Exam 7: Budget Preparation: The Expenditure Side

The Obama administration's focus on high-priority goals successfully engaged agency leadership more so than previous administrations where performance management initiatives tended to be delegated to lower-level officials.

When did the use of program information in public budgeting become a mainstream reform issue?

While performance budgeting never became the basis upon which decisions were made at any level of government, it did introduce the use of program information in budget documents on a wide scale.

Why are broad social indicators rarely used as measures of public program performance?

While budget preparation practices vary considerably in different public agencies and at different levels of government, the overall process is guided by a set of instructions issued by the legislative body.

One measure of the need for a local fire prevention program might be the annual dollar value of fire damage in a city.

What is the main characteristic of a measure of productivity as used in the context of performance measurement?

What budgeting approach assumes that decision makers have the capacity to eliminate enough programs to justify the time spent in evaluating them?

In current services budgeting, an assumption is made that the agency is not obligated to continue its existing programs.

Through its many reforms, what was the primary focus of early reforms in public budgeting?

The more recent focus on evidence-based policy making has squarely focused agency budget preparation efforts on the use of evidence in budget decisions.

Looking at 1990s and early 2000s, the the General Accountability Office concluded in a study that there has been a considerable increase in federal managers' use of performance data in making decisions.

Describe the origins of budgetary reform in the United States. What were the major influences and the prevailing themes of the budget reform movement? Where have reform efforts focused since the 1960s, and what is current emphasis?

Local governments with professional managers are less likely to adopt program and performance budgeting than are those with strong mayor systems.

Which of the following are the measures of more direct relevance to public program budgeting called?

In the case of an employment program, why is the graduation rate of unemployed workers a very limited measure of the program's success?

What is the connection between a strategic planning effort and a budget?

In the case of an employment program, a valid outcome measure might be the average earnings of nonwhite men who completed a job training program.

When was the use of planning-programming-budgeting PPB extended to the civilian side of the federal government? By what presidential administration?

What is the main difference between a program's outputs and outcomes?