The Long Road to Mastery
Imagine taking three years to grasp the ins and outs of your role. That’s the reality for newcomers to federal bureaucracy. They spend most of their time just learning processes and grasping the significance of data relationships, tirelessly chasing traceability and accuracy. The goal is to master the lifecycle integrity of budget information, where a final number is easily traced from formulation through testimony and Congressional actions and finally through execution. Achieving that elusive single number creates a clear line of sight, fosters confidence in reporting among all stakeholders engaged in their agency’s financial decision-making processes, and can deliver transparency to American taxpayers.
We’re in an exciting era where these newcomers to the federal budget workforce bring tech-savvy expertise and an expectation to harness Artificial Intelligence for a brighter tomorrow. However, this optimism and excitement are often tempered by the challenge of filling the knowledge gap left by a continual wave of retirements. This gap goes beyond the ordinary impact of staff turnover; for federal budgeteers, it means the loss of decades of accumulated expertise, deep insights into agency operations, and a rich understanding of business processes. Such knowledge, often irreplaceable and irreplicable for novice budgeteers, gets lost in the transition.
Software should help codify institutional knowledge and ease the pain for new budgeteers. However, much of the current federal budgeting software in the market seems to be playing a game of masquerade—corporate tools dressed up in a federal disguise. These tools are built to manage corporate financial statements, driven by profits and losses, and struggle to align with the specific needs and nuances of federal budgeting. The result is a forced fit that creates more friction than function. This friction turns what should be systematic, codified, and repeatable processes into cumbersome software gymnastics that require extensive human resources, substantial costs, and ages to implement.
Why should federal agencies obligate millions of dollars to twist, contort, and rewire Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions to meet their needs?
Single Source of ‘Truth’ or a Single Source of ‘Pain’?
Many repackaged CPM budgeting tools have promised to integrate federal budget data into a single source of truth. Ironically, they have only manifested as a single source of pain for their federal clients. Take the federal budgeting formulation phase as an example. Corporate America budget software does not formulate budgets using the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular A-11. In their federal disguise, these CPM solutions present a mirage of simplicity and accuracy only to end up being a complex puzzle requiring multiple 15-person teams and years to implement. Federal clients are sold an “all-in-one tool” missing essential parts, forcing them to pay an engineer to fix what’s missing, resulting in more frustration than facilitation.
Many of these painful federal budgeting software systems still rely on old-fashioned data management methods, like online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes. In a landscape where dynamic, real-time data handling is critical, depending on such antiquated systems is analogous to driving a horse and buggy on a Formula 1 track—charming but woefully inadequate.
Consider the scenario where a late-breaking program increase, negotiated by OMB’s Resource Management Officer, is added to an agency’s President’s Budget and Congressional Budget Justification. In OLAP cubes, speed and efficiency suffer when minor common changes like this arise. It can be painstaking to update each budget’s exhibits, manually enter the data into OMB MAX (after it is unlocked), and republish the budgets. A single error in these systems can lead to incongruent results, calling into question the entire budget’s integrity.
Shedding the Federal Disguise
The increasing need for a specialized, federal-only solution becomes clear amidst these challenges. This is where tools like Unison’s Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting (PBF) begin to shine. Crafted from scratch by former federal budgeteers, PBF is a tailor-made solution—not a modified commercial product—designed to meet the multifaceted needs of the federal budget process. Using the OMB A-11 as the foundation, there is no need to twist, contort, or rewire PBF into a federal form. Because of this, PBF is more effective, and its implementation time and cost are significantly less than current commercial products.
PBF effortlessly merges execution and formulation phases, allowing for fluid transitions between current year estimates and execution year projections, including “most likely” scenarios. It simplifies adjustments to fixed costs and across-the-boards (also called built-ins or mandatories), enabling easy percentage or fixed-value setting to account for inflationary factors. Recognizing the uniqueness of each program, PBF allows for calculations to be either broadly applied or finely tuned to specific appropriation accounts—all significantly increasing speed and efficiency.
With the nuance built in, PBF serves as a knowledge repository, bridging the divide between seasoned federal budgeteers and new analysts, subsequently preserving vital institutional knowledge. Its intuitive design doesn’t just fit the existing federal budgeting framework. It enhances it. PBF is not about forcing a square peg into a round hole; it’s about crafting the peg and the hole to work together in harmony.
Click here and reach out to us to learn more about PBF.