Learning agendas: Motivation, engagement, and potential

Abstract

In 2017, the U.S. Commission on Evidence‐Based Policymaking recommended that federal agencies produce strategic plans focused on research and evaluation, referred to as learning agendas. This requirement was later incorporated into the Foundations for Evidence‐Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act) for the 24 largest federal agencies. Prior to the Evidence Act, only a few federal agencies had experimented with learning agendas, a relatively new concept in the evaluation literature. Learning agendas hold potential for supporting organizational strategic planning that focuses on the generation of relevant knowledge for decision‐makers, organizational leaders, and stakeholders. An inclusively‐ and strategically‐developed learning agenda provides a list of important questions as well as plans for addressing the questions, balancing the interests, informational needs, and time horizons for different organizational decision‐makers. We draw upon the policy design and the evaluation capacity building literature, our analysis of existing learning agendas, and interviews with federal evaluation leaders who guided their development to describe how the process of developing a learning agenda can support intentional learning and impactful evaluation practice within public agencies. Our work should contribute to the development of both theory and practice regarding the implementation of the new expectation to produce learning agendas in federal agencies that contribute to the increased use of evaluation and evidence in policymaking.