

• In FY22 MCC budgeted $12,200,000 for monitoring and evaluation, a decrease of $5,400,000 from FY21 ($17,600,000 total). This decrease is due to the reduced number of countries MCC made eligible for investment in FY22 rather than to a reduction in the value MCC places on monitoring and evaluation.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• In support of its emphasis on country ownership, MCC also provides substantial, intensive, and ongoing capacity building to partner country M&E staff in every country in which it invests. As a part of this effort, MCC provides training and ongoing mentorship in the local language. This includes publishing select independent evaluations, Evaluation Briefs and other documentation in the country’s local language. The dissemination of local language publications helps further MCC’s reach to its partner country’s government and members of civil society, enabling them to fully reference and utilize evidence and learning beyond the program. Data strengthening and national statistical capacity are also included as a part of MCC’s evidence building investments. This agency-wide commitment to building and expanding an evidence-based approach with every partner country is a key component of MCC’s investments.
• As a prime example of this work, MCC continues to implement a first of its kind evaluation partnership in its Morocco investment. The local implementing entity, TMCA Morocco, signed MCC’s first cooperation agreement, a funded partnership within a country program, under the new Partnership Navigator Program Partnership Solicitation process. This first MCA-driven partnership agreement is bringing Nobel prize-winning economic analysis approaches from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard to partner with a Moroccan think tank to create an employment lab for conducting rigorous research into Moroccan labor market programs and policies. This research is coupled with training and capacity building for key Moroccan policymakers to promote evidence-based decision-making.

3.1 _____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• The Department of Education  invested $212,700,000 in high-quality evaluations of federal programs, evaluations as part of field-initiated research and development, technical assistance related to evaluation and evidence building, and capacity building in FY22. This includes work awarded by centers across the IES.

• This represents 0.44% of the agency’s $48,000,000,000 FY22 discretionary congressional appropriation, not including the accounts listed below.

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it? (Were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year?)

• The Department of Education does not have a specific budget solely for federal program evaluation. Evaluations are supported either by (a) required or allowable program funds or (b) ESEA Section 8601, which permits the Secretary to reserve up to 0.5% of selected ESEA program funds for rigorous evaluation. As part of the FY22 Consolidated Appropriations Act, Congress allowed the Secretary to reserve up to 0.5% of funds appropriated for programs authorized by the Higher Education Act for a range of evidence building activities. The department’s decision-making about the use of those funds is ongoing and is not represented below.
• The decrease in funds dedicated to federal program evaluations represents a combination of natural variation in resource needs across the life cycle of individual evaluations and the need to slow some activities in response to school closures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• In June 2021, IES announced ALN 84.305S: Using Longitudinal Data to Support State Education Recovery Policymaking. As part of this program, IES supports state agencies’ use of their state’s education longitudinal data systems as they and local education agencies reengage their students after the disruptions caused by COVID-19. The maximum award is $1,000,000 over three years. Examples of recent (FY21 and FY22) grantees include state education agencies in Delaware, Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
• The Regional Education Laboratories provide extensive technical assistance on evaluation and support research partnerships that conduct implementation and impact studies on education policies and programs in ten geographic regions of theUnited States, covering all states, territories, and the District of Columbia.
• Comprehensive Centers provide support to states in planning and implementing interventions through coaching, peer-to-peer learning opportunities, and ongoing direct support. The State Implementation and Scaling Up of Evidence-Based Practices Center provides tools, training modules, and resources on implementation planning and monitoring.

3.1 ____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• In FY21 and prior years, USAID invested at least $211,600,000  in a combination of evaluations completed in FY21, evaluations that are ongoing in FY22, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity building, representing 1.1% of the agency’s $18,400,000,000 FY22 budget.

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it (were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year)?

• In FY21 and prior years, USAID operating units invested approximately $84,400,000 on 94 evaluations that were completed in that fiscal year. Another 181 evaluations were ongoing in FY22 (many spanning more than one year) with total ongoing evaluation budgets estimated at $121,000,000. The budget of the Office of LER for evaluation technical assistance and evaluation capacity building in FY21 was $6,600,000, resulting in a budgeted total of $211,6000,000. This represents 1.1% of the agency’s $18,400,000,000 FY22 budget. This total does not include evaluation capacity building by other agency offices or field missions or other research, studies, analysis, or other data collection that is often used for evaluation, such as USAID’s investment in the the Demographic and Health Surveys Program or some of the assessments done by third parties across USAID’s innovation portfolio. It also does not include funding by agency subcomponents for evaluation technical assistance.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• While specific data on this topic are limited, USAID estimates that investment in contracts or grants that provide support to build local organizational or governmental capacity in data collection, analysis, and use could be as high as $250,000,000.
• For example, USAID’s Data for Impact (D4I) activity helps low- and middle-income countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, to increase their capacity to use available data and generate new data to build evidence for improving health programs and health policies and for decision-making. The goal of  D4I is to help low-resource countries gather and use information to strengthen their health policies and programs and improve the health of their citizens.
• In another example, the MEASURE Evaluation project, funded by USAID, has a mandate to strengthen health information systems (HIS) in low-resource settings. This project enables countries to improve lives by strengthening their capacity to generate and use high-quality health information to make evidence-informed strategic decisions at local, subregional, and national levels.

3.1 ____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $______ million FY22 budget.

• AmeriCorps invested $9,420,000 on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing 1.1% of the agency’s $865,409,000 FY22 operating budget.

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it? (Were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year?)

• In FY22, Congress allocated $4,120,000 to AmeriCorps for its evaluation budget. This is an increase of $120,000 compared to the agency’s FY21 allocation.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• The Office of Research & Evaluation  funds a contractor to provide AmeriCorps grantees with evaluation capacity building support ($918,169 of the $4,120,000 evaluation budget). Staff from this office are also available to state commissions to address their evaluation questions and make resources (e.g., research briefs summarizing effective interventions, online evaluation planning, and reporting curricula) available to them and the general public. AmeriCorps awards investment fund grants to state commissions ($8,500,000 in FY22, of which approximately one-third will be used for data and evidence capacity building activities based on prior year activities.

3.1 ____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• The Department of Labor invested $23,180,000 in evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity building, representing 0.16% of the agency’s $14,200,000,000 discretionary budget in FY22.

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it (were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year)?

• The Chief Evaluation Office receives $8,280,000 and then may receive up to 0.75% from statutorily specified program accounts, based on the discretion of the Secretary of Labor.  In relative terms, between FY21 and FY22, this budget decreased by 0.14%.  The Chief Evaluation Office also collaborates with DOL program offices and other federal agencies on additional evaluations being carried out by other offices and/or supported by funds appropriated to other agencies or programs. The office oversaw approximately $9,940,000 in evaluation and evidence building activities in FY19 and approximately $21,000,000 in FY18 as compared to an estimated $40,000,000 in evaluation funding in FY17.
• This amount represents only the dollars that are directly appropriated or transferred to the Chief Evaluation Office. Additionally, many DOL evaluations and research studies are supported by funds appropriated to DOL programs and/or are carried out by other offices within DOL. In some programs, such as the America’s Promise grant evaluation and the Reentry grant evaluation, evaluation set-asides exceed 1% (2.9% and 2.8%, respectively, for these programs).

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• Grantees and programs that participate in DOL evaluations receive technical assistance related to evaluation activities and implementation through contracted support from evaluators and resources, such as tools, guides, and webinars available on the Evaluation and Research Hub (EvalHub). Additional dissemination and technical assistance resources, including the Research and Evaluation Notes, Evaluation Peer Learning Cohort, and the Evaluation Toolkit: Key Elements for State Workforce Agencies, have been developed. The Chief Evaluation Office partners with DOL agencies like ETA to help states and local areas build evaluation capacity to meet the program evaluation requirements for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA). For example, it oversees contracted support through the RESEA program evaluation technical assistance project, which has supported analyses, webinars, tools, and templates to help states understand, build, and use evidence. The project’s technical assistance webinar series for states includes a webinar and webcast series and evidence resources posted online to the RESEA community of practice, and each webinar has been viewed by the field between 2,500 and 4,600 times. Additional RESEA evaluation technical assistance products are being developed and will be posted on the Chief Evaluation Office’s website, CLEAR, and in the RESEA community of practice.
• Another notable example is the Chief Executive Office’s contracted evaluation-related technical assistance focused on community colleges and Strengthening Community College grantees. In February and March 2022, in collaboration with ETA, it delivered a series of three roundtables that featured research on how community colleges can measure equity in their programs and improve employment-related outcomes for historically marginalized groups. All three rounds of the Strengthening Community College grants require a third party evaluation, and the most recent rounds of grants include a unique approach to provide additional evaluation funding to grantees that propose to conduct rigorous impact, outcomes, or behavioral impact studies. The office oversees contractor technical assistance to grantees to support the development of high-quality evaluation plans.

3.1 ____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• The Administration for Children and Families invested approximately $156,000,000 in evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity building, representing approximately 0.2% of the agency’s approximately $69,600,000,000 FY22 enacted budget.
• The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation has provided training to  its staff on procurement vehicles that specifically support small businesses with a race equity lens (e.g., minority-owned small businesses, Latino-owned small businesses, and tribally owned Native American concerns).

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it (were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year) ?

• In FY22, ACF had an evaluation budget of approximately $156,000,000, a $25,000,000 decrease from FY21. The decrease is primarily due to COVID-19 funding received in FY20 and FY21 but not FY22. In addition, in FY22, Congress granted ACF the authority to extend the availability of a portion of its research and evaluation funds provided in the omnibus appropriation, allowing for more efficient administration for a portion of these dollars.
• For context, a substantial portion of OPRE’s annual budget is from program offices designating certain funds for research, so the amount varies from year to year. Factors driving this fluctuation can be driven by changes in program office budgets or evaluation needs. Other factors influencing changes in OPRE’s funding include sometimes receiving funds from outside of ACF (e.g., SSA in FY19, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health in other years). Like program offices, the amount and frequency of these funds are driven by specific evaluation needs.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• The Administration for Children and Families  provides evaluation technical assistance to grantees:
  • to support sites participating in federal evaluations (for example projects supporting Health Profession Opportunity Grants 2.0 and Tribal Health Profession Opportunity Grants 2.0 grantees and Regional Partnership Grants grantees);
  • to support grantees conducting their own local evaluations [for example, projects supporting Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grantees, Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grantees, Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) grantees, Tribal MIECHV grantees, Child Welfare Community Collaborations grantees, and Youth/Young Adults with Child Welfare Involvement At-Risk of Homelessness (YARH) grantees] and ACF staff directly supporting Section 1115 child support demonstration grantees;
  • to provide general capacity building support (for example, the TANF Data Innovation Project and the Center for States) and capacity for culturally competent research (for example, the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center, the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families, and the African American Child and Family Research Center);
  • to provide guidance to encourage state MIECHV awardees to develop their own learning agendas.
• It also strengthens the data capacity of grantees through:
  • technical assistance with management information systems, such as the Participant Accomplishment and Grant Evaluation System (PAGES) system for Health Profession Opportunity Grant (HPOG) and Tribal HPOG grantees and the Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management (nFORM) system for Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grantees;
  • supporting grantee ability to monitor data quality and performance through projects like PREP Studies of Performance Measures and Adulthood Preparation Subjects (PREP PMAPS) and SRAE Performance Analysis Study (SRAE PAS).
• It supports evidence capacity across the agency by preparing promising programs and interventions to advance to the next level of evidence through projects like Supporting Evidence Building in Child Welfare; Next Steps for Rigorous Research on Two-Generation Approaches; and Building Evaluation Capacity in TANF: Implementing, Replicating, and Scaling up Evidence-Informed Interventions to Promote Employment and Self-Sufficiency. The latter project documents the landscape of current or previous evaluation technical assistance activities in human services program contexts, what can be learned from other fields that have examined this question, and what lessons can be drawn to inform future federal evaluation capacity building efforts.
• The Administration for Children and Families also publishes resources such as The Program Manager’s Guide to Evaluation to provide guidance to programs planning and implementing evaluations (a new edition will be released in late 2022) and the Continuous Quality Improvement Toolkit, which helps MIECHV awardees and others work with local agencies to build capacity in continuous quality improvement. The toolkit features examples from home visiting but may also be helpful for audiences from other early childhood and human service programs. ACF recently began work to adapt its existing evaluation technical assistance resources and develop new evaluation technical assistance resources to more effectively build the evaluation capacity of the diverse groups that it serves.

3.1  ___ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration invested $131,800,000 in evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity building, representing 2.01% percent of the agency’s $6,547,100,000 FY22 budget.

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it (were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year)?

• SAMHSA’s evaluation budget remained the same from the previous fiscal year.
• Its FY22 evaluation budget is $133,600,000, and it comes from Section 241 of the Public Health Service Act evaluation funds issued through annual appropriations for section 1935(b) activities.
• Within the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022, P.L. 117-103, SAMHSA is authorized to allocate up to 5% of the amounts appropriated for data collection and program evaluation under Sec. 1920 and for technical assistance, national database, data collection, and program evaluations under Sec. 1921.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• SAMHSA aims to provide communities, clinicians, policymakers, and others in the field with the information and tools they need to incorporate evidence-based practices into their communities or clinical settings. A series of EBP guides on the Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center (EBPRC) website provide resources and guidance on capacity building and evaluation on issues and topics across the spectrum of SAMHSA’s mission. A recent example (posted September 2022) is Addressing Burnout in the Behavioral Health Workforce through Organizational Strategies. (Burnout is a complex issue resulting from chronic workplace stress that encompasses exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. This guide highlights organization-level interventions to prevent and reduce burnout among behavioral health workers).
• The Peer Recovery Center of Excellence (Peer Recovery CoE) advances recovery supports and services for people with substance use disorders and their families. The Peer Recovery CoE website indicates it provides training and technical assistance to build and elevate an equitable peer workforce to deliver Peer Recovery Support Services by supporting peer integration and workforce development, Recovery Community Organization capacity building, and evidence-based practice dissemination.
• The National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Child, Youth and Family Mental Health provides states, tribes, and communities with training and technical assistance on children’s behavioral health, with a focus on systems of care. Its training and technical assistance activities for clinical best practices, wraparound services, and workforce development focus on evaluation, fidelity assessment, and quality assurance, among nine other topics.
• All SAMHSA grantees (discretionary and formula-based) may designate set-aside funds for data collection, data reporting into SAMHSA’s Performance Accountability and Reporting System (SPARS), and individual evaluation activities. To support grantees in reporting timely and accurate data to SAMHSA, SPARS provides access to online data entry, reporting, technical assistance, and training resources. There are multiple resources available to state and community grantees including a resource library with general and center-specific information on data collection, performance monitoring, disparities impact statements, and trauma-informed care (to name just a few). Access to these resources requires that grantees enter the password protected website.
• In addition to the technical assistance and set-aside funds, SAMHSA offers webinars to provide detailed support for organizations unfamiliar with its grant application process. In FY22, two webinars were held to highlight valuable information from the manual available to applicants.
• In FY22, SAMHSA completed a multiyear national evaluation of its Technology Transfer Centers program. This program comprises three networks: Addiction Technology Transfer Centers, Mental Health Technology Transfer Centers, and Prevention Technology Transfer Centers. Each network consists of a National Coordinator Center, ten regional centers, an American Indian and Alaska Native focused center, and a Hispanic/Latino focused center. This report will be used to improve services and capacity.
• In FY22, SAMHSA also engaged to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion benchmarks that might be included in notices of funding opportunities to encourage applications from diverse organizations and those that address health disparities. These benchmarks are still in the planning stages, but one component would be to better understand where SAMHSA might wish to focus its marketing efforts to attract more applications from a more diverse array of organizations. This work was begun in FY22 and will be implemented in FY23. As part of this process, a logic model has been developed. SAMHSA is considering an evaluation in year two to better understand the impact of these efforts as well as to identify areas for future growth and focus.

3.1 ____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development invested $125,000,000 for the Office of Policy Development and Research to carry out advancements in research and technology, representing .21% of the agency’s $60,400,000,000 FY22 budget.

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it (were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year)?

• For FY22, Congress appropriated $125,000,000 for the PD&R’s research and technology account. This represents an increase of $20,000,000 from FY21, reflecting Congressional support for the value of PD&R’s research, evaluations, and demonstrations. This funding includes $59,000,000 for core research activities; $13,000,000 for experimental research, evaluations of current research, and other policy-related research; and $33,000,000 for technical assistance. The funding for core research is used primarily for the American Housing Survey, other surveys, data acquisition, and research dissemination that support evaluation of HUD’s mission activities in domains such as affordable housing and house finance. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, funding for core research is also being used to develop a new National Eviction Database, and PD&R also maintains $20,000,000 for funding of competitive grants providing nonprofit organizations and government entities with legal assistance to prevent unlawful evictions. The department also saw an increase of $4,000,000 in the FY22 budget for the chief information officer, thus increasing the agency’s overall capacity for research and evaluation.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• For FY20 and FY21, HUD made available $91,000,000 in technical assistance funds to equip the department’s program partners with the knowledge, skills, tools, capacity, and systems to implement HUD programs and policies successfully and to provide effective oversight of federal funding. State and local governments and authorities are among the eligible recipients of technical assistance. Community Compass integrates technical assistance funding from four major HUD program areas to better reflect the cross-cutting nature of housing and community development challenges. Eligible technical assistance activities include training and tool development to help program partners improve program management, evaluation, and performance measurement. The Community Compass program itself has an increased evidence-based focus for FY20 and FY21.
• The department operates a Section 4 capacity building grant program that in FY22 provides $41,000,000 for national intermediaries, including $10,000,000 for rural needs to build capacity for functions including assessing needs, planning programs, and evaluation.
• Its CDBG program, which provides formula grants to entitlement jurisdictions, increases local evaluation capacity. Specifically, federal regulations (24 CFR570.200) authorize CDBG recipients (including city and state governments) to use up to 20% of their CDBG allocations for administration and planning costs that may include evaluation-capacity building efforts and evaluations of their CDBG-funded interventions (as defined in 570.205 and 570.206). In FY22 HUD is allocating $3,300,000,000to the CDBG program.
• Through its Research Partnerships program, HUD offers grants to support research that addresses current research priorities. The department is especially interested in increasing participation of minority serving institutions of higher education and historically Black colleges and universities in this program. The FY22 Notice of Funding Opportunity notes $2,000,000 available for research partnerships specifically related to the Lead and Health Homes program, as well as $1,000,000available for research partnerships regarding other topics.
• In April 2022, HUD published its first ever agency-wide Equity Action Plan in accordance with Executive Order 13985 on “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” The assessment reflects several priorities of the agency, including promoting racial equity in home ownership by addressing discrimination in federal programs and providing federal assistance for first-time buyers, as well as advancing equity in the administration of homelessness assistance programs.
• In FY22, HUD is offering $7,000,000 through the Lead and Healthy Homes Technical Studies Grant, which seeks to improve HUD’s and the public’s knowledge of health-related safety hazards in order to improve and develop new hazard assessment techniques. The department expects this program to develop evidence-based approaches that are cost-effective and efficient and will result in a substantial reduction of health threats in housing, especially for vulnerable populations.

3.1 ____ invested $____ on evaluations, evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building, representing __% of the agency’s $___ billion FY22 budget.

• The amount invested in evaluation technical assistance, and evaluation capacity-building as a percentage of the agency’s $3,009,000,000 FY22 enacted budget was not reported. However, from FY17 to FY21 ACL funded evaluation at a consistent level.

3.2 Did the agency have a budget for evaluation and how much was it (were there any changes in this budget from the previous fiscal year)?

• The ACL OPE budget for evaluation was $9,600,000 in FY22, down from $13,600,000 in FY21.   The bulk of OPE’s evaluation funds are based on a set-aside required in Title II, section 206 of the Older Americans Act (OAA): “From the total amount appropriated for each fiscal year to carry out title III, the Secretary may use such sums as may be necessary, but not to exceed 1/2 of 1 percent of such amount, for purposes of conducting evaluations under this section, either directly or through grants or contracts.” In addition, in 2017 ACL’s OPE established a mechanism that allows ACL programs not covered by the OAA set-aside to transfer funds to OPE to support evaluations of their programs. In FY17, FY18, FY19, FY20,  FY21, and FY22 OPE added approximately $1,000,000, $1,700,000, $3,200,000, $1,200,000, $2,300,000, and $1,600,000 from these programs to its evaluation budget, respectively.

3.3 Did the agency provide financial and other resources to help city, county, and state governments or other grantees build their evaluation capacity (including technical assistance funds for data and evidence capacity building)?

• The Administration for Community Living primarily provides information resources to grantees to build their evaluation and evidence building capacity. Staff record trainings on evaluation topics, including an overview of performance measurement. Several resources and technical assistance centers focus on evidence building including one contract dedicated to improving performance data provided by Older Americans Act Title III, VI, and VII grantees that offers live and prerecorded webinars and a range of manuals and technical assistance supports. The agency also published toolkits for strategic planning, data quality, performance measures, logic model development, and more. It provides technical assistance to grantees related to using evidence-based programs and building evidence. For example, the National Resource Center on Nutrition and Aging provides different programs and approaches that deliver nutrition-related home- and community-based services (HCBS) administered through grants to the states and territories. Access to Respite Care and Help (ARCH) provides training and technical assistance to the Lifespan Respite Network with a focus on performance measurement, sustainability, best practices, and research. The National Alzheimer’s and Dementia Resource Center supports grantees as they implement evidence-based interventions and innovative practices designed to empower and assist caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.
• In an effort to better support Older Americans Act’s Title VI Native American Programs grantees with their data needs, OPE created several tools for grantee use. One tool is a template for collecting program satisfaction survey data from both nutrition and caregiver clients about the services they are receiving. This template is customizable, has a user guide and an Excel spreadsheet for easy data tabulation and visualization as it creates charts from the entered data. The office also worked to create an infographic for Title VI grantees to use by plugging in their own data (into an Excel template with the help of a user guide) from a variety of sources to which they have ready access so that they might create a two-page visual document to share with stakeholders to showcase the services they are providing to their communities. In addition, OPE created a Title VI Data Tracking Workbook, built with grantee input, to help grantees track their data on a daily basis. This workbook provides monthly and quarterly statistics and produces an annual roll-up of data. Based on grantee feedback, it has some customization built in and has a budget feature to help grantees manage their income and expenditures, data that ACL does not currently collect for this program. In an effort to make these tools more user friendly for grantees and to encourage their wide adoption, OPE has held webinars, trainings, and question sessions.