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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The Short Answer Progress reports may address one or more of the following: An actual turning of one or more curves: This is the most rare kind of event to report - when it is possible to see a change in direction away from the baseline. An improvement in client results which contributes to turning [...]
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 [...]
The Short Answer (1) Population well-being is clearly beyond the responsibility of any one organization or any one level of government. It is beyond government itself. It requires a whole range of public and private partners. (2) Programs and agencies serve client and customer groups that are (almost always) less than the total [...]
The Short Answer Indicators are about whole populations. Performance measures are about client populations. Indicators are usually about peoples' lives, whether or not they receive any service. Performance measures are usually about people who receive service. Indicators are proxies for the well-being of whole populations, and necessarily matters of approximation and compromise. Performance measures are about a known [...]