Public Financial Management (PFM) plays a significant role in smart government. FreeBalance is developing numerous “vision cases” to describe the intersection of PFM and “smart”.
The planning and implementation of smart cities is enabled through PFM techniques and the use of open government. Governments cannot achieve “smart” without citizen engagement and a citizen-centric perspective. This is particularly important in service delivery. Long wait times and poor service has a negative economic impact on society. Smart technologies can be leveraged to improve service delivery and make this improvement financially sustainable. Long wait times have political consequences in countries with nationalize health care.
- Government Priorities: governments have service delivery priorities for health care, public works maintenance, education, permits, licenses etc.
- Balanced Scorecard: these service delivery objectives can be characterized in a performance structure using the balanced scorecard or other techniques
- Citizen Services: physical and online citizen services are provided by governments
- Web Analytics: web analytics are able to calculate time to complete a service, abandonment rates, and revenue
- Smart Devices: sensors, cameras, and computerized scheduling systems are able to calculate times for physical services
- Performance Outcomes: service delivery outcomes can be measured using data, augmented by surveys to measure the perception of outcomes
- Cost per Unit of Outcome: analytics can provide governments with the cost required to improve a unit of outcome, such as the cost to improve hospital wait times by one minute
- Online Cost Advantages: analytics compare the cost and service delivery advantages of online services – these advantages can be promoted to citizens to help reduce costs
- Budget Planning: budget plans for service delivery become realistic based on achieving government goals and scenarios for higher adoption of online services
The integration of PFM, open government and digital devices provides the “smart” in Smart Government:
- Citizen-centric: use of data from citizen experiences and perception surveys provide the appropriate context for service delivery improvements
- Data-driven: data from multiple sources build the analytics required to make effective decisions
- Performance-focused: balanced scorecard and other techniques used to measure the important characteristics of service delivery
- Long-term: analytics are used to improve subsequent years budget plans