Embedding Evidence and Evaluation in Economic Recovery Legislation
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts on communities across the country. Tens of millions of people lost jobs and millions of school children have fallen behind. To help people recover from the effects of the pandemic, the next administration should invest in proven solutions by working with Congress to embed evaluation and evidence-building into economic stimulus legislation, strengthening the foundation for an equitable and efficient recovery.
The new administration and Congress should ensure that any forthcoming economic stimulus legislation include provisions requiring commitments to build new evidence and utilize existing evidence. Specifically, the administration should establish a task force coordinated by the National Economic Council to:
- Work with agencies and Congress to set aside a portion of recovery resources (up to 1%) for evaluation and evidence-building, based in part on agency learning agendas created in response to the Evidence Act.
- Create a National Economic Mobility Innovation Fund at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
- Empower the Office of Evaluation Services (OES) within the General Services Administration (GSA) to help agencies develop evaluation and evidence-building capacity.
- Create Excellence in What Works in Economic Mobility Awards.
These strategies, which we are collectively calling a “Stimulus Evaluation Act,” should be integrated into current and future economic recovery efforts.
Soft law was never meant to be a permanent solution. Treating it as one, and letting the sandcastle stand in for the skyscraper indefinitely, is how we end up with a decade of voluntary commitments and no enforceable accountability to show for it.
Jobseekers, employees at smaller organizations, and local public workers need more than a weekend crash course in AI. They need practice choosing useful tasks, protecting data, testing outputs, and explaining where human judgment remains necessary.
“What excites me is that it’s very tempting to be very discouraged, and say, ‘Oh, we’ve got these archaic institutions that are calcified and you could never change them.’ But I think we’re in the middle of a technological revolution that will upend lots of things, and does provide a window.”
As Congress considers broader packages to advance critical minerals production and supply chain resilience, science diplomacy vehicles must be part of that conversation, not as an afterthought, but as an intentional and foundational pillar of any strategy.