Ricardo Basurto-Dávila, head of the County’s Office of Evaluation, Performance and Analytics is headed to Cambridge, Massachusetts this week to take part in a panel discussion on climate action and the County’s role in it.
The climate action panel is organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Basurto-Dávila will talk generally about the County draft Climate Action Plan, actions the County could take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the unincorporated areas and from County facilities and its vehicle fleet. And he will talk specifically about how the Office of Evaluation, Performance and Analytics (OEPA) could help evaluate the effectiveness of some of those actions.
The County created OEPA in 2021 to use modern analytics to study the County’s vast collection of data in new ways. In part, to look for patterns, trends and associations that can help County decision makers improve programs, services and policies. That particularly includes top priorities including homelessness, mental health, equity, racial justice and climate action.
The County’s department of Planning & Development Services plans to bring the draft Climate Action Plan to the Board of Supervisors for consideration in September.
Basurto-Dávila’s participation on the climate panel continues a working relationship that started last year between OEPA and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) also known as J-PAL North America. The group is located at MIT.
In November, OEPA was chosen to team up with J-PAL for the poverty action lab to provide technical assistance to help evaluate a County pilot program that provide rent subsidies to low-income seniors to keep them from homelessness. That program is called the Shallow Rental Subsidy program.
In June five County employees were awarded tuition and travel expenses to take part in a weeklong J-PAL course at MIT. The course focused on using randomized evaluations to study social programs.
