Presented by Jennifer Hamilton, Senior Study Director, Westat and David Bernstein, Senior Study Director, Westat. Opinions are our own. The majority of US federal government evaluations are conducted by external evaluators. However, conducting evaluations is just one of the roles that external evaluators can play to help expand and build evaluation capacity in federal agencies. This presentation focused on some of the challenges of involving contractors within the federal evaluation framework, and offer potential solutions to those challenges. In particular, the presentation focused on the role that external evaluators can play in building evaluation capacity. The presentation addressed four specific areas: facilitating education of federal staff (internal evaluators and program staff) through education and training; addressing resource issues by expanding federal capacity to design and conduct evaluations; help ensure continuous use of evaluation methods and results; and developing increased evaluation capacity by expanding skill sets and methodologies available to support federal evaluation and accountability.#evaluationcapacitybuilding #USFederalGovernment #2016Conference #evaluationcontracting