Services Provided to the People of Tennessee: a programmatic accounting of resource investment.

• Author: Hardin, Connie B.
• Position: Award for Excellence

A plain-language guide to the State of Tennessee's budget responds to citizens' requests for program-oriented information, provides the media background on service organization and funding sources, supports legislative analyses and constituent communication, and supplies planners with data for benchmarking and performance measures.

Editor's note: Each year the Government Finance Officers Association bestows its prestigious Award for Excellence to recognize outstanding contributions in the field of government finance. The awards stress practical, documented work that offers leadership to the profession and promotes improved public finance. This article describes the 1994 winning entry in the budgeting and financial planning category.

It is incumbent upon every governmental entity to justify to its customers its continued efficient use of their funds. It also is required of each entity to give an accounting of its purposes, program goals and financial aims. The State of Tennessee's publication Services Provided to the People of Tennessee does those things in a manner different from the traditional, but equally necessary, 400+ page budget document.

Services Provided to the People of Tennessee provides in a layperson's perspective a by-program accounting of state expenditures, explaining to the citizens--who are both the financiers and the end users--how their government is putting their resources to work. By laying out simply and clearly the programs and people in which the state government is investing, it presents the legislature with a means of showing its constituents the effectiveness of its actions. This communication to the stakeholders helps to allay the lack of trust all governmental units are currently facing.

This plain-language guide to Tennessee's budget came about, in part, as a response to the many requests from the public for budget information. The complete budget document is far too detailed and lengthy to easily provide the type of data requested, as most requests are for information that is more general in nature or program-oriented across state agency lines. To meet these needs, Services Provided to the People of Tennessee was designed to be a concise and easily understood illustration of the allocation of resources by program type. This type of report was needed also to address commonly voiced concerns about who provided state services--whether state funds were being used in the most efficient manner possible to get services to the people. The legislature, in particular, needed a clearer presentation for its constituents to understand funding allocation decisions. Services Provided gives a benchmark of data which previously had been projected but not founded in research.

Typical budget documents do not tell the reader much about the specific services upon which various organizational budgets are based. The presentation of the data in Services Provided to...