Program budgeting and benchmarking – innovative management instruments in the practice of self-governments in Slovakia

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JEL classification

• State and Local Budget and Expenditures
• Public Administration; Public Sector Accounting and Audits
• Finance in Urban and Rural Economies

Keywords

Assessing the effectiveness of public services providing, Benchmarking, benchmarking performance indicators, local self-government, program budgeting

Abstract

The paper is focused on issues of the program budgeting implementation to the financial management of Slovak local self-governments, with an emphasis on its possible use in the benchmarking process. The aim of this paper is to analyze the structure of the first local self-governments’s program budgets and to highlight the benefit of program budgeting in the context of its potential use as a data source for self-government’s mutual comparing and learning in the field of effective public-services providing. Case study compares the structure and volume of program budgets of selected municipalities in Žilina region and realises the initial phase of benchmarking on the basis of benchmarking performance indicators proposed by Transparency International. The intention of this paper is to provoke discussion and to activate the practice for making the missing databases and partnerships of local self-governments.