September 27, 2024
And the Award Goes To… The Improve Group Cooperative for their PPCE Evaluation Toolkit
By The Evidence and Equity Teams, OMB PPM
On August 19, 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced the winning submission for the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) Learning Agenda: Public Participation and Community Engagement Evidence Challenge. The Improve Group was selected from the three Phase I winners as the recipient of the $150,000 Phase II prize. The Improve Group, a worker-owned evaluation consulting cooperative, based in St. Paul, MN, developed the winning toolkit with a variety of tools and step-by-step instructions that agencies can follow to plan, design, and implement evaluations of their public participation and community engagement (PPCE) approaches.
At the inception of this Challenge, OMB recognized the need for a user-friendly resource that would help agencies learn from the effort and energy being invested in new strategies and approaches to improve public participation and community engagement. After all, if agencies set about making changes without forethought and consideration for how they will know whether or which changes make a difference, it is difficult to build on those experiences to achieve our ultimate goal of, “making it easier for the American people to engage with their Government, and to harnessing their knowledge, needs, and lived experiences to improve how Government works for them and with them1.” The Improve Group’s toolkit uses plain language and use cases to empower readers to carefully and systematically plan for and carry out the work needed to learn from their efforts. It also demonstrates how to incorporate equity into every step of designing a PPCE evaluation, while helping users explore, reflect on, and select appropriate and relevant measures for understanding the effectiveness of their PPCE activities. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to evaluating the contribution of PPCE activities for advancing equity or building trust, the winning toolkit draws on the experience and expertise of The Improve Group to provide an accessible guide filled with tools, resources, and a step-by-step approach to using equitable evaluation practices.
In a recent interview with Challenge.gov, representatives from The Improve Group Cooperative shared what motivated them to enter this Challenge. “We live in a time when there are lots of different information sources and people don’t have high trust in government…. The PMA acknowledges the history of people not feeling engaged. When people witness a deeper engagement effort like this Challenge and see what came out as a result, with emphasis on the result and how their feedback affected policy, they eventually become more engaged citizens.” When asked about the unique aspects of their toolkit, The Improve Group officials highlighted their focus on how to conduct evaluations while implementing PPCE activities, how to use different methods of evaluation, and how to track trust building over time. In developing this evaluation toolkit, The Improve Group visualized an employee conducting and evaluating the engagement without having to overcome a huge learning curve. “Employees conducting engagement projects should feel empowered to do an evaluation themselves and not need to bring a separate ‘evaluator’ on board. This toolkit aims to provide agency staff with resources to do just that.”
The resource is now available here on Evaluation.gov, on Performance.gov, and will be shared widely with Federal agencies. OMB will also coordinate with The Improve Group to ensure that agencies taking up the toolkit have the resources and support they need to benefit from the rich collection of tools and insights it provides. We are very excited to announce the release of the toolkit!
1 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-05882
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