Preface

In the government, it’s all about results these days. The public is increasingly asking: What have you done for me lately? The pressure is on to cut budgets despite ever-increasing work demands. Performance budgeting is the latest in a succession of government initiatives designed to make government work better and be more accountable to taxpayers. Good performance budgets link dollars to results—making government programs more accountable and more efficient.

You may be in the process of implementing or refining your performance budget and corresponding performance reports. Where do you turn for help? The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) offers only broad and vague guidance—it tells you which elements to include in your analysis and reports, but you have to pick the format. You can review your agency’s previous performance budgets and reports, but how can you tell whether or not those documents have really been effective?

Performance budgeting is difficult. The purpose of this book is to ease your burden a bit. I begin by putting performance budgeting into a historical framework and explaining why it is such a good idea. I then focus on recent performance results from federal agencies, both large and small. In these sections I highlight what is particularly good—what works—so you can emulate those techniques. I also identify elements that don’t work as well, so you can learn what techniques to avoid.

If you work for a state or local government, you are not bound by the OMB Circular A-11 guidance described in this book, but there is plenty of relevant information to use where you work. While I’ve concentrated on federal agencies for my examples, the principles of good performance budgeting are the same regardless of venue.

My goal is to provide informative examples and evaluation tools for you to use to apply performance budgeting techniques at your own organization. This is not a cookbook for performance budgeting; it’s more of a discussion about the ingredients. It is up to you to choose the tasty ones and incorporate them in your own recipe.

William G. Arnold
Heath, Ohio