THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2024 29 agencies about progress when measured against their goals, and what the agencies plan to do differently given this evolving body of evidence. Indirectly, Congress and the oversight organizations would still receive ample information about progress and performance, but in a way that cultivates a culture of self-scrutiny at the agencies and a tolerance among oversight professionals for a learning curve on immensely complex issues. Indeed, if failures lead to demonstrable learning and verifiable improvement, it will become less controversial for a senior U.S. official to admit to facing significant challenges. Under this model, senior officials would still be held accountable for foreign assistance failures, but the basis for those failures would instead revolve around, for example, asking the wrong questions, doing sloppy data collection and management, having insufficient or unqualified personnel to translate that data into actionable evidence, and failing to take any actionable evidence about what works and what doesn’t and do something meaningful with it. Too many decisions at State and other agencies are based on the judgment of senior officials, many of whom have significant personal experience but often rely on that experience as a sacred oracle. When a strategy or program fails, if these officials can credibly tell Congress, “We simply followed the available evidence,” it helps create a more reliable North Star, brings attention back to the institution rather than a specific official, and forces the more important question, “Why didn’t the evidence lead to success?” What the Agencies Can Do It may be tempting for agencies to think that responsibility for kickstarting reforms such as these rests entirely with Congress and oversight organizations, but the agencies themselves have more power than they think. As agencies have the most to gain from this shift, State, USAID, and others should lean into it. First, they should find opportunities big and small to demonstrate how learning has improved their work. This will require investing more in research capacity—from data
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