The Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES) is an interdisciplinary team that brings diverse scientific expertise to Federal agencies and translates research insights into concrete recommendations for how to improve Federal programs, policies, and operations. OES then collaborates directly with agencies to implement, rigorously test, and evaluate the impact of
these changes.
Based at the General Services Administration (GSA), OES supports GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy’s mission to serve agencies by helping them to use policies, evidence, and analysis to drive efficiency, savings, and improved mission performance. At GSA, OES is uniquely situated to deploy technical support to agencies across the Federal government,
provide an independent yet intragovernmental perspective, and develop standards for high-quality rapid-cycle evaluations in the government environment. OES’ mission and operating model involve engaging a wide variety of agencies to answer high-priority questions, often developing iterative collaborations over multiple years to fill evidence gaps.
Since 2015, OES and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have collaborated to apply insights from behavioral sciences and conduct rigorous, low-cost evaluations on child and maternal health and infectious diseases programs around the world. The goal of the collaborations is to identify cost-effective, evidence-based changes that can be
scaled for broader impact.
Institutional Representative: Kelly Bidwell, Director
Kelly joined the team as a Fellow in 2013, and took on the role as OES Director in 2016. Kelly provides the direction and oversight of the team, manages the staff and budget, coordinates with GSA leadership, and ensures scientific protocols and standards are met across the OES portfolio. Kelly leads strategic conversations with government-wide leadership to identify evidence gaps and evidence generation opportunities, feasible evaluation plans which can be implemented in agency operational and budget constraints, government-wide resource and training needs, and aims to ensure OES is responsive to growing and changing agency demands. Kelly has also built a portfolio of global health projects with USAID, led early collaborations with the VA, and supports and oversees all of OES’ ongoing evaluations. Kelly holds a MA in International Affairs from Columbia University, where she focused on economic development, education and evaluation methods. In her previous roles at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Kelly served in technical and management positions launching, supervising and running numerous randomized control trials across sectors, leading training and dissemination efforts internationally, launching and growing programs and country offices, and supporting the use of impact evaluations and rigorous evidence for informed and effective policy making with numerous governments. Kelly lived and worked abroad, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, for much of her professional career prior to joining GSA.
The Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES) is an interdisciplinary team that brings diverse scientific expertise to Federal agencies and translates research insights into concrete recommendations for how to improve Federal programs, policies, and operations. OES then collaborates directly with agencies to implement, rigorously test, and evaluate the impact ofthese changes. Based at the General Services Administration (GSA), OES supports GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy’s mission to serve agencies by helping them to use policies, evidence, and analysis to drive efficiency, savings, and improved mission performance. At GSA, OES is uniquely situated to deploy technical support to agencies across the Federal…