A Better Path to Priority-Based Budgeting: How Do We Get There and What’s the Payoff?

Seeking to modernize budgeting, local governments are looking to priority-based budgeting to enable budget decisions that relate directly to their priorities and save money. This session will explore the steps toward priority-based budgeting, obstacles, and payoffs.

After an overview of priority-based budgeting and its benefits, a public sector budgeting expert and a Collier County, Florida, commissioner will explore best practices for implementing this new budgeting approach.

While local governments want the benefits of program- and priority-based budgeting, they often lack the resources to undertake the process. Speakers will discuss how AI modeling technology offers a solution to reduce the program budgeting lift significantly. Attendees will learn how AI modeling can analyze huge data sets to make logical connections and discover patterns in the data to predict programs – including inventory, costs, and scores.

Collier County will share real-world insight into how priority-based budgeting can surface innovations for how programs are funded, resources can be freed up and reallocated, and spending can be optimized to support community priorities.

Upon completion of this session, participants will:

• Recognize the critical steps involved in implementing priority-based budgeting.
• Know how to leverage machine learning and AI to streamline translating existing budget data into actionable program data, mitigating a primary obstacle to enacting priority-based budgeting.
• Understand how to use priority-based budgeting to further the mission of local government while saving money.