Public Financial Management: Planning & Performance [C201|C301]
| Introduction | Aims & Objectives | Resources | Course Content | Tuition & Assessment | Course Sample |
Introduction
It is an interesting time to be studying public finance for several reasons. First, there are changes in the way that the public sector does its business. In some cases there is a movement towards decentralisation and delegation of authority so that managers and professionals at relatively junior levels now have to take decisions based on the best information, including financial information, available to them. Consequently, more people are having to understand costs, budgets, financial statements about cash flows and expenditures, even when they are not in accountancy. In professions across the public sector, people are making choices about investments, about how to achieve efficiency, how to stay within budget and how to improve performance. Second, there are changes in what people are being held to account for. It is no longer sufficient to have accounts that show that money has been spent how governments intended. Politicians and the public want to know how well it has been spent, whether it has been used efficiently and whether it has achieved the purposes for which it was allocated. This course focuses almost entirely on the expenditure side of public financial management and looks at budgeting, accountability and the changes in financial management.
Aims & Objectives
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- understand how public budgeting fits into the macroeconomic framework
- apply ideas about accountability to the production of various forms of account for public services and public money
- understand how changes in public management require different forms of public accounting
- read a budget and a set of national accounts in different jurisdictions
- understand costs and different ways of measuring them and how costs are used in budgets
- understand the budget process at national and sub-national levels and the techniques appropriate at different levels
- apply budgetary control methods
- appreciate how public financial management interfaces with politics and political choices
- use financial management to enhance the performance of public organisations
Resources
Study Guide
You will receive a looseleaf binder containing eight 'course units'. The units are carefully structured to provide the main teaching, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the further assigned readings. The unit files are also available to download from the Online Study Centre.Textbooks
H.M. Coombes and D.E. Jenkins, (2002) Public Sector Financial Management, Third edition, Thomson Learning S. Schiavo-Campo and D. Tommasi, (1999) Managing Government Expenditure, Asian Development Bank, (a very practical and rigorous book, rooted in a wide variety of country experiences).Readings
You will receive Reader volumes as part of the course materials, which consist of articles contributing to current debates in PFM. In addition, you will also use case studies and exercises in PFM in a variety of contexts.Online Study Centre
You will have access to the OSC, which is a web-accessed learning environment. Via the OSC, you can communicate with your assigned academic tutor, administrators and other students on the course using discussion forums. The OSC also provides access to the course Study Guide and assignments, as well as a selection of electronic journals available on the University of London Online Library.Podcast interviews
In this interview, Fred Mear, one of the authors of this course discusses the impact that the economic crisis has had on budgeting and in particular on MTEFs, how choices are made between cash and accruals in terms of planning, budgeting and accounting, and whether budgets should be constructed according to line items or in terms of programmes.
Course Content
Unit 1: The Context of Financial Management
- Introduction
- What is a budget?
- The macroeconomic framework
- Accountability
- 'New Public Management' and financial management
- Conclusion
Unit 2: Budget Classification and Structure
- Introduction
- Classification of the Budget
- Budget Composition
- The Line Item System vs Programme Systems
Unit 3: Costs
- Some definitions of costs
- Costing Systems
- Cost-Volume-Profit Model
- Absorption or Full cost recovery
- Activity Based Costing (ABC)
- Managing Costs
- Price-based costing
- Conclusions
Unit 4: Accounting and Budgeting: National Level
- Introduction: approaches to public accounting and budgeting
- Cash Accounting vs Accruals Accounting
- Planning: the macroeconomic, fiscal framework and the medium-term expenditure framework
- The role of the Ministry of Finance
- Budget Timetable
- Conclusions
Unit 5: Accounting and Budgeting: Sub-national Level
- Translating the national budget into operational budgets
- Structure, Performance, Discretion, Block Grants and Contracts
- Fund Accounting
- Resource Accounting and Budgeting
- Which techniques at which stage?
- Budget timetable at sub-national level
- Accounting for services provided by third parties
- Conclusion
- Introduction: Budgetary Control
- Controlling Operations
- Evaluation of Budgets
- Taking Action
- Summary
- Introduction
- National Legislatures and the Budget Process
- Case Study 1: Politics and Budget Making in the USA - Executive or Legislature?
- Case Study 2: Politicians and Output-orientated Performance Evaluation in Municipalities in the Netherlands
- Introduction: Accruals Accounting and Output and Outcome Budgeting
- Defining and Measuring Non-Financial Items, especially Outputs and Outcomes
- Case Study 1: Output and Outcome Definitions
- Output and Input Budgets
- Organisational Issues about the possibility of Integration
- Case Study 2: Budgeting in Australia from 1996 to 1999
- Case Study 3: Management By Objectives in Sweden
- Conclusions 1: Will Performance Management and Budgeting ever be Fully Implemented?
- Conclusions 2: Is there a single best method of financial management?
- The journey from Bureaucracy to NPM as it affects Public Financial Management
Tuition & Assessment
Students are individually assigned an academic tutor for the duration of the course, with whom you can discuss academic queries at regular intervals during the study session.
You are required to complete two Assignments for this course, which will be marked by your tutor. Assignments are each worth 15% of your total mark. You will be expected to submit your first assignment by the Tuesday of Week 5, and the second assignment at the end of the course, on the Tuesday after Week 8. Assignments are submitted and feedback given online. In addition, queries and problems can be answered through the Online Study Centre.
You will also sit a three-hour examination on a specified date in October, worth 70% of your total mark. An up-to-date timetable of examinations is published on the website in April each year.
Course Sample
Click on the link below to download the course sample document in PDF.
