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| 12 Nov 2025 | |
| Evidence Act Hub |
Annual evaluation plans are agency documents describing the “significant” evaluation activities planned for the upcoming federal fiscal year, including the key questions each evaluation will address, the methods to be used, and how findings will be disseminated and used for decision-making. While learning agendas span four years and may include all types of evidence-building activities, annual evaluation plans focus specifically on evaluation projects, which are systematic assessments of programs, policies, or processes that generate evidence about effectiveness, efficiency, and outcomes.
Required to be published each February alongside annual performance plans, these documents operationalize learning agenda priorities into evaluation projects with specific timelines. Annual evaluation plans enable stakeholders—Congress, researchers, program beneficiaries, and the public—to understand what agencies plan to study and how, facilitating collaboration and preventing duplication. As OMB M-21-27 states, producing evaluation plans is important to developing “processes and practices that establish habitual and routine reliance on evidence across agency functions and demand new or better evidence when it is needed.” The evidence produced by the activities identified in annual evaluation plans is expected to inform future cycles of learning agendas and subsequent evaluation plans.
