From the Social Science Research Council (SSRC):

State and local governments are responsible for delivering vital public goods and services, including health, education, safety, clean energy, and growth-oriented infrastructure. Yet these governments have little capacity to build the data and evaluation infrastructures that would enable more effective delivery of these important goods and services.

In partnership with several universities in the SSRC’s College and University Fund for the Social Sciences, SSRC recently co-authored a Day One 2025 Policy Memo for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) calling on the newly elected Congress to establish a network of “Policy Experiment Stations” or policy innovation labs in every state. These labs, hosted by universities and supported by federal and state appropriations, would provide state and local governments with much needed capacity to build integrated data infrastructures and evaluate the efficacy of their programs and policies.

Read more on the FAS website.