Managers in Government and Labor Relations

Abstract

one must question whether that is most productive use to which federal budget process can be applied. A preoccupation with routines of operation drives out a consideration of program objectives and effectiveness. As much as one might want a budget process which equally attends to diverse objectives of budgeting, choices have to be made. An agency cannot devote itself to managerial routines of ZBB while deploying its budget process for program planning and anaylsis. Nor can an agency productively search for significant efficiencies each year. The 1979 budget looks for greater benefits next year as Federal Government realizes full potential of zero base Judging from state experiences, however, one may question whether a recurring search for efficiency will be of much value. After a couple of years of preparing minimum packages, ZBB process itself becomes routinized. While it might be possible to cream off savings in first year or two, ultimately ZBB will have to move to more fundamental program issues if it is to have much staying power. The President's 1979 budget offers perhaps most telling indication of ZBB's limitations. It announces a major effort to stretch time horizon of federal budgeting to a multi-year framework, arguing that with one-yearat-a-time budgeting, the budget was difficult to control and changes in allocation of resources difficult to make. These difficutlies cannot be mitigated by dedication to principles and techniques of zero base budgeting. No matter how thoroughly program managers scour their operations for savings, year-to-year changes in budget are driven by policies over which control can be secured only through non-budgetary actions. With ZBB, upwards of 75 per cent of budget will continue to be uncontrollable under existing law; upwards of 95 per cent will continue to be de facto uncontrollable. The budget sensibly recognizes need for a long-range budget process in order to cope with these fundamental issues. Although it does not abandon ZBB, it seems to give priority to an earlier type of budget reform. For budget watchers who have seen a parade of innovations and fashions over past 30 years, road from ZBB might lead back to PPB.