EAST LANSING, Mich. — Following several months of implementation, the City of East Lansing has launched its Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) community-facing data dashboard: https://openpbbdata.net/EastLansing/.
The dashboard provides community members with an opportunity to see how funds and resources are being allocated across the City of East Lansing’s departments and shows how departmental programs align with the City’s identified priorities and goals.
“While Priority Based Budgeting doesn’t replace our traditional budgeting process, it provides a new approach to our budget decision making and increases transparency for our residents,” said East Lansing City Manager George Lahanas.
In the Open PBB dashboard, citizens can view a tree plot that breaks down the City’s budget by department and the programs within each department. Residents can click on results, program costing and program attributes tab sets at the top of the webpage to see how various departmental programs align with each of the City’s identified priorities (results), categories and attributes. Citizens can click on the information icon in the bottom right corner of the header image for a walkthrough of the dashboard.
“The Open PBB dashboard is specifically designed to transparently share all of the City’s priority-based budgeting data with citizens and inform our community of the true cost of providing City services,” said Lahanas.
City officials plan to use the Priority Based Budgeting data to make important decisions during budget deliberations and, over the years, work will be done to improve the data and resource alignment in order to achieve the City’s long-term strategic goals. The data will also be used to make important decisions that result in cost efficiencies and prioritization of resources.
PBB is a recognized best practice and budgeting tool used by more than 200 cities, counties, school districts and non-profit organizations across the country. Community members can learn more about PBB at https://www.resourcex.net.