INFOGRAPHIC: 9 Reasons to Define Better Budgeting Software Requirements

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By Kara Batt, Neubrain Strategic Communications and Marketing Manager

Many state and local governments are nearing the end of the 7-10 year lifespan of the average budgeting and performance management software system, causing more and more key-decision makers to explore new budgeting and performance management technologies.

In fact, according to a 2013-2014 Gartner survey of more than 2,300 CIOs, business intelligence and analytics remain the top technology spending priority for the next three years.

In the past decade, budgeting analytics and financial intelligence and planning technologies have transformed from error-prone manual data entry tools to an array of advanced analytical, integrated, and sophisticated real-time budget management software solutions, improvements that are making software selection much more difficult.

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Federal Government Seeks Public Solution to Spending Less on Travel

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Originally posted on Government Executive by Eric Katz.

The federal government is offering $90,000 to people who can help reduce its travel costs.

Uncle Sam spends about $9 billion annually on travel, and the General Services Administration is turning to its own crowdsourcing website for help reducing that tab. GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy opened its Travel Data Challenge on Challenge.gov last week, asking the public to create a "digital interactive tool" that highlights the shortcomings and inefficiencies of current government travel policy.

GSA is "looking to bring a quantitative approach to the data the federal government collects in order to help agencies make smarter business decisions, and to allow them to drive greater saving and efficiencies," according to the posting. The grand prize winner will receive $35,000, the runner up $30,000 and the honorable mention recipient $25,000.

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Lemonade from Lemons: Learning from Managing Reduced Budgets

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IBM conducted a study interviewing California state officials to see what that group had learned managing their state's complicated budget shortfall. The resulting report examined what happened to local California government revenues during this period, which services have been adjusted, how employee benefits have been treated, and what innovations have been introduced.

The authors were able to pull out three key recommendations based on the subjects' real-world experiences.

  • Identify and address structural deficits in a finely grained manner, leaving no major budget category unexamined.
  • Foster citizen engagement to encourage widespread dissemination of fiscal information in order to enhance the legitimacy of public policy choices.
  • Improve the state/local relationship to reduce episodic, convulsive impacts on local public finance.

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Are Government Attendees an Endangered Species?

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Originally posted on Meetings & Conventions by Cheryl-Anne Sturken

How the meeting industry is pushing back against general travel restrictions

It has been a rough two years for government meeting planners. Following several high-profile cases of lavish conference spending, and with economic recovery from the Great Recession remaining in fragile mode, Congress has turned up its scrutiny of federal travel and conference spend and pushed for legislation that would restrict and regulate meetings outlay. Determined to avoid potential accusations of excess, federal agencies responded last year by taking an ax to meeting budgets, canceling multiple conferences and shunning resort destinations such as Hawaii, Las Vegas and Orlando, concerned that even the location alone could raise eyebrows.

The slash-and-burn reaction resulted in a 30 percent drop in government meetings in most of the top-tier markets in 2013. It also set off a heated debate on the importance of face-to-face meetings and spawned a flurry of white papers and studies from various groups anxious to reaffirm the power of in-person gatherings.

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GEOINT 2013*: Operationalizing Intelligence for Global Missions

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The GEOINT Symposium--the nation's largest intelligence event of the year--will take place April 14-17, 2014, at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Fla. The annual GEOINT Symposium, hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), attracts thousands of attendees from government, military, industry, and academia worldwide.

This year, the GEOINT Symposium promises another agenda packed with high-profile keynote speakers, insightful panel discussions, engaging training offerings, and a world-class exhibit hall.  In addition to the more than 250 exhibiting organizations offering 100,000 square feet of technologies, services and solutions, GEOINT 2013* will provide 30 hours of training and education sessions, four panel sessions on key community topics, and 11 keynote speakers including directors of intelligence agencies and combatant commanders.

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