About Mark Friedman

Mark Friedman is the author of the book Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough: How to Produce Measurable Improvements for Customers and Communities. He is the Director of the Fiscal Policy Studies Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, best known for his international work on Results-Based Accountability (RBA), a framework for turning data into action.

2.13 How do we create an action plan and budget?

The Short Answer 1.  An action plan describes who will do what, when and how. Action plans are developed after your strategy is developed. For each element of a strategy, identify tasks down the left column. Across the top, identify who is responsible for completing the task, and beginning and ending dates. Add a column [...]

2022-06-16T11:23:08-04:00By |Categories: RBA Implementation Guide|Tags: , |0 Comments

2.14 How do I finance a results-based plan?

The Short Answer 1. Make sure the action agenda drives financing and not the other way around. 2. Consider financing as a matter of packaging together many different resources. No single financing source will do the job. 3. Stretch your resources by using them to leverage other resources. Seek funding options in the following [...]

2.15 OK, so what’s the link to the budget?

The Short Answer 1. Budgets are about choices. And results based budgeting (ends to means thinking, talk to action thinking) means we will have better choices. It does not mean that we will make better choices, but we will have better choices. 2. Budgets are about allocating scarce resources. Results based budgeting does not presume [...]

2017-02-20T22:47:47-05:00By |Categories: RBA Implementation Guide|Tags: , |0 Comments

2.16 How do we create a Family and Children’s Budget

The Short Answer 1. Study what others have done. Don't reinvent the wheel. 2. You will need political and organizational sponsorship, access to data and paid or volunteer staff with good financial analytical skills. 3. Design what you want the budget document and analyses to look like at the beginning of the process and work [...]

2.17 How do we create a Cost of Bad Results report and what do we do with it?

The Short Answer 1. Base your analysis on the answers these two questions: Question 1: What are the expenditures we want to go down in the long run because we need less of it? Questions 2: What expenditures are embedded in these that are today devoted to reducing the cost of bad results? 2. Follow [...]

2.18 How do we present a results-based plan to the public, to political leadership?

The Short Answer 1. Organize the presentation to match the Results-Based Accountability thinking process. Start off with the results we want, then experience, then indicators, then baselines, then the story behind the baselines, the partners, our what works strategy, and what we propose to do. 2. Include a brief (one page) summary of the thinking [...]

2017-02-20T22:47:47-05:00By |Categories: RBA Implementation Guide|Tags: |0 Comments

2.19 How can we get more flexibility in the use of the money in the service system?

The Short Answer 1. Fund flexibility is a means to the ends of better results for children, adults, families and communities. It is not an end in itself. 2. Create individual child case level flexibility through wrap around: Take all the money that is being spent on a child by the various service systems. Allow [...]

2017-02-20T22:47:47-05:00By |Categories: RBA Implementation Guide|Tags: |0 Comments

2.20 How do we oversee the implementation of a results-based plan?

The Short Answer Create a regular (i.e. monthly or quarterly) review process which considers: Are the elements of the plan being implemented on time?  A common format for an implementation plan lists the tasks (or goals and objectives) down the leftmost column, and then tracks across the top: description of the task, primary and secondary [...]

2018-09-11T15:21:25-04:00By |Categories: RBA Implementation Guide|Tags: |0 Comments

3.1 What are the basic ideas behind performance accountability?

The Short Answer (from 1.1)  1. Choose among the many approaches to performance measurement. Make sure it makes sense to you, make sure it is useful to managers, make sure it addresses the most important measures, those that tell you whether and to what extent clients/customers are better off, and make sure it get you from talk [...]