The Road to PPB: The Stages of Budget Reform

Among the new men in the nascent PPB staffs and the fellow travellers who have joined the bandwagon, the mood is of “a revolutionary development in the history of government management.” There is excited talk about the differences between what has been and what will be; of the benefits that will accrue from an explicit and “hard” appraisal of objectives and alternatives; of the merits of multiyear budget forecasts and plans; of the great divergence between the skills and role of the analyst and the job of the examiner; of the realignments in government structure that might result from changes in the budget process.