(a) The Federal awarding agency must measure the recipient’s performance to show achievement of program goals and objectives, share lessons learned, improve program outcomes, and foster adoption of promising practices. Program goals and objectives should be derived from program planning and design. See § 200.202 for more information. Where appropriate, the Federal award may include specific program goals, indicators, targets, baseline data, data collection, or expected outcomes (such as outputs, or services performance or public impacts of any of these) with an expected timeline for accomplishment. Where applicable, this should also include any performance measures or independent sources of data that may be used to measure progress. The Federal awarding agency will determine how performance progress is measured, which may differ by program. Performance measurement progress must be both measured and reported. See § 200.329 for more information on monitoring program performance. The Federal awarding agency may include program-specific requirements, as applicable. These requirements must be aligned, to the extent permitted by law, with the Federal awarding agency strategic goals, strategic objectives or performance goals that are relevant to the program. See also OMB Circular A-11, Preparation, Submission, and Execution of the Budget Part 6.

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(b) The Federal awarding agency should provide recipients with clear performance goals, indicators, targets, and baseline data as described in § 200.211. Performance reporting frequency and content should be established to not only allow the Federal awarding agency to understand the recipient progress but also to facilitate identification of promising practices among recipients and build the evidence upon which the Federal awarding agency’s program and performance decisions are made. See § 200.328 for more information on reporting program performance.

(c) This provision is designed to operate in tandem with evidence-related statutes (e.g.; The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, which emphasizes collaboration and coordination to advance data and evidence-building functions in the Federal government). The Federal awarding agency should also specify any requirements of award recipients’ participation in a federally funded evaluation, and any evaluation activities required to be conducted by the Federal award.