COMPONENTE FÍSICO

Public servants are engaged in the budget process in a number of ways: they may be asked to help develop a policy proposal for the budget; they may work in an area that holds information of particular importance to the process; as a member of a finance agency, they may collect data on expenditure together into one database, and this will be necessary for the development of the fiscal strategy paper; or they might work in an agency that has considerable experience in dealing with a particular client group. Whatever their role, it is likely that they will have to assemble information quickly and with accuracy. Not all new policy proposals are ‘new’: the idea for a particular policy might have been lying around for years waiting for the political environment to be right for its introduction. Often, these are brought into the political arena by public servants who recognise their timeliness.

Political issues

It may not be a public servant’s place to arbitrate political issues, but policy and advice work will be less valued if it does not take them into account. Developing a new policy proposal or savings option which cannot be sold politically is a waste of public resources. So, what are the political issues of interest to ministers?

The ministers need to be aware of any sensitivity attached to decision making. Often they will ask for an assessment of sensitivities as part of the policy advising process. In a local planning decision, this might be an assess- ment of the effects on people’s lifestyles of a new development, the extent of a decrease in amenity and the number of people affected. At the national level, this might mean the likely effect of a woodchip licence on employment and environmental degradation, the community response and options for harm minimisation.

Policy costing

In addition, ministers are often poorly equipped to develop costings associated with new budget measures, yet they need to be able to defend costings in Cabinet. One of the key issues is the amount that an agency needs to spend in order to deliver the government’s program. Different types of programs require different amounts of resources for their administration. A program that transfers millions of dollars to the states might require only one public servant to operate, whereas a program that collects data to generate policy-relevant information might not cost much in total, but might have very high adminis- trative costs.

One way to determine whether a new program will require low or high costing is to look for a benchmark as an aid to judgment. There may be other programs in existence in other sectors for which information on admin- istration costs is available, or examples of similar services in the private or not-for-profit, non-government sectors.

Evaluation of results

Ministers are poorly positioned to be able to observe the results of new policies that have been implemented, and public servants are well placed to develop reports of various kinds that define the kinds of results that are being achieved. Continuous improvement in the quality of this form of advice means improving the quality of the data that is being collected. Good-quality data is timely and its production can be coordinated with the budget process, so that, for example, a review is conducted and results are available as new policy is being developed.

6.5 CONCLUSION

Decision making about the best use of public money is inherently political. Within agencies there is bureaucratic politics in the form of internal argument between managers about the best use of assets, the most appropriate performance indicators, and the exact relationship between inputs, outputs and outcomes. Within Cabinet and the wider community there is an even more furious debate about where government ought to be spending money, on what is to be regarded as ‘valuable’ and worthy of government funding, and about what are appropriate objectives for government to set itself and whether those objectives are being achieved.

There is a special connection between the managerial and the political level. Under a Westminster system of government, the minister is responsible for both policy and management within their agency. The public servant’s role is to provide the most focused advice possible in order to help the minister get the results required by the Prime Minister and the public. This

chapter has surveyed some of the more important budget-based issues that have to be managed. You may have noticed the primacy of the fiscal deficit/ surplus target. It is the first decision to be made during the budget process and tends to place limits on all that follows.

FURTHER READING

Caiden, N. 1998 ‘A new generation of budget reform’ Taking Stock: Assessing

Public Sector Reforms G. Peters and D. Savoie (eds) McGill–Queens

University Press, Montreal.

Department of Finance and Administration 1997 Beyond Bean Counting: Effective

Financial Management in the APS—1998 and Beyond at www.psmpc.gov.

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Human resource