“Follow the money,” the now iconic line from the Watergate scandal, urged reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to follow the money trail to root out government corruption. But, just as Bernstein and Woodward discovered, following the government money trail can be incredibly difficult. The reason? Funds from different programs often overlap or are reportedRead… Read more »
There is a petition on the We the People website asking for a paid Holiday Friday November 27, 2015. Please take a moment to sign it if you are so inclined.
With technology now providing online tools that show government expenditures in real time and make public budgets educational and interactive, citizens are coming to expect much more than a public meeting and a giant budget PDF posted to the website when it comes to budgeting visibility.
Many of us who have no formal training or background in accounting/finance find ourselves overseeing big budgets. As we continue to advance in our careers the size of those budgets continues to grow, along the expectations and LIABILITIES. Brookings Executive Education (BEE) Finance for Non-Financial Managers course addresses some of the potential pitfalls those ofRead… Read more »
Sometimes it’s not the destination, but the journey that truly counts. That’s the philosophy some of the government’s best and brightest are adopting with open data programs. Open data is not just a single solution, but a path to solving the plethora of problems government faces now and will face in the future. Open dataRead… Read more »
Why do government systems fail? That is essentially the question raised by MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough following word that IRS data got hacked. MSNBC’s Morning Joe on government IT problems The short but exceedingly provocative discussion that followed spurred me to think: How would I answer that question? What are the big obstaclesRead… Read more »
If you’re anything like me, every two weeks you look at your paycheck and hope for just a few more dollars to magically appear. In reality, the number stays the same. For state and local government employees, salaries have been stagnant for years. “Our whole country has been stunned by the difficulty we’ve had inRead… Read more »
On February 2nd, the President unveiled his new $4 trillion proposed budget for FY 2016. Obviously the federal government was paying close attention, but state and local governments were also on high alert. The reason? Simple: the President’s budget also provides funding to states and localities in several different areas like transportation, education and infrastructure.Read… Read more »
Our top budgeting, forecasting and business analytics posts for the public sector from the week of September 12th!
The White House’s Open Government initiative encourages citizens to become more actively engaged in budget decisions in their communities. How does this work in practice? Do busy citizens actually get involved? Inspired by successful efforts in Brazil and other countries around the world, several U.S. communities have undertaken pilot efforts to allow citizens to directlyRead… Read more »