Too often, contracting is seen as a back-office function, even though many government programs are actually implemented with contracted service providers. In reality, contracting — and contracting reforms — can be a key driver of better results in human services, including for the most vulnerable families and individuals.

We discuss specific steps in results-driven contracting with Lisa Morrison Butler, the former Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) and now the Executive Vice President and Chief Impact Officer at Results for America. She served as Commissioner of DFSS — the largest funder of human and social services in the city — for more than five years across two mayoral administrations. Under her leadership, she led an organizational transformation aimed at achieving greater overall impact, including overhauling the department’s approach to contracting.

The five main steps in DFSS’s path to results-driven contracting that we discuss are:

1. Build consensus around the need for change related to contracting.
2. Choose a pilot division.
3. Develop a calendar to roll out reform across the department.
4. Build clear goals and new expectations into each new RFP, among participating divisions.
5. Adopt active contract management, including developing learning cohorts that met quarterly.

Learn more:

• To hear other Gov Innovator podcast interviews on results-driven contracting, click this link.
• Read Lisa’s “Innovator Interview” with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab on her efforts to improve outcomes at Chicago’s DFSS.

When we think about what skills leaders need to be successful — such as making good decisions, regulating their emotions and stress, and forming strong and healthy relationships with others — an important foundation for those skills is mindfulness. Our guest today has deep expertise in helping people cultivate self-awareness and mindfulness in order to (to paraphrase his own words) help them become the person they’re meant to be in the world, hopefully growing towards that day by day. Rabbi Marc Margolius is the Senior Program Director at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. He hosts IJS’s daily mindfulness meditation sessions and teaches an online program called “Awareness in Action” designed to cultivate character through mindfulness.

Rabbi Margolius presents the three step process used by IJS:

• First, adopt a stance of non-judgmental curiosity by observing one’s own mind and reactions. This can be done by simply pausing.
• Next, be aware of having the possibility of choice, realizing that we have a range of options in responding to a stimulus.
• And finally, choose the value or set of values that one wants to use in responding.

Together, these steps can help us to have a response rather than a reaction. The approach draws at times from Jewish spiritual practice, but it can be useful for anyone, whatever one’s faith background or connection (or not) to a religion.

A transcript of our conversation is available here.

Related resources: An article co-authored by Andy Feldman and Rabbi Margolius in Government Executive on the value of mindfulness practices is here. The magazine also interviewed the co-authors for their podcast, available here.

To celebrate our 200^th interview, we are joined by one of the most respected people within the evidence and evaluation field, Dr. Naomi Goldstein, to share reflections on her 21-year career at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Human Services.

Dr. Goldstein (@NaomiGoldstein1) is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning, Research, and Evaluation at ACF. She will retire from federal service this week after a 21-year tenure at ACF, including becoming Director of the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in 2004 and Deputy Assistant Secretary in 2015. Beyond those important career achievements, it is her kindness, humility, candor and commitment — and, I would add, all with a sense of humor — that have made her such a valued colleagued and friend to so many over the years.

A transcript of our conversation is available here.

Learn more:

• Recent OPRE blog post by Dr. Goldstein: “How Do I Love My Job? Let Me Count the Ways“
• Previous podcast interviews:
  • Why evaluation policies are useful to results-focused federal agencies (with Molly Irwin)
  • Strengthening evaluation capacity within agencies

Colorado is a leader in the U.S. in terms of using evidence to guide state budget decisions, so that dollars flow to programs that are effective. It’s also a leader in terms of building evidence to better learn what works in key program areas. For example:

• State agencies are required by the governor’s budget office to show the evidence behind requested budget changes.
• In doing that, agencies use a framework called the “Evidence Continuum” that describes the stages of building and assessing program information.
• Also, the legislature now requires agencies to use consistent definitions of evidence-based programs in their budget requests.
• And Colorado is one of only a handful of states to have a dedicated fund to support program evaluations.

A recent report by the The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Results First initiative, titled “Colorado’s ‘Evidence Continuum’ Promotes Efficient, Effective Public Programs,” discusses the state’s progress in these areas. To get an overview, we are joined by one of its authors, Sara Dube who directs the Results First initiative at the The Pew Charitable Trusts.

An important area of innovation within higher-education policy in recent years has been tuition-free college policies — also known as Promise Programs — designed to make college more affordable and accessible. Our previous podcast interview with Professor Elizabeth Bell of Florida State University provided an overview of the topic. In this new interview, we focus further on state-level programs, including the fact that Promise Programs have spread to states of very different political leanings.

To do that, we are joined by Dr. Michelle Miller-Adams (@mmilleradams). She is the co-director of the Upjohn Institute’s place-based research initiative and is a national expert on tuition-free college initiatives. Her latest book is The Path to Free College: In Pursuit of Access, Equity, and Prosperity.

Tuition-free college policies have become a cornerstone of policymakers’ efforts to expand college access, affordability, and degree attainment. The movement began at the local level with initiatives such as the Kalamazoo Promise, but has since been taken to the state level, with 21 states currently operating Promise Programs.

To learn more about these important policies and the evidence behind them, we are joined by someone who has examined them closely, Dr. Elizabeth Bell (@PoliSciBell). She is an Assistant Professor at the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University and also serves as an Academic Affiliate for the Office of Evaluation Sciences within the federal government.

Arnold Ventures launched its evidence-based policy initiative in 2015 in large part to increase the number of social programs with strong evidence behind them. To do that, the team funds randomized controlled trials of programs in social policy whose prior evidence has shown the potential for sizable effects on educational achievement, earnings, and other important outcomes. To date it has funded over 100 RCTs — shown here — and disseminates findings from Arnold Ventures-funded RCTs as they become available. Programs backed by especially promising evidence, whether funded through Arnold Ventures or not, are highlighted on its Social Programs that Work website; discussions on research reporting and transparency are highlighted on its Straight Talk on Evidence (@NoSpinEvidence) website.

To hear lessons from that work and also broader observations from someone working to advance evidence-based policy for almost two decades, we are joined by David Anderson. He is the Vice President of Evidence-Based Policy at Arnold Ventures and previously served as the Vice President of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy.

Minnesota has been identified by several good-government organizations as one of the leaders in the nation on evidence-based policymaking. The Pew Charitable Trusts, for example, has noted that “Using evidence-based policymaking has enabled Minnesota…to provide better outcomes for residents, [and] improve the way research and evidence inform the budget and policymaking processes….”

One important piece of that story is how the state launched an Impact Evaluation Unit within  Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB). The Impact Evaluation Unit helps lead the development of program inventories used for evidence-based budgeting and also conducts rigorous program evaluations to help the state learn what works.

To learn more, we are joined by Dr. Weston Merrick (@WestonMerrick). He is a senior manager at MMB and leads the Impact Evaluation Unit.

Ohio’s Department of Education is one of the leading state agencies in the U.S. in terms of its focus on helping and encouraging school leaders to use evidence-based educational strategies and supports. For the past almost four years, Dr. Heather Boughton (@hrosemaryb) helped lead those efforts. She’s the former director of the Office of Research, Evaluation & Advanced Analytics within the Department. She served in the department for almost 13 years before starting a new role last month as Director of Education Policy Implementation at Results for America.

In our interview, she discusses the mission of her former office and then provides three pieces of advice based on her experience: 1) Use evidence to create a cycle of continuous improvement; 2) Understand that using evidence can be messy; and 3) See the use of evidence as a team effort. She also provides advice for state education departments that are earlier on the path to doing this type of work.

Anne Arundel County, Maryland, has a population of just under 600,000 and is south of Baltimore and East of Washington D.C., with the county seat being Annapolis. In 2018, under County Executive Steuart Pittman, the county launched a performance-focused office called ArundelStat. One of the key initiatives of the office so far has been developing performance plans for 30 county departments. Those plans are being used by top executive leadership within the county to track departmental performance trends and focus on and tackle priority performance challenges.

To learn more, we’re joined by Elizabeth Funsch. She is the founding manager of ArudelStat and, prior to that, served as a senior performance manager in Prince George’s County in Maryland.