---
title: Policy Program
group: Reach
order: 5
summary: Applies Charitology’s research to public budgets for aid and social programs, publishing analysis of their evidence, their mix of relief and prevention and their long-run costs.
status: live
statusNote: A policy brief workspace compares a stated baseline and options, sourced claims, equity and participation, uncertainty and follow-up tasks. Optional discounted monetary scenarios show their assumptions without ranking options or claiming government adoption.
conditions: [symptom-trap, short-horizon]
firstMilestone: Export one draft options brief with evidence gaps, distributional questions and a review plan. Publication as a reviewed analysis and use by agencies remain future work.
help:
  - Open an issue labeled program proposing a public program or budget line for a first analysis.
  - Share public evaluation plans or learning agendas published by government agencies.
  - Offer to review the first analysis if you work in public budgeting or evaluation.
related: [/open-problems/the-government-question/, /open-problems/discounting-the-future/, /record/country-profiles/, /programs/evidence-reviews/]
sources:
  - title: What Works Network
    publisher: GOV.UK
    url: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/what-works-network
  - title: 'H.R.4174, Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018'
    publisher: Congress.gov, Library of Congress
    year: 2019
    url: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4174
---

## Use the policy brief workspace

[Jump to the working workspace](#pw-title).

Set the decision, jurisdiction, population, status quo and time horizon below. Describe feasible alternatives and their causal assumptions, then attach evidence claims, limits, equity questions and a review plan. The draft keeps unpriced outcomes and missing voices visible.

Optional monetary scenarios use incremental costs and benefits relative to your baseline in a common price-year unit. Upfront cost occurs at year zero; constant annual costs and benefits occur at year end. A low-to-high benefit range is a scenario, not a confidence interval. The calculator does not add inflation, risk or distribution weights, price rights or recommend an option. Enter zero and describe an unpriced effect when monetization is inappropriate.

Export a complete Markdown options brief, CSV inputs and calculations or an editable JSON backup. Nothing is filed with a government or published. The review, research and adoption goals below remain proposals.

## What it is

Public budgets for aid and social programs face the same questions as private giving: what works, where on the [depth scale](/method/#depth) the money acts and how far ahead it looks. The Policy Program would apply Charitology’s research to those budgets and publish what it finds for anyone to use.

## How it works

Each analysis would take one public program or budget line and ask four questions. What does the evidence say about the interventions it pays for, drawing on [Evidence Reviews](/programs/evidence-reviews/)? How is the money split between relief, repair, prevention, structure and source? What are its costs and benefits over ten or twenty years, not just one budget cycle? And who was consulted on its design, including the people it serves?

The program would build on government work that already exists. The UK’s What Works Network, made up of independent What Works Centres, uses evidence to improve how public services are designed and delivered. In the United States, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, which became law in January 2019, requires covered federal agencies to plan evidence-building and designate evaluation officers.

The program would publish analysis. It wouldn’t lobby for bills, endorse candidates or take sides between parties.

## Why it matters for the system

Charitology’s hypothesis is that public budgets feel the same pulls as private giving. The [Symptom Trap](/diagnosis/symptom-trap/) favors relief that is visible today, and the [Short Horizon](/diagnosis/short-horizon/) favors results that show up within a budget cycle, while the payoff from prevention can take years. Showing a program’s depth mix and long-run costs would give budget makers the view Charitology asks private givers to take, and would test whether the hypothesis holds for public money.

## Risks and limits

Private analysis of public money raises its own question about influence without accountability. That is [Open Problem 21, the Government Question](/open-problems/the-government-question/). The program would publish its methods and data, invite the agencies it studies to respond and stay out of partisan politics.

## What success looks like

Within five years, the program has published analyses of several public programs and at least one has been cited in a public budget debate. Agencies have used its depth-and-horizon method in their own evaluations.