That approach could have unintended consequences, though. A department could just cut back on the services they provide, in order to cut back on their spending, to stay well within their budget. If these services are critical, then that may be worse than some wasteful spending, but a higher level of service.
Agreed. Certainly there'd need to be some other metrics to judge a dept on - service feedback, goals hit, timelines, etc, in addition to budget. However, we seem to be so far off the other end of the spectrum with this line of thinking that wasteful spending is encouraged, or one might even say required.
I've done work for state and city agencies over the years and it's generally the same thing. "Well, if our budget is $4m, but we only spend $3.85m this year, we won't be able to get $4m in next year's budget, and we know we'll need it then, so we have to spend the other $150k now so we can get more next year." Again, it simply boggles my mind that a budget process would not only take in to account a department's requests, but also their track record.
I've had to deal with it even with app hosting for some clients. "What do we need?". "Well, right now, we only need one server, but if demand goes up, we'll need 3 servers in 6 months, and we'll need them for about 2 months." "Well, we'll need to order 3 servers and pay for a year to get it in the budget". Huh? Variable pricing has been something foreign to most govt depts I've worked with over the years.
