Analysis

This memo reviews how the federal government uses evidence and analysis to support policy decisions. Specifically, the memo reviews the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS), which is one of thirteen statistical agencies that gather evidence within the federal government. Research conducted on the SNAP and WIC program by the ERS is reviewed and presented. 

This literature review analyzes the most commonly identified critical success factors (CSFs) for infrastructure related public-private partnerships. The literature included in this review are scholarly articles  from 2015 to 2022 that discussed CSFs. The search used keywords such as “public- private partnerships”, “critical success factors”, “infrastructure”, and “transportation” to select the literature. In total, 11 articles were assessed and the majority of the articles selected are from top P3 scholars in the fields of public administration, urban policy and planning, project management, and construction or engineering fields. The articles selected also include 5 studies from developing countries, 4 from developed countries, with more than 8 countries throughout the selected literature in total. Overall, the literature review contained many common critical success factors between developing and developed countries, but severely lacked sufficient studies on P3s in the United States specifically.

This discussion post responds to the professor's question about how evidence-based policy is actually practiced. There are several key takeaways including the use of "policy-based evidence", lack of acceptance within government institutions, and the valuable role that external stakeholders provide in developing evidence.