Performance Budgeting Solutions

Budget execution is the process by which the financial resources made available to an agency are directed and controlled toward achieving the purposes and objectives of the requesting agency. In today’s complex budgeting world, having systems and people that can link core financial management data with budget and performance data is critical to an agency’s success. Integrating the systems, resources, and best practices that exist in the budget execution space with their counterparts in the financial management space helps ensure that funds are managed in the most efficient and effective manner and are communicated to management and stakeholders in real time. PPC develops integrated systems and tools that address the complete sequence of events in the budget execution cycle, including appropriations, apportionments, allotments, commitments, obligations, expenditures, and outlays. Our approach is to ensure that the information contained in financial management systems are properly tracked and measured in a way that is meaningful for budget processes and analysis. This integrated approach allows budget execution data to be available for current-year reporting and analysis and readily available for out-year planning efforts concurrently under way.

Budget and Performance Integration (BPI)
Our BPI platform facilitates the analysis of relationships between program resources and program output capabilities that can be used to forecast expected results and resource requirement targets.
 
Building upon the legacy of GPRA and PART, the President’s Budget and Performance Integration (BPI) initiative is intended to enhance the government’s ability to evaluate competing demands for federal dollars by equipping decision makers with better information on the results of individual programs. These efforts place a heavy burden on federal agencies to demonstrate improved program performance. Maintaining performance data in the same, single database with budgetary data is industry standard. Adding a BPI component that integrates budget and performance information was a natural progression of the PPC budgeting solution set. Our BPI platform facilitates the analysis of relationships between program resources and program output capabilities that can be used to forecast expected results and resource requirement targets. Additionally, the standardization of performance charts, tables, and graphs allows for reuse in various reports and publications. This platform allows for improved monitoring and control of performance measures; however, simply monitoring individual performance measures without linking them to agency-wide strategic goals is insufficient to support true performance management. PPC’s strategic mapping capabilities are core to our BPI platform. The ability to define agency strategic goals, their related agency performance goals, and the performance indicators that help to achieve each performance goal is a critical function of any BPI tool. Once these relationships are established, the prioritization of resources based on contributions to strategic goals can take place, maximizing return on investment (ROI) for the agency, the government, and ultimately taxpayers.

Budget Formulation
PPC brings extensive experience and expertise to support the budget formulation process. Our subject matter experts work closely with federal budget analysts to support the three major budget submissions.

Budget formulation is the primary process in the budget cycle by which federal agencies identify the resources, both dollars and FTEs, necessary to effectively carry out their objectives. Three major budget submissions are produced each year for three different stakeholders. Internal submissions are presented to senior agency leadership in June; the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) submission is completed in September; and the Congressional budget is presented in February. PPC brings extensive experience and expertise to support the budget formulation process. Our subject matter experts work closely with federal budget analysts to support the three major budget submissions. Through our budget formulation solutions, budget office personnel are able to identify and manage dollars and resources through familiar desktop tools. Excel is by far the most popular budgeting technology used in the market today. PPC’s budget solutions leverage the popularity of Excel with standard web-forms for data entry. Unstructured data is an integral part of the budget process as well, and must be equally managed with structured data. Therefore, narrative budget justifications are maintained in MS Word for ease of use and narrative extendibility. Word allows maximum text manipulation and provides full word processing capabilities. Finally, because auditing and version control are essential to the budget formulation process, both features are provided through the solution’s underlying database and document management systems.