Budget Season: dollars follow (government) data
Let’s say you’re a city manager and it’s budget season. Your department heads are clamoring for resources: more staff, another maintenance truck, funds for new smartphones, subsidies for a popular summer camp etc. The needs are endless, but public resources are not.
How do you decide where to allocate budget?
If you’re a department head, how do you ensure your request garners support?
The answer to both questions is data. Budget requests backed up by hard numbers make stronger cases.
When I was a Public Works analyst in 2010, I used data to write a justification for a second ‘patch truck’ for my division. My group had just implemented a sophisticated (and expensive!) software solution. I was able to use data from that new system to demonstrate the cost savings of a second patch truck (the data showed that we’d save much more in reduced “trip and fall” sidewalk lawsuit settlements than the new truck would cost). Even in the midst of the Great Recession, the City Manager looked at our data and accepted our budget allocation request; we were able to purchase that second truck.
Since then, technology has advanced and software prices have dropped. Cities and towns no longer need to spend tens of thousands of dollars and months issuing RFPs and installing new systems to have customized software and access to vital data: they can get it from the cloud — for free!
The CityGrows platform has zero upfront costs. Our approach to software pricing empowers local government staff to offer online services AND generate the kind of data that helps manage workflow and demonstrate impact with limited resources. Our platform brings permits, licenses, and just about any government process you can think of online. And once your process is online, getting data for planning gets a whole lot easier.
GovTech and open data are having a bit of a moment: cities and towns have begun to aggressively share financial data and information online, eager to demonstrate transparency and build trust. While more and better data is an important first step in good governance, data alone won’t help you advocate for resources and do better work.
CityGrows’ built-in analytics include: average time to complete a process, active process count, and other workload data. From the real, live data in the above process, a manager could infer a spike in demand every March, and reassign extra staff to assist.
Additionally, for each process that’s active in our system, you’re always able to export all the data and analyze it. While local governments usually have a handle on their budgets and staffing, they’re just beginning to understand how to use performance management data to increase efficiency, improve customer experience, and bring automatic transparency to all stakeholders. Get started with a process on CityGrows and see how automatic data and analytics can help your government (and your budget requests!).
Sign up for a CityGrows account and test out a sample process today.
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