Explore the vast range of titles available.

Despite academic findings that performance information seldom is used in appropriations decisions, many professional organizations and governments continue to press for integrating performance information into local public management, planning, and budgeting processes. Is it possible to reconcile such inconsistencies? Looking beyond the executive— legislative relationship and departmental appropriations, the author examines the budget implications of applying performance information at the subdepartmental program level. Case analysis of Indianapolis's IndyStat initiative underscores that performance measurement application is positively related to intradepartmental program budget changes. Hence, performance-based budgeting (PBB) can improve local budgeting despite severe political constraints. Still, successful use of PBB requires strong executive leadership, and its effects remain less visible at the departmental level or within the wider political arena of legislative bargaining. The author concludes by recommending some rethinking of the current analytical focus of PBB both in future research as well as recommended practice.

The administration of President Barack Obama, like those of his immediate predecessors, is focused on trying to improve the quality of, and use of, performance data. The federal government has been pursuing performance-informed budget reforms for more than 50 years. Most recently, the Bush administration reforms included the President's Management Agenda and the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The Obama administration reforms include: measuring the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; reducing or eliminating poorly-performing programs; setting a limited number of short-term, high-priority performance goals; and funding detailed program evaluations. The administration is taking a more agency-driven approach than the Bush administration, but continues to find it challenging to move beyond production of performance data to its use. There should be opportunities to show how performance information can be used for decision making, given the change in the political climate and the needs to reduce spending and the deficit. Historically, there has been little appetite in the Congress for evidence-based decision making. The administration, however, can continue to demonstrate how federal agencies can use performance information to more effectively manage programs.

The authors examine the track record of applying performance-based budgeting (PBB) across three time periods within a sample of U.S. state governments: (1) throughout the 1990s, (2) in the early 2000s, and (3) during the Great Recession. State-level PBB is analyzed according to four elements: (1) the development of performance measures, (2) its applicability to budgeting and management processes, (3) its utility across the business cycle, and (4) its usefulness for budget players. An analytical framework is devised that highlights the \"publicness\" of American government, draws on the principal—agent model, and considers incentive mechanisms theory. Findings confirm that a good performance measurement system takes time to develop and operate well and that PBB functions more effectively for executive management than legislative purposes. PBB is used more by the states during strong economic times as opposed to during economic downturns. More importantly, PBB is only selectively applied by legislators in most states, whereas top executive policy makers, middle managers, and staff embrace and utilize PBB systems more extensively.

Performance-based budgeting (PBB), defined as a process for developing and incorporating measurements of the performance of government operations, services, and programs into the budget process, is intended to introduce some \"rationality\" into a traditionally subjective and political decision-making process. Still, PBB remains a target of naysayers. Critics allege that PBB is complicated, too data driven, and incompatible with the principles of democratic governance. These arguments against PBB echo the ongoing criticisms against the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which matches two teams in a national collegiate football championship game while pairing other top teams in competitive contests in additional bowl games. This symposium examines PBB as it is applied in American governments, in part to address the foregoing criticisms. Obviously, PBB and the BCS are not perfect, but experience shows that these rational decision aids can succeed in their intended purposes. In a decade or two, perhaps PBB will experience a similar level of success and enthusiasm in the arena of public budgeting.

Professor Philip G. Joyce has provided a very informative overview of the Barack Obama administration's performance agenda that places that agenda in the recent and longer-term history of the federal government's performance initiatives. My comments will highlight only a few of the points that this scholar makes in his paper that are particularly important elements of a performance agenda. These elements include: (1) employing a governance perspective on performance, (2) involving Congress, (3) building agencies capacity, (4) ensuring transparency, and (5) fostering civic engagement. Given my experience in federal service and in the evaluation and analysis of U.S. agency programs and budgets, I provide my perspective on each of these elements. Adapted from the source document.

Dr. Yilin Hou, Robin S. Lunsford, Katy C. Sides, and Kelsey A. Jones present a well-researched paper, State Performance-Based Budgeting in Boom and Bust Years: An Analytical Framework and Survey of the States. The paper provides a good overview of performance budgeting as well as its use -- or lack of use -- at the state government level during good and bad economic periods in the United States. The scholars employ an analysis of 11 states to examine and describe how these governments have used performance budgeting across specific time periods. The authors make two key points first, that performance budgeting has been a more effective and useful tool for management than for the influence of budgetary decision making and, second, that performance budgeting has been used less in lean times than in robust economic periods. The papers analysis seeks to test the assertion made by some that performance information can be used effectively in both good and bad fiscal times. Adapted from the source document.

In his essay PBB in American Local Governments: Its More than a Management Tool, Dr. Alfred Tat-Kei Ho poses the question, is performance budgeting dead? Of course, Ho's question is a rhetorical one. Indeed, performance budgeting is not dead. Still, the practice faces a significant threat posed by the current fiscal crisis that local governments are enduring. Traveling about the country in my role as senior management associate for the International City/County Management Associations Center for Performance Measurement (CPM), I visit local governments that are using or implementing performance budgeting effectively to help them focus their efforts and allocate scarce resources to address priority issues. It is from such experiences that I base these comments regarding Ho's research and conclusions about PBB practice in American local governments. Adapted from the source document.

Lesotho has been implementing financial management reforms, including performance-based budgeting (PBB) since 2005 in an effort to increase accountability, transparency and effectiveness in governance, yet little is known about how these efforts are affecting the health sector. Supported by several development partners and $24 million in external resources, the PBB reform is intended to strengthen government capacity to manage aid funds directly and to target assistance to pressing social priorities. This study designed and tested a methodology for measuring implementation progress for PBB reform in the hospital sector in Lesotho. We found that despite some efforts on the national level to promote and support reform implementation, staff at the hospital level were largely unaware of the purpose of the reform and had made almost no progress in transforming institutions and systems to fully realize reform goals. Problems can be traced to a complex reform design, inadequate personnel and capacity to implement, professional boundaries between financial and clinical personnel and weak leadership. The Lesotho reform experience suggests that less complex designs for budget reform, better adapted to the context and realities of health sectors in developing countries, may be needed to improve governance. It also highlights the importance of measuring reform implementation at the sectoral level.

While most states have had legal requirements in place to conduct performance-based budgeting (PBB) for some time, little research exists that examines the content of these laws. This research examines PBB laws in states that received the highest and lowest scores from the most recent Government Performance Project (GPP) in budgeting for performance. Specifically, we examine the components of state laws that prescribe performance measurement development and protocols for measurement applicability in the budgetary process. Currently, 39 states have code prescribing some sort of performance-based budgeting process. Findings here indicate that all states scored by the GPP as strong users of performance information for budgetary decision making have PBB law, while just over half of states scored as weak in the use of this information to aid decision making have such law. Also, states scored as strong users of performance information for budgetary decision making have PBB laws that are \"more comprehensive\" than those of states scored as weaker users of such information. That is, state leaders in budgeting for performance have laws more likely to include specifics regarding performance measurement applicability across all budgeting phases-including measurement linkages to strategic plans, measurement reporting requirements, and stipulations regarding measurement and results evaluation and auditing. Perhaps most importantly, findings indicate that state leaders in budgeting for performance have PBB laws that codify shared responsibility among budgeting participants in developing and using performance information.

Government is challenged by the simultaneous use of contracting out and performance measurement. The coexistence of these two phenomena brings up issues of accountability and performance transparency in government. The performance measurement tool used by the Bush administration, the performance assessment rating tool (PART), includes specific performance measurements regarding the use of third parties and contractors. Yet PART has been viewed as a politicized performance measurement tool. We attempt to look at the way that agency PART scores are affected by the prevalence of private contracting and procurement, contractor competition and the use of performance-based contracts. Through the lens of contracting and governance, our analysis supports the observation that the PART scores are politicized. Lessons are drawn for performance measurement in general.