"The City of Longmont is providing public access to the online Priority Based Budgeting tool (Open PBB Data) that helps staff make budget decisions. This sophisticated tool allows you to review City budgets based on multiple variables, including type of program, department, and quartile ranking, and to compare Longmont's budget to that of other organizations that use this tool."
ResourceX and the Center for Priority Based Budgeting recognize the City of Longmont, CO as now the second city to launch the Open PBB Data Citizen Portal. Longmont is committed to sharing city data with the public to increase transparency, accountability and customer service, and empower citizens with the ability to harness a vast array of useful information to improve life in the city. Longmont Open PBB Data is specifically designed to transparently share all the city's priority based budgeting data with citizens.
Longmont Open PBB Data is specifically designed to transparently share all the city’s priority based budgeting data. Through this Open PBB Data set, the community will now have the opportunity to:
Translates the city’s line-item budget into a program budget
Reveals the prioritization of every program in the city budget
Show exactly how much it costs the city to deliver every program (service)
Demonstrate exactly how much city staff support is required to deliver every program (service)
Exhibit the relevance of each program (service) in relation to community results
Show if a program is mandated (by Federal, State or local government) to be delivered
Demo if the city is a sole provider of a program or if others (public or private entity) are delivering similar programs
Present the level of reliance on the city citizens have for program delivery
Reveal program level revenue and if fee-based programs pay for themselves
Demonstrate the level in which every single city program impacts community results
Open PBB Data is the premier open data site in the nation. Never before have cities had the ability to share such comprehensive program level data with their citizens. With Longmont Open PBB Data citizens will be able to:
Obtain a thorough understanding of all the programs the city delivers, what it costs to deliver programs, and understand whether the programs contribute to community results
Understand exactly what programs are funded through tax dollars
Evaluate and analyze how city programs impact community results
Communicate with the city to evolve the prioritization of programs
Longmont business owners and other public entities will have an opportunity to evaluate all the city programs to determine where partnership opportunities exist
Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) is a financial process to help align city resources with results. The City administration implemented a PBB process in 2014. Considered a best practice in government finance, the PBB analysis has been used to develop the city's 2016, 2017 and 2018 budgets to make improvements on how city resources are deployed, and identify opportunities to reduce costs and increase effectiveness of city services.
PBB provides cost and revenue data for more than 600 individual Longmont programs identified through this process. The PBB process also allocates programs into four quartiles according to a program’s impact on key community desired outcomes and "results." The Longmont City Council, with feedback from several hundred residents, business owners and service providers, determined that in order to be great, the CIty of Longmont should focus on:
Safe CommunityReliable
Innovative and Resilient Infrastructure
Thriving Economic Climate
Vibrant Amenities and Opportunities for All
Responsible Internal Operations and Governance
Longmont City Council, along with community feedback, then defined the outcomes for each result and the underlying assumptions and factors that influenced the outcomes. Accurate prioritization requires a clear definition of the result so that cause and effect relationships can be identified and reflected in the scoring process.
This process ultimately reflects "program metrics" that identifies the influences, measurements and factors that are most critical to achieving the result. See full result definitions and outcomes here.
The PBB information can be accessed from the City’s website at Longmont Open PBB Data. Here citizens can find a more detailed explanation of priority based budgeting plus full access to the city's budget data.
The City of Longmont is now the 22nd municipality in Colorado to implement priority based budgeting, joining many other neighboring communities in this innovative approach to ensuring a city’s long-term financial sustainability and will ultimately allow the City of Longmont to also serve its residents in the most effective, efficient and fiscally responsible manner possible.
For organizations who wish to engage with our team at ResourceX, our value is in providing you with the technology tools, our database of over 90,000 local government programs, and providing guidance in how to bring your data to life.
We hope to share with you case studies of how over 190 cities, counties and now school districts have evolved their budgeting processes, and substantially reallocated resources to create positive changes for their communities.
Contact us to discover more about PBB and how to transparently bring your PBB data to life!
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