For a Truly Distinguished Budget, Make an Interactive Online Book

The GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation award is an important signifier of budgeting excellence in local governments. While every government wants to grow its wall of plaques, many are realizing that it’s more about the journey than the designation.

As most finance leaders already know, the GFOA updated its criteria for 2021. The new criteria emphasize elements that improve stakeholder and public understanding of the budget (OpenGov’s playbook provides an in-depth look) . The new guidance also reveals a shift in focus from numbers to process.

The goal of the budget is to be a policy document and plan, but without gaining real buy-in and collaboration with departments there is the risk that the budget will have a short shelf life. If stakeholders do not understand key decisions and tradeoffs, alignment will be quickly lost and the budget will lose its value for organizing priorities.

Linking data to resources across the document is an important first step toward creating an information ecosystem that helps improve everyone’s understanding of key initiatives and performance. Also key are the narrative descriptions. Involving departments to contextualize their spend improves clarity internally and with the public.

The importance of communicating the budget in a way that is clear to the public is critical. The budget should function as an educational tool, making it easy for residents to click to, read, understand, share and engage in sections based on their interests. Multi-year winner, Ukiah, CA explains the importance of collaboration and communication in their budget process in a recent video.

Over 100 of OpenGov’s Budgeting & Planning customers have earned the GFOA distinction for their budget books or financial plans. A growing number have earned this recognition for their online budget books, which is a medium that provides context and improves interactivity with digital capabilities. These governments also save time by automating updates across the budget with integrations between the budget and publishing and storytelling software.

OpenGov has seen an increasing number of customers adopting online budget books for their ease of use and the ability to connect data dynamically to their reporting and transparency portals. Connected data make it possible for updates to cascade through the document without time-consuming and error-prone manual updates. Less time making updates means more time for providing descriptions and context.

Online, interactive budget books aren’t simply an efficiency play. They can actually improve collaboration by enabling departments to showcase their finances and their team’s work to tell a fuller story of what the department does for the community. The format enables content and narrative descriptions that improve the public’s understanding of government.

For governments pursuing this distinction, it’s important to recognize the intent of new criteria: to improve the processes and effectiveness of the budget. For those who are interested in adopting more collaborative approaches to budgeting and the budget book, many are finding that the journey is as crucial as the designation.

Download the Playbook for a Truly Distinguished Budget here