THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECTReport Card: Wisconsin FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: C+ Calculated according to generally accepted accounting principles, Wisconsin has been running a budget deficit for years. Even in the good economic times of the late 1990s, the GAAP deficit has been bouncing up and down. It was under $1 billion in fiscal year 1996, back up to $1.5 billion in 1997, and probably will be between $1 and $1.2 billion this year. The legislature has a habit of carrying forward balances for use in the second year of a biennium—a practice that may cause problems if there is a downturn in the economy. What's more, the state faces ballooning education and corrections expenses (up 31.7 percent in the current biennial budget). Wisconsin requires that about 1 percent of gross general purpose revenues be set aside in each budget for unforeseen contingencies, but it has never taken the trouble to stock its formal rainy day fund. That could be because Wisconsin wasn't hit quite as hard in the last recession as some of its upper Midwest neighbors. In other ways, the state does a pretty good job of running its finances, with acceptably accurate forecasts, solid cash and debt management, competent financial statements and an efficient contract management process for delivery of state goods and services. CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: A- "We own roughly 6,900 buildings," says Bob Brandherm, Wisconsin's administrator of facilities development. "The majority need major renovation. We want agencies to focus on that rather than another building boom." Toward that end, the state now has consultants auditing the condition of all the buildings and creating a new asset management system that will help dictate both repairs and preventive maintenance. For those new projects it does choose to undertake, Wisconsin has a highly evolved six-year capital management planning process, which is bipartisan and involves both the executive and legislative branches. A new project management database, which monitors the work done on capital efforts, seems to be paying off. Projects are tracked from start to finish on a real-time basis, and the system links construction sites with project managers and analysts around the state. It is being put on a Web page so a broader audience can have access to it. HUMAN RESOURCES: B+ Wisconsin has done a terrific job of reworking civil service provisions to make them more flexible. It no longer uses limited lists for managers to select new hires, and has moved to walk-in testing for the 20 percent of vacancies that are still filled through written examinations. Turnover of state employees is low; that's noteworthy given the fact that the state's minuscule unemployment rate has created a seller's market in both the private and public sectors. As with most strong labor states, Wisconsin is generally restrained by collective-bargaining agreements from offering performance pay to unionized employees, but raises for non-unionized managerial staff are based on performance. Unfortunately, the state still has about 2,800 classified positions, and while the personnel chief agrees that that's high, fixing it is not a major priority. There also is no real statewide workforce planning, although most agencies consider staff needs in their required business plans. MANAGING FOR RESULTS: C Wisconsin was a national leader in establishing performance measures 20 years ago, but that effort died in 1981, and the legislature has been leery of trying it again. Still, about a quarter of the programs in state government are receiving the benefit of results-oriented measures. Wisconsin's Legislative Audit Bureau, among the best agencies of its kind in the country, can chart a long list of service improvements that have come from its evaluation work. Effective measures are being developed to hold the state's schools accountable for their results. There is a statewide test that is being required of all high school seniors for graduation. In the current biennium, budget instructions encouraged agencies to develop new measures reporting on efficiency and effectiveness. Meanwhile, the state is starting a pilot project in performance-based budgeting. Wisconsin has no overall statewide strategic plan. Agencies are required to draw up business plans, which focus on the efficiency of operations rather than on targeting the results of the services. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: B The IT planning process here is top-notch, with planning done statewide, at the agency level and by individual organizations within agencies. Wisconsin is ahead of the pack in requiring agencies to use a standard cost-benefit methodology in making funding requests. It also is one of the national leaders in IT training, which is made affordable to agencies through centralized funding. Although the state has no chief information officer, it does have an effectively standardized IT system, from mainframes to desktops. Network-level telecommunications are largely integrated. Even so, there are problems. The budget information system is old and can't really handle its job; human resources has no central system at all; the accounting information system is better, but its ability to generate reports is far from state of the art. Wisconsin plans to remedy this by gathering a wide array of information into a data warehouse. This should help the situation a great deal. AVERAGE GRADE: B
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