08. Investing in What Works through Budgeting

The agency has a budget policy that prioritizes evidence of effectiveness in order to achieve equitable outcomes.
Agencies Meet This Criteria

Subcriteria

8.1. The agency defines evidence of effectiveness for purposes of budget development (i.e., the agency’s budget office has a clear definition of evidence of effectiveness for budget documents).

8.2. The agency’s budget guidance states that requests to increase or decrease funding for a program should be supported by evidence.

8.3. The agency includes evidence indicators in public budget documents (i.e., budget requests to increase or decrease funding for a program, such as those in the congressional justification, are supported by evidence).

8.4. The agency sets evidence-based targets (i.e., it has set targets on what percentage of the budget or new proposals should go towards evidence-based programs).

8.5. The agency summarizes items signed into law that support evidence-based interventions (i.e., proposal-level indicators of evidence are reported for items signed into law, such as items enacted).

8.6. The agency has a policy (e.g., law, administrative rule or policies, executive order, budget templates) that requires budget documents to, wherever practicable, include consideration for how proposals address the needs of people who are experiencing unfavorable outcomes.

Learn More

  • The 2024 Federal Standard of Excellence includes a new, unscored criterion – 08: Investing in What Works through Budgeting. Part of RFA’s charge in conducting the Federal Standard of Excellence is to go beyond celebrating the significant progress made by agencies and identify the next frontiers to increasingly use evidence that the government and its partners have already generated. Through our work with government at the federal, state and local levels as well as consultation with dozens of experts across the U.S., RFA has identified integrating evidence into budgeting as one such frontier. While the President’s FY 2025 budget made clear that the Administration made decisions guided by the best available science and data and many agencies include evidence-indicators in their Congressional Budget Adjustments as well as consider evidence of effectiveness in the budget development, RFA believes agencies can enhance these efforts by demonstrating they meet all the subcriteria laid out. While providing a transition period before scoring, RFA includes this criterion to encourage agencies to consider how they can move towards budgeting according to evidence of effectiveness, among other factors.
  • Federal agencies may find it useful to look to state leaders. RFA’s 2024 Invest in What Works State Standard of Excellence features 12 states that have put outcomes for the people they serve front and center by incorporating evidence of effectiveness in the state budget process by:
    • Defining evidence of effectiveness for purposes of budget development (CO, IL, MD, MN, NC, NM, OR, RI and TN)
    • Including a default field for evidence collection on internal budget documents (CO, CT, MD, MN, NC, NM, OH, RI, TN and UT)
    • Setting evidence-based targets (OR and TN)
    • Including evidence indicators in public budget documents (CO and MN)
    • Summarizing items signed into law that support evidence-based interventions (MN and NM)
  • In November 2024, RFA released a guide on integrating evidence into budgeting. Although it is written for state governments, much can easily be adapted to the federal level.
  • RFA has long called for agencies to shift their discretionary dollars to programs that build and/or use evidence of effectiveness, away from programs that repeatedly fail to generate targeted outcomes, for example, in our 2022 What Works Guide to Federal Legislation.
Using Learning

Investing in What Works through Budgeting

The agency has a budget policy that prioritizes evidence of effectiveness in order to achieve equitable outcomes.

The agency has a budget policy that prioritizes evidence of effectiveness in order to achieve equitable outcomes (currently unscored).

Colorado

Leading Example
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