David Osborne

Budgeting for Results (not Cuts) in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis

Friday, May 23. 12 noon to 1:00 p.m. PST.
The seminar format will be a 45-minute talk followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session.

Join a conversation with David Osborne, nationally-known expert and author on reinventing government. He has advised Vice-President Al Gore, helping him run his "reinventing government task force," the National Performance Review. David was the chief author of the NPR report, called by Time Magazine "... the most readable federal document in memory."

He will be in dialogue with Steve Rees, discussing the lessons he's learned from:

• California's 1978 Prop. 13 cuts, which clipped 23 percent from the spending power of local governments;
• The Minneapolis public school system, which his firm, The Public Strategies Group, ran for three and a half years during the 1990’s
• The fiscal crisis of 2001-2004, when his firm helped Governor Gary Locke of Washington, who had to slash the state budget by 14 percent, focus the state’s creativity not on what to cut, but on what to keep, buying results the public wanted for the price they were willing to pay

Together with his firm, The Public Strategies Group, David has helped Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, Gov. Lawton Chiles of Florida, and Gov. Gary Locke of Washington, as well as many cities and counties, successfully steer their states through hard times. His methods are just as relevant to leaders of school districts facing the challenge of “me-me” stakeholders scrambling for their piece of a shrinking budget pie.

David Osborne is also known for his practical ideas about streamlining public sector management. His five books, including Reinventing Government and The Price of Government, are must-reads for leaders facing the riddle of how to get more bang for the limited bucks in the public treasury.

Squeezing better results out of less money and Budgeting for Outcomes are the themes of this teleconference. The Public Strategies Group pioneered Budgeting for Outcomes with the state governments of Washington and Iowa; it has also been used by city governments, including Los Angeles and Azusa, California; Dallas, Texas; Spokane, Washington; and Fort Collins, Colorado.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Expect to take away some new ideas for managing wisely in this era of unavoidable cutbacks.

Learn how joint use agreements with city and county agencies can help. (Los Angeles libraries took on schools as primary customers in the early 1990s.)

Learn how budgeting for results can help you focus your resources on what matters most, and focus the debate in ways that bring people together.

Learn how to communicate why you have fiscal problems, where you want to trim and where you want to invest, why you are tied by laws and policies to inefficient spending, and what you are doing to get the most value for the dollars you’re entrusted with.

Learn how to use the budget crisis to break down barriers separating your district’s various departments.

Learn how to stimulate creative solutions from all members of the district community.

Learn how to harness the energy of worried parents, students and teachers, and how to bring people together to identify inefficient spending, fashionable but wasteful trendy reforms, and burdens that districts should pass off to other civic and government groups.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Board members, superintendents, public information officers.

BACKGROUND READING

"The Osborne Letter"—a series of essays and short articles written by David Osborne on the people who make government work in new ways.

"The Price of Government, Budgeting for Outcomes"—This is a handy summary of the 2004 book by David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson that spells out a new way of thinking about budgeting, and a new approach to steering your organization toward the results you want.

"The Spread of Budgeting for Outcomes"—an essay on the growing successes enjoyed by public sector leaders who were guided and inspired by "The Price of Government" by David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson.

"Your Budget, From Axe to Aim,"appearing in the May 2007 issue of Public Management Magazine – An essay by Darin Atteberry, city manager of Fort Collins, Colorado, and Camille Cates Barnett, a former partner in the Public Strategies Group, describing how budgeting for results helped them get a handle on a wild budget crisis in 2005.

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San Francisco, CA 94112
TEL: 800-247-8443 or 415-337-7971
FAX: 415-337-1146

WEB: www.schoolwisepress.com
EMAIL: jake.reid@schoolwisepress.com