| The Future of Local Government
I recently found an research report discussing the weaknesses in current governmental structure concerning their ability to adapt their business model to the ever changing economic, culture and technological environment in America. Just a few things mentioned were that local governments need to adapt to do more with less, update out-dated IT systems, incorporate more transparency, create succession plans to hire more highly skilled staff and incorporate the private sector into various service offerings. This got me thinking about how a budget department would need to adapt to meet these larger communal goals.
For many departments, recent cuts have made it difficult to deal with budget processes which are labor-intensive due to antiquated IT systems. Cuts to areas such as training make it more difficult since existing personnel will become less effective at using the tools they need to do more with less. Succession planning is set aside to focus on work that needs to be done before certain employees retire. Overall budget departments are stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to create the budget on time while trying to improve operational inefficiencies with the short amount of time leftover after completing the current year budget.
It is important that budget departments work with other departments to keep moving forward while dealing with existing hardships. Some suggestions for budget departments to adapt their business model for the future might include:
1. Use private sector produced software to shorten the budget process and train users properly to achieve optimal efficiency. By using web-enabled software which allows department heads to enter their own budgets, this allows the budget staff to focus on analysis and financial modeling. Hiring a private company to provide software instead of in-house development allows the IT staff to focus on upgrading outdated systems. Overall the cost of the software will be paid back in the time reductions and value added to the existing budget process.
2. Engage civilians to create priorities which tie in with performance measures for community goals. This allows you to increase transparency of how dollars are being used to meet goals. This also can aid in measuring how certain goals are being met and determine where spending cuts can be made to achieve the same goals. By tracking expenditures by goals, objectives and measures you can help demonstrate to civilians how you deliver value to the community.
3. Promote knowledge sharing to move away from seniority-based systems and towards adaptable workers. No longer can workers be expected to focus on a single area of knowledge or work independently from team members who share the same end result. Employees need to become more flexible by learning the skills which other members in their team have to aid in production and reduce blockages that occur by separating tasks by skillset. Use of programs to share ongoing updated training documents within a repository such as the Dropbox or Sharepoint can aid with such efforts.
These are just a few thoughts however I urge readers to analyze the document to come up with their own ideas.
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