GFOA announces awards for excellence winners.

• Position: Government Finance Officers Association - Awards list

The GFOA has announced the winners of its 2014 Awards for Excellence in Government Finance. The awards recognize contributions to the practice of government finance that exemplify outstanding financial management. The awards stress practical, documented work that offers leadership to the profession and promotes improved public finance.

This year's awards include the Louisville Award for Innovation in Government Finance, awarded occasionally to recognize an exceptional accomplishment that introduces a new concept or technique with enduring value to the government finance profession. This year, the Louisville Award went to Williamson County, Texas, for Williamson County Creates Business Intelligence System for the Public Sector, a fully supported Software as a Service package built by and for the public sector to meet public-sector business intelligence and operational reporting requirements in a manner that is transferable to most other jurisdictions.

This year's Awards for Excellence-winning entries encompass such innovations in areas of capital financing and debt administration, e-government and technology, and pensions and benefits. The awards were presented at the GFOA's annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 20, 2014.

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TEXAS

Williamson County Creates Business Intelligence System for the Public Sector Category: eGovernment and Technology

When Williamson County, Texas, decided to implement a more sophisticated internal reporting system, it went well beyond an ordinary approach to business intelligence, creating a public-private partnership to develop and implement technology that will now be marketed to other public-sector organizations. The new, cloud-based reporting tool--known as Performance Center--improves reporting capabilities at the operational, staff, management, and taxpayer levels while reducing costs by 95 percent, as compared to a typical business intelligence implementation that would have cost the county approximately $750,000 to $1 million over three years. Performance Center is a state-of-the-art package that provides standardized reporting for the unique needs of government and eliminates the manual, time-intensive processes involved in routine public-sector business practices. Governments have numerous tools available for building custom business intelligence software, but Performance Center is the first fully supported Software as a Service package built by and for the public sector to meet...