Budgeters' Views of State Performance‐Budgeting Systems: Distinctions across Branches

Abstract

Budgeters' Views of State Performance-Budgeting Systems: Distinctions across BranchesGiven that a majority of states have had some sort of performance-budgeting initiative on the books for several years, how has implementation of such reform progressed? To answer this question, we surveyed legislative and executive budgeters from the 50 states, asking them for their impressions of performance-budgeting implementation in their state. Specifically, we asked these budget officers about the reasons for introducing performance budgeting in their state; the types of activities required of their system; responsible oversight bodies; extent of application across state agencies and departments; and perceived levels of effectiveness and problems experienced with implementation of the budget reform. Our findings indicate that implementation of performance-based budgeting systems is proceeding slowly. While there are some benefits to highlight, results show that implementing performance budgeting is not without problems-perhaps the greatest being differing perceptions of use and success among budget players, particularly across branches of government. Julia E. Melkers is an associate professor of public administration at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. Her teaching and research interests are performance measurement, public management, and science-and technology-based economic development. She has worked with several governmental organizations in the areas of performance assessment and performance-measurement development. Email: jmelkers@gsu.edu.Katherine G. Willoughby is an associate professor of public administration at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. Her teaching and research interests are public budgeting, financial management, and policy analysis. She has conducted extensive research in the area of state government budget process, specifically relating to the decisions of executive and legislative budgeters. She has also worked with a number of governments and governmental organizations regarding technology, privacy, and government performance.

What Drives Performance Budgeting to Perform? A Survey Examination in Taiwan

“…These survey respondents, i.e. budgeters at legislative and executive branch, are highly utilized as survey targets by several researchers (Berman & Wang, 2000;Melkers & Willoughby, 1998;Melkers & Willoughby, 2001;Melkers & Willoughby, 2005;Willoughby & Melkers, 2000). We particularly interested in the respondents from executive and legislative branch as previous studies have attempted to explore the impacts brought about by performance budgeting on executive as well as legislative staffs (Gilmour & Lewis, 2006;Sterck, 2007).…”

E-government success factors in the context of an IT-enabled budget reform

“…Methodology factors involve the information format, content and methods for budgeting and accounting [27,34,39]. Strategy of implementation factors are the intentions of designers of the reform [12,34,37] and the proposed direction of this change-top-down or bottom-up- [34,39].…”

“…Governance factors are indicated the procedures and mechanisms for making and monitoring decisions regarding e-government such as selection of teams or networks, and other mechanisms of interaction between participants [1,33,34]. Resource sharing factors engage the potential inputs required for coordination and adoption of egovernment in organizations such as financial, staff, technical infrastructure and training [27,34].…”

“…Because of the intensive informational content and technological use in the budget process, information systems have become central to budgeting operations in government, and vice versa [27,28]. As Joyce, Lee, & Johnson [26: 397] noted "Contemporary approaches to budgeting and accounting obviously require considerable amounts of information for decision making and evaluation.…”

Performance-Based Budgeting: The U.S. Experience

“…''Some initiatives were motivated by improvement to efficiency, whereas others focused on improved decision making'' (Melkers and Willoughby, 2001, 57). A total of 47 of 50 states have performance-budgeting requirements: 31 states with legislated requirements and 16 with executive requirements (Melkers and Willoughby, 2001). At the local level, ''although there is no similar formal mandate for city and county government to use performance measurement systems,'' cities and counties have been using systematic performance measures for their own interest in managing and monitoring for results (Ammons, 1995;Poister and Streib, 1999, 326).…”