"The Benefits and Threats of PBB: An Assessment of Modern Reform".

• Position: Performance-based budgeting - Brief Article

Smith, James Fielding

Public Budgeting & Finance, Fall 1999, pp. 3-15.

Building, maintaining, and managing a performance-based budgeting (PBB) system involves layers of complexity. This article argues that these complexities make PBB more vulnerable than other budgeting systems to threats from error, fraud, falsification, and misrepresentation. The vulnerabilities arise from several sources. First, PBB is dependent on the quality and integrity of performance data used and data may be inadequate, corrupted, or falsified. Second, a large number of specialists, whose activities may not necessarily be coordinated or complementary, are involved in the process. Finally, there is often a lack of consistency in strategic focus from year to year as program categories, objectives, goals, and missions change. The traditional response to effectively dealing with these threats has...