Quattro Punti: Four Steps to Budgeting and Performance Management - Part II

Source: Thad Juszczak, Public Manager, Volume: 38 Issue: 3, Fall 2009

Budgeting and performance management (B&PM) is a tool for anyone interested in improving government agency performance. The Summer 2009 issue of The Public Manager began a review of the four steps (quattro punti) to B&PM. Part I examined the first two steps: 1) What are you doing and how are you doing it? and 2) How do you measure success? This article reviews the next two steps in the equation. Terza Punto addresses the question: How Much Will It Cost? Government organizations typically concern themselves with two different sets of B&PM cost questions: How much will it cost to run this organization next year? and What will it cost to change the performance level? The basic answer to the first question is relatively easy to calculate. However, if you want to make changes in planned performance levels from last year's budget, you need a different level of cost detail. Quarto Punto addresses the question: How Are You Going to Get There? Tasks in the first three B&PM steps include identifying goals, objectives, or activities that need to be changed, creating performance measures and targets, and calculating the cost of performance changes. In the next step, we need to implement changes, such as changing organizational structures, setting performance targets, assembling a budget, and executing the budget.