Gov Innovator Podcast

What insights can public leaders gain from leading companies about building a culture of experimentation? To find out, we’re joined by Stefan Thomke, the author of the new book Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. Dr. Thomke is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and has published […] The post Creating a culture of experimentation within organizations: An interview with Stefan Thomke, Harvard Business School – Episode #171 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

Attracting a police force from diverse backgrounds is one important step in ensuring that citizens are well served by their police departments and have trust in the police. But what steps can police departments take that are effective in achieving that goal? The Behavioral Insights Team, in conjunction with the What Works Cities Initiative, set […] The post Using behavioral insights to help recruit diverse police candidates: An interview with Elizabeth Linos, University of California, Berkeley – Episode #170 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

Over the last two years, the Small Business Administration has made laudable progress in building and using evidence in order to learn what works and help programs improve. That includes launching an evaluation office and a chief data officer role within the CFO’s office, as well as creating a learning agenda to identify priority research […] The post How the Small Business Administration became a leader in evidence-based decision making: An interview with Jason Bossie, Director, Office of Performance Management, SBA – Episode #169 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

It has been estimated that more than half of Americans are saving too little to support an adequate lifestyle if they plan to retire at age 65. It was economist and recent Nobel prize winner Richard Thaler who suggested a fix: Make payroll retirement savings plans available to everyone and then by add design features […] The post How Oregon’s auto-enrollment IRA program, OregonSaves, helps state residents save for retirement: An interview with Lisa Massena, Executive Director, OregonSaves – Episode #168 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

Low-income and first-generation students enroll in and complete college at much lower rates than their more advantaged peers. This is particularly problematic because of the strong link between educational attainment and subsequent earnings, underscoring the need to find effective strategies that promote persistence and degree attainment. We profile two such programs that are making an […] The post Two promising strategies to promote college success for disadvantaged students: An interview with Lindsay Page, University of Pittsburgh, and Michael Weiss, MDRC – Episode #167 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently launched a pilot version of a new initiative called the Data Science CoLab, an eight-week-long data science training program. The first class, which kicked off in October 2017, included 25 employees from different agencies within HHS and with different levels of knowledge about using data. Participants applied […] The post How HHS’s Data Science CoLab catalyzes employee innovation: An interview with Will Yang, CoLab Director, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Episode #166 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, passed by Congress and signed by the President on February 9th, 2018, contains several noteworthy bright spots in the use of data and evidence-based policy. Those wins suggest there is continuing bipartisan support in Washington for using evidence, data and innovation to improve the results and cost-effectiveness of Federal […] The post Wins for data and evidence-based policy in the bipartisan budget deal: An interview with Nick Hart, Bipartisan Policy Center – Episode #165 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

A small but growing number of federal departments and agencies have created  evaluation policies that describe the principles that those agencies seek to promote when they conduct program evaluations. Those principles can include rigor, relevance, transparency, independence, and ethics. To learn more about evaluation policies and why they are useful to federal agencies, we are […] The post Why evaluation policies are useful to results-focused federal agencies: An interview with Naomi Goldstein, HHS, and Molly Irwin, DOL – Episode #164 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

How can program managers within public agencies — whether local, state or federal — use random assignment (in other words, a lottery) within programs to build evidence that can strengthen results and improve customer service? A good example comes from South Carolina. Its Medicaid program is administered through Managed Care Organizations, which offer different health care […] The post How program managers can use random assignment (i.e., a lottery) to build evidence that can improve customer service: An interview with Matthew Notowidigdo, Northwestern University – Episode #163 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

As the new report “Putting the Experiment Back in the Experimental Sites Initiative” discusses, the U.S. Department of Education’s “Ex Sites” initiative — in place in one form or another since the mid-1980s — is designed to allow the Department to grant flexibility to institutions of higher education to test and evaluate potential federal policy changes, […] The post Reforming the federal Experimental Sites initiative to better learn what works in higher ed: An interview with Amy Laitinen and Clare McCann, New America – Episode #162 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

The partnership between Stanford University and the San Francisco Unified School District is one of the best examples of a partnership between a university and a school district. Launched in 2009, the partnership matches researchers from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education with district leaders to create research projects to directly inform the school district’s work […] The post Insights from a leading researcher-practitioner partnership, between Stanford University and San Francisco’s school district: An interview with Laura Wentworth, California Education Partners – Episode #161 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

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 […] The post A primer on the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking’s recommendations: An interview with Nick Hart, Bipartisan Policy Center – Episode #160 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

Many interventions that aim to increase the cognitive or socioemotional skills of children and adolescents have shown positive results, but far too often their impacts quickly disappear as children get older. Some programs, in contrast, have shown longer-lasting effects. In a new study published in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Greg Duncan and […] The post Strategies to sustain program impacts for children and adolescents: An interview with Greg Duncan, Professor, University of California, Irvine – Episode #159 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

The bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was enacted in December 2015. ESSA gives states more opportunities to design their own educational systems, while also encouraging and sometimes requiring them to use evidence-based approaches that can help improve student outcomes. Our guest today, Thomas Kane, joins us for part two of our conversation about how states […] The post How states can use ESSA to focus education spending on what works: An interview with Tom Kane, Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education – Episode #157 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

Social Impact Bonds, also called Pay for Success projects in the U.S., draw on private sources of capital to fund preventive services, with governments acting as the outcome funders, paying back the money with a profit if specific targets are met. The approach started in the U.K. and is now being used in many different […] The post The use of impact bonds around the world: An interview with Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Fellow, Center for Universal Education, The Brookings Institution – Episode #158 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

Project Evident (@project_evident) launched earlier this year to help nonprofit leaders and their funders develop and implement multi-year evidence-building plans – plans that can help those nonprofits to provide evidence-based programs. The effort is lead by Kelly Fitzsimmons, formerly of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and Scott Cody, formerly of Mathematica. One of the underlying motivations for […] The post Helping nonprofits build and use evidence through Project Evident: An interview with Kelly Fitzsimmons, Founder and Managing Director, Project Evident – Episode #156 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

The Connecticut Green Bank (@CTGreenBank) is designed to help mobilize more private investment and accelerate the growth of green energy, such as solar power, in order to create jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lower energy bills. It is the nation’s first state-sponsored bank to promote lower cost financing for clean energy. Since 2011, for […] The post How the Connecticut Green Bank is catalyzing green energy infrastructure: An interview with Bryan Garcia, President and CEO, CT Green Bank – Episode #155 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

The Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) recently celebrated five years of C-Stat, its performance management and leadership strategy and one of the leading examples in the U.S. of data-informed decision making in human services. Through C-Stat, CDHS reviews about 100 measures each month. Two-thirds of those measures have maintained or beat their goals set in […] The post Insights from C-Stat in Colorado at year 5: An interview with Reggie Bicha, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Human Services – Episode #154 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

In 2016, the District of Columbia launched The Lab @ DC, based in the Office of the City Administrator within the Office of Mayor Muriel Bowser. Its mission: To embed the scientific method into the heart of day-to-day governance of the city to provide decision makers with high-quality evidence in order to improve results for the city. […] The post Launching an applied research team within city government: An interview with David Yokum, Director, The Lab @ DC – Interview #153 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.

Statistics New Zealand (@Stats_NZ) is the government department of New Zealand charged with collecting and producing statistical information. It is known as a leader in terms of linking data from different data sets in order to enable research and insights into important and complex policy challenges with the goal of improving outcomes for New Zealanders. For over […] The post How New Zealand links data from public data sets to address important policy challenges: An interview with Kelvin Watson, Deputy Chief Executive, Statistics New Zealand – Episode #152 appeared first on Gov Innovator podcast.