While Democrats and Republicans can’t seem to agree on much these days, there was a bright spot for bipartisanship recently: Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray joined together to praise the recommendations of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking (CEP), which Ryan and Murray launched last year. The Commission was co-chaired by Katharine Abraham of the University of Maryland and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution.
Some of the Commission’s key recommendations focus on making the most of the data the government already collects by giving qualified researchers—including academics as well as evaluation experts within government—greater access to data from government programs and surveys. At the same time, the CEP calls for strengthening privacy protections to ensure that those data are not misused. It also recommends ways that departments can increase their evidence capacity, meaning their ability to use and build evidence about what works.
To learn more, we are joined by Nick Hart (@NickrHart) who served as the Policy and Research Director for the Commission. Today he is the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Evidence-Based Policymaking Initiative.