[Editors note: The following is a journal entry addressing specific questions provided by the CPM course instructor Larry Dzieza for module 3.1.]
1. Identify what you think are the two big strategic and budgetary issues facing your organization. (Possible opportunity to do a SWOT analysis).
First, our existing ordinance is outdated and essentially irrelevant. Without an enforceable ordinance, we lack a basis for identifying our services, authority, or funding ability.
Without this formal authority it is difficult to tie budgets to levels of service. Therefore we tend to be stuck in getting the baseline appropriation from the previous year in each subsequent year.
Second and tangentially related, our accounting system uses budget codes that have no relevance to the services we provide.
When combining these two issues, we have no clear picture of what we should be providing and have no meaningful information about where we spend that money or how effectively we spend that money.
2. What is the “elephant in the room” that should be on your organization’s strategic plan/budget agenda but is not? Why do you think it isn’t?
The elephant in the room is that we have no boundaries for our services. No clear definition of what specific services we provide and to whom we provide those services.
The most notable effect of not having formal parameters for our services, is that the political process has increased influence in determining what services we are able to provide.
A secondary effect would be in justifying utility rates to customers. This effect is muted due to the fact that for a myriad of reasons, the Tribe does not charge other Tribal departments or its residential community members for water or sewer utility services.
3. Reread your strategic plans in context of the budget. Do you see the connections? How might they be strengthened?
This unfortunately is not applicable, since I do not have a strategic plan for our organization.
Interestingly, we have propensity for not formally adopting planning documents.
4. What learning stands out for you as your reflect on the classroom experience?
Here are a couple of the concepts that stood out to me:
Identification of what you produce necessitates a tangible items. I recall a similar concept in reading about database development in that tables must be populated with physically tangible things.
Inputs to Results model:
Inputs => Processes => Products (outputs) => to Customers => Results (outcomes)
Budgeting begins with the inputs but only exists to produce results.
Key factors in the production of public value:
Authority: (Creation myth) gives history of and basis for organization.
Money: Reservoir of power.
Personnel: Human Resources
The intersection of these three factors is the production of value (or outcomes). Technology is the environment the model operates with in.
Noting how closely tied payroll typically is to finance/ budget departments.
The statement was made that 90% of results issues are timeliness. I wonder if that is because it is easily and objectively quantifiable measureable?
For example, if you are at the DMV and wait an hour in line, are helped by someone who doesn’t speak English, the photo they take is poor, and get charged more than you would like. How many of those can you complain about?
Complaining about poor English skills from the clerk, makes you a racist. Complaining about a bad photo is makes you pompus and vain. Fees are set by a process that no one person could possibly understand, so why bother arguing about them? But waiting an hour is easily quantifiable and would resonate well with any audience.
Similar to timing being the easiest target to complain about, of the three key production factors listed above, personnel is probably the most easily addressed.
Take the recent outrage over the shortcomings in the Veterans Administration as an example. It would be difficult to envision quickly altering the organization’s authority. Likewise, adding or removing money from the department would be difficult to justify. This leaves personnel as the one factor of production from which a tangible response can be quickly made. Which leaves the question, was that really the best way of addressing the root of the problem, or was that just a convenient response to satisfy a news cycle?
As an aside, notice how often wait times are referenced. The quality of care is a difficult item to quantify. The budgetary expenditures are difficult to effectively analyze on TV news. Service wait times by comparison are very easy to measure, can be quickly described, and are easily understood by large audiences.
Budgets “Never Forget” and Budgets “Are Laws”.
“Extra Value” Work
5. If possible, meet (lunch?) with your organization’s strategic planner and/or budget leader and discuss with them their perspectives on the topics and challenges they face in your organization.
I have had a total of four conversations with my boss’s boss in the 32 months I have worked here. I have never met our grants and finance manager who oversees most of the financial accounting operations. As mentioned above, we also have a dearth of strategic plans.
So I am not sure who I would find to talk to about the perspectives behind our non-existent long range plans.
"Extra Extra Value" Work
1. In class we talked about the challenges of strategic planning in the real world and linking the planning to real actions. Identify a goal/objective your organization that has been established (or a goal that should be established in the absence of a formal strategic plan) and:
• Identify the current resources being devoted to it in the current budget. (i.e., we have a goal to replace all of our legacy computer systems. This year we are buying the servers and software upon which we will build the new applications and we have $xx to do so).
• Identify the future needs for funding the objective; has it been identified? Is it adequate? What are the risks and risk mitigation steps that have been taken/considered?
One area that we struggle with is that is that our budget codes are completely irrelevant to our operations.
Because our cost codes do not relate to our operation, we have no way to accurately assess our true costs are for any specific activity. We have very little historical data upon which to forecast future costs.
Compounding this issue is that we do not have a system that provides timely reports of expenditure or commitments.
In the past, I had considered building a job costing process that would allow us to internally allocate costs to the actual products produced. However, considering that evaluation of program effectiveness seems only marginally correlated with budget management, this process seemed like an exercise that might produce only marginal value.
Jason, you did a nice job connecting the concepts presented in class to the challenging environment you are working in. You clearly identified how cost, budget, fee codes, or whatever you would like to call them, are critical in allocating costs to production or services and measuring results. The lack of planning documents, budget codes, performance measures in your department makes me believe your department does not receive federal funds. My guess is that other entities such as the Tribal School, have very complex budgets that are tied to federal funding and have stringent accounting and performance measurement standards. In your Capstone, you may have to focus on smaller chunks to demonstrate the value of metrics/measurement/expenditures/commitments to the Firewood Program. A small demo can show how this work impacts the long-term sustainability of the Program. Good luck! Lisa
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