June 10, 2024
Announcing Phase I winners of the President’s Management Agenda Learning Agenda: Public Participation and Community Engagement Evidence Challenge
By The Evidence Team, OMB
On June 3, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced the Phase I winning submissions for the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) Learning Agenda: Public Participation and Community Engagement Evidence Challenge. The Technical Concept Paper submissions were judged in accordance with the Challenge scoring criteria and the three winners were chosen to each receive $15,000 and continue as finalists in Phase II of the Challenge. They are:
- Expedition Works, LLC
- The Improve Group Cooperative
- Partnership for Public Service
This first-of-its-kind Challenge is one part of OMB’s efforts to initiate and support evidence building activities in support of the PMA Learning Agenda. One key element of OMB’s approach is the Evidence Project Portal on Evaluation.gov, which provides agencies with a means to broaden their reach and connect with external experts who can provide critical evidence to help address Learning Agenda questions or other key evidence needs. The PMALA Challenge provides another unique opportunity to connect with the external expert community to develop concepts that help agencies build evidence in their public participation and community engagement (PPCE) activities. By using PPCE strategically, agencies can improve their delivery of services, increase equitable participation in their programs, and enhance public trust.
As the three finalists continue with the PMALA Challenge in Phase II, they will transform their concepts into detailed evaluation toolkits that compile methods and metrics Federal agencies can use to evaluate the effectiveness of their PPCE efforts. The toolkits should support agencies in rigorously evaluating their PPCE activities to build evidence on which approaches offer an improvement to the status quo. Phase II submissions are due by August 2, 2024, and the selected winner of Phase II will win $150,000. Additionally, the winner of the challenge may have the opportunity to collaborate with a Federal agency in a pilot implementation of the Solver’s evaluation toolkit as part of a PPCE activity, to the extent allowable. If the Solver expresses interest, OMB may facilitate a collaboration between the Solver and a Federal agency High Impact Service Provider to implement the toolkit to evaluate a specific PPCE activity. (Note that there is no guarantee that the winning Solver will have the opportunity to conduct a pilot implementation.)
Learn more about the Challenge and winners at Challenge.gov.
Tags: