What Questions Should the Federal Government be Asking About Disasters?
Part I: The Evidence Act and Agency Learning Agendas
If you have ever taken a public policy course you will remember the ‘policy cycle,’ an idealized representation of how the proverbial sausage gets made. It looks something like this:
Research is (in-theory) foundational to the policymaking process. How do we identify and define the issues that make up the policy agenda? What information is needed to develop policy options? How do we know if policies are effective, and what alternatives might be available? These questions require research, memorably defined by P.M. Cook as the ‘honest, exhaustive and intelligent search for facts and their meanings or implications.’ While there are endless debates about the relative strengths of different research methods and approaches, the data and evidence that research provides is a necessary tool for lawmakers and agency professionals.
Anyone who has stepped outside of the classroom knows that there are serious challenges in the research-to-policy-pipeline. In 2017 the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking1 framed the issue this way:
Policymakers must have good information on which to base their decisions about improving the viability and effectiveness of government programs and policies. Today, too little evidence is produced to meet this need.
The Commission, created by Congress, spent a year gathering information from hundreds of federal agencies, research organizations, and outside experts. Its’ final report makes numerous recommendations for strengthening the evidence building capacity of the federal government, including the requirement that federal agencies develop ‘learning agendas’ to ‘support the generation and use of evidence to address the range of policymakers’ questions.’ The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (the Evidence Act), passed unanimously in Congress in 2018 and signed into law by then President Trump, codified the requirement that the largest federal agencies adopt multi-year learning agendas to that support the generation and use of evidence. It encourages smaller agencies to do the same.
What Are Learning Agendas?
The Office of Management and Budget defines learning agendas as “systematic plan[s] for identifying and addressing policy questions relevant to the programs, policies, and regulations of the agency” and a “systemic way to identify the data agencies intend to collect, use, or acquire as well as the methods and analytical approaches to facilitate the use of evidence in policymaking.” While the structure of learning agendas is up to each agency, they are required to contain several types of analysis (see Figure 1) and common components.
These common components include:
Priority questions that, when answered, will have the biggest impact on an agency’s functioning and performance.
Short- and long-term questions that take into account the existing foundation of knowledge at the agency. These should include a mix of foundational (fact-finding) questions that build evidence and questions that are critical to the agencies policies and programs (i.e. policy analysis, program evaluation, and performance management focused questions).
Engagement with stakeholders, internal and external, defined as individuals, groups and organizations ‘who will contribute to, or benefit from, the development of [an] agency’s learning agenda.’
The learning agenda aligns with, and is a section of, the agency’s Strategic Plan.
What Do Learning Agendas Tell Us About Disaster Management?
The rising frequency and cost of disasters is a clear challenge for U.S. policymakers. While FEMA is the primary agency that most Americans associate with disasters, in-reality there are dozens of agencies that contribute to the task of disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Learning agendas offer a unique view into the ways that these agencies think about disasters. What are the priority questions that these agencies are asking? What questions or issue areas receive the most, and least, attention? How do the agencies balance their overall focus on foundational research questions versus policy and program-oriented analysis?
I will review the learning agendas for several of the largest federal agencies that work directly on disaster-related policies and programs in my next post in this series, including FEMA, HUD, and the USDA. In the meantime, you might find these resources from the Urban Institute helpful:
The Commission was established in response to the bi-partisan Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act of 2016. To learn more about the Commission’s work, see this event hosted at the Urban Institute.