About the Budget & Financial Management Center

The Center for Budget and Financial Management at the Performance Institute promotes excellence, transparency and accountability to government managers by providing the strategies and tools necessary to solve financial and budgetary issues.

Performance, Prudence, and Efficiency

The adoption of the President's Management Agenda (PMA) in 2001 addressed high-risk management areas in federal government, and came up with five initiatives that required improvement. Two of these initiatives, Improving Financial Management and Budget-Performance Integration, focused on the inefficient fiscal management in government. Citing deteriorations such as billions of dollars in erroneous payments and limited cause for resource allocation, these initiatives established measurable results and legislation to ensure government agencies can succeed in implementing performance and efficiency.

The Center for Budget and Financial Management recognizes these initiatives, and brings together "leaders in the field" to conduct trainings as well as educate at our national conferences. By identifying emerging strategies to new legislation, the Center for Budget and Financial Management brings managers together to "roll up their sleeves" and get to the heart of the issue. One of the main areas of focus for the Center is providing strategies on improving program performance as outlined in the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The Institute offers ground-breaking research and facilitation in key strategies necessary to improve agency PART scores. More information can be found at www.transparentgovernment.org

Linking resources to results can be a daunting task to ensure that your government program is successful. The Performance Institute can help government agencies manage that organizational change as well as assist in the design of cost-effective, outcome-oriented performance measures that are aligned with agency mission and citizen expectations. Through its use of the Government Performance Logic Model, government managers can employ a simple and proven approach to measure program or agency performance. Using clearly-defined end outcomes, the Logic Model framework illustrates the cause and effect linkages between program activities and outcome results.

Furthering Government Research

Aside from its public offered conferences and trainings, the Center for Budget and Financial Management brings best practices and key strategies to the government workforce through its publication of Performance Institute research reports. By drawing on interviews with federal managers, each report offers a look into the pressing issues facing government agencies in their attempt to integrate performance with management. These reports are available on www.performanceweb.org, and government workers can stay current with federal performance issues by signing up to receive the monthly PMA Update e-Newsletter, outlining news and events for each of the five PMA initiative areas. Look for research in the areas of Performance Budgeting in Government and PART, and Cost Accounting Innovations in Government.