Government Performance Project 2002: Glossary

Cash Management: The way a county invests and otherwise handles the money in its treasury. Good cash management means investing available dollars to achieve good returns with an acceptable amount of risk, and maintaining effective oversight in the process.

Credit Watch: A term used to indicate that a county’s bond rating is shaky, in the judgment of one or more of the national bond rating agencies; if steps are not taken to change the current status, the bond rating is likely to drop.

Cost Accounting: The effort to calculate the expense associated with delivering a service, such as maintaining inmates in a maximum-security prison.

Fiscal Note: An addendum, often attached to an appropriation bill, that shows legislators how much money a program or project will likely cost in future years.

GAAP: Generally Accepted Accounting Principles — a body of uniform standards promulgated by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board that allows for comparability among units of government, including states, cities and counties.

One-Time Revenue: Money that comes into a government account from a non-repeating source: the sale of an asset, for example. Ideally, one-time revenues should be used to pay for one-time expenses, not continuing budgetary needs.

Procurement Card: A device that allows managers to make small purchases for their agencies or offices, billing the county directly, without the need for time-consuming approval at higher levels.

Rainy Day Fund (or Contingency Fund): Reserves set aside to be used in the event of recession or other fiscal surprises.

Structural Balance: A government should bring in more revenue than it spends each year. If it defies this rule year after year, it is not in structural balance.

Capital Management

Major Maintenance: Large-scale projects to repair and rehabilitate assets that have significant physical problems. Major maintenance funding can come out of operating budgets, but often comes out of capital budgets instead. It is different from routine maintenance, which is upkeep of capital assets that should be done on a regular basis. Routine maintenance nearly always comes out of operating budgets.

RFP: Request for Proposal — an outline providing a varying degree of detail in describing a purchase or project, which vendors read for the necessary information to bid on supplying it.

Scope Creep: The tendency for the size and expense of projects to grow while they are being worked on — and after original budgets and designs have been approved.

Value Engineering: A review process, usually conducted by both external and internal analysis, designed to cut costs while retaining project quality.

Human Resources

Broadbanding: The act of combining individual job classifications or pay categories to make it easier for a government to give promotions or raises.

Career Ladder: A mechanism that offers employees a track of upward promotions, based on seniority, performance or the acquisition of new skills.

Certified List: Some governments provide their agencies with limited lists of applicants for job openings, often including three, five or 10 names (they are then referred to as having a “rule of three,” “rule of five,” etc.).

Pay for Performance: A means of tying employee pay levels to the quality of work delivered.

Succession Management: The act of planning to replace individuals in specific — often high-level — jobs when it is known that they are about to retire or be promoted.

Workforce Planning: A longer-term effort to predict future personnel needs and to make sure those needs will be met.

Managing for Results

Balanced Scorecard: An approach to performance measurement that attempts to align internal administrative policies and investments with the larger goals of the organization.

Benchmarks: Goals that governments set for themselves, against which actual results are later compared; also used to mean an effort to emulate the best practices from other counties.

Efficiency Measures: Measures that show how much it costs to deliver a given unit of service

Input Measures: The simple measurement of resources used to deliver a product or service.

Output Measures: Measures that focus on the quantity of a project or program. The number of measles inoculations given in a county each year is an output measure.

Outcome Measures: Measures that focus on the result, rather than the quantity of work, delivered by a project or program. The decline in measles cases resulting from inoculation is an outcome measure.

Performance-Based Budgeting: An attempt to link funding levels to specific desired results, both for administrative efforts and for programs.

Information Technology

Backbone: The communications infrastructure used by a government to share information among departments and with the outside world.

Data Warehouse: A computer system that acts as a storage closet for information, making data easily available to managers.

Refresh Cycle: The period of time during which a county plans to replace all the technology in a particular category; most often used in connection with desktop computers.

Standards: Guidelines, either formal or informal, which indicate the types of technology available for purchase that will be supported by the county.

Stovepiping: The tendency to use dissimilar, unintegrated technologies in different departments.

Wide-Area Network: A computer system that permits many entities to communicate with minimal effort.

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