The Changing Role of the Central Budget Office

The traditional role of the central budget office is incompatible with the management reforms enfolding in various OECD Member countries. These reforms are grounded on the principle that managers must be permitted to run their operations without undue outside interference. The logic of reform is that only when managers are free to use money and other organisational resources within agreed budgets can they be responsible for the organisation’s successes or failures. In countries where a culture of reform has taken hold, there is consensus that halfway measures do not suffice, that managers either are free to act or are not. It is not a matter of relaxing one or another restriction, but of reshaping the operations of public institutions and the behaviour of those who work in them. The budget process is one of the main arenas in which the machinery of government is undergoing fundamental transformation.