Planning, Programming, and Budgeting Systems

Three Essential Steps

PPBS has been somewhat superseded by a range of other process-control methodologies in use by transportation administrators, although its key principles remain valid. The value of the PPBS process and the documents it generates can be useful whether the budget output represents the plans and programs of a public body or a private enterprise.

The first P—the plan—is the initial step in the technique. Data on goals, capabilities, material and personnel needs, and similar matters are gathered from the field operations staff. At the same time, directives and compliance requirements, along with strategic goals, are received from the oversight and funding authorities. Together, these criteria are synthesized into the plan. This is typically done at the very outset of a project and must then be repeated on an annual basis. Sometimes institutions or agencies also require three-year, five-year, and 10-year plans in order to build greater strategic vision, as well as to meet the more practical challenges of long-term budgeting, borrowing, and the effects these have on day-to-day operational capabilities, service levels, staffing, and related functions.

Once the plan is prepared, the key elements of the plan are input through various methods and practices to assemble the program, which is the second P. In this undertaking, it is recognized throughout the process that the output of this step will lead to the budget. Therefore, formats are structured with that goal in mind. The programming of the plan must be immediately recognizable, and its content readily accessible, to facilitate its use by both the internal and external financial administrative staff.

Programming typically features an overview, rosters of key decision makers and details on their staff complement and capabilities, an outline of timeline goals and milestones to enable monitoring of program progress once it is put into effect, information on internal and outside resources that will be called on to accomplish the plan at its different stages, and any fiscal year carry-forwards or other fiduciary ramifications that will need to be discovered and explored in the budgeting segment of the process.

The B, or budgeting segment, is the presentation phase of the PPBS sequence, in which priority aspects of the plan, along with the major stages of the program, are translated into a codified, comprehensive statement of the expenditure and funding requirements for both long-term capital investment (e.g., right-of-way acquisition, infrastructure construction, and rolling stock purchase) and operational costs (e.g., workforce, contractor payments, utility and supply costs, and expense reimbursements).

The budget thus becomes the closest-to-reality component of this process. In its line-item translation, it serves as a dollar-and-cents statement of the strategic goals of the plan, as well as the toolkit of metrics encompassed in the programming. The budget provides the truest measure of the ways and means necessary to accomplish strategic goals and their everyday application, and the budget spells out the grants, loans, and ongoing funding streams that must be negotiated with targeted financial sources.

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