The Age of Accountability: Extension’s Public Value

1. The Age of Accountability:Extension’s Public Value Teresa McCoy Assistant Director Evaluation & Assessment

2. Extension’s Public Value Think about your career so far in Extension. How have we tried to prove our value (to be accountable)?

3. Public Value • 1887 --Study of Public Administration • 1911 -- Mother’s Pension • 1912 -- Election of Wilson • 1914 • Smith-Lever called for “a full detailed report of its operations” • 1921 • Government Accounting Office (now Government Accountability Office)

4. Public Value • Jump Forward • 1960s and The Great Society • So, we now have … PROGRAMS! • Therefore, we have program evaluation: The systematic process of determining the worth of a person, product, or program.

5. ‘70s & ‘80s ‘90s 2000 Practice Change: Adoption & application of new information (follow up interviews & surveys) Inputs: Time, Money, Materials Numbers Reached, Frequency of Contact, etc. (quantitative records) KASA Change: Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills, Aspirations (pre and post testing, focus groups)

6. The Present -- IMPACTS: Condition change – from focus on individual to focus on societal and public conditions

7. MCE’s Public Value • This transition from individual focus to condition focus is the foundation for issues-based programming with multidisciplinary teams, • Which is required to create large-scale impacts in conditions.

8. MCE’s Public Value Examples: • Every $1 spent on MCE's Expanded Food & Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) saves $10.64 in future health care costs related to foodborne and chronic illnesses and low birth weight babies. In 2008, 1,617 families in seven counties learned how to eat better and spend their food dollars wisely. MCE's partnership with EFNEP and relevant counties will end up saving Maryland citizens more than $15 million.

9. MCE’s Public Value Examples: • People with diabetes who control their disease by keeping their blood glucose down cost employers only $24 a month, compared with the $115 a month for people with diabetes who do not control their blood glucose. 390individuals with diabetes in Western Maryland gained knowledge and changed their lifestyles through an MCE diabetes education program, resulting in an estimated savings in health care costs of $425,000.

10. MCE’s Public Value Examples: • The Baltimore City Master Gardener Community Garden Program in one year saved the city over $137,800 through the equivalent of 3.2 employee years of effort in garden development, decreased property maintenance costs, and donations of plant material. Community gardens under Cooperative Extension advisement amount to 11 acres throughout Baltimore City and raised over 12 tons of produce, saving gardeners $31,000.00 in food costs.

11. Contribution v. Attribution Condition Change: We need to accept the fact that what we are doing is measuring with the aim of reducing the uncertainty about the contribution made, not proving the contribution made.

12. Beyond 2009 Transparency Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account—to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day—because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.– President Barack Obama

13. What is MCE’s Value? We have to connect the dots and answer that question if we want to be around in the future. Issue-Based Programs Multidisciplinary Teams Evaluation