Considering the demands in recent years that governments show concrete results and at least indicators that show that progress is being made in solving problems, it has been determined that results-based management can be used through tools such as results-based budgeting, which responds to the priority need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending, linking the allocation and use of resources to management results of the institutions, using in a systematic and institutional way the performance information for budgetary decision making.With the implementation of the Budgeting for Results in the program budget system, the aim is to improve the way in which the goods and services of public entities reach citizens, so that there is greater transparency in the use of taxes paid. by them. In this context and according to the Ministry of Finance of Paraguay, results-based management can be defined as a «management strategy that guides the action of public development actors to generate the highest possible public value through the use of instruments of management that, in a collective, coordinated and complementary way, public institutions must implement to generate social changes with equity and in a sustainable way for the benefit of the population of a country ».
Budgeting for results is a methodology, which is applied within the program budget system. In results-based budgeting, what you want is a program budgeting process in which: Program formulation revolves around a series of defined objectives and anticipated results. The expected results must justify the resource needs that obey and are linked to the products necessary to achieve those results.In other words, it focuses on end products and services that have an impact on customers and improve their quality of life, so a new management culture must be established where the citizen is the axis of performance and establish indicators of efficiency, effectiveness and cheapness and quality that allow measuring the results of institutional management.
Managing for results and budgeting for results are not the panacea to improve the public sector, but tools that can improve the functioning of the public sector, but must be completed with improvements in information systems, improvements in the administrative contracting system, improve in the national and institutional planning system, with simpler and friendly planning instruments and managing the institutional operative plan (POI) for matters related to the National Development Plan, and the sectoral planning and the annual operative plan for the management of all institutional actions that consider the substantive programs and the administrative program.
Bearing in mind that the annual operating plan and the institutional operating plan are mechanisms for executing the strategic and long-term plans in the short term. It is necessary that the results are prioritized over the processes and procedures, which are often excessive and slow, and that the budget is really a financial expression of the programmed action, and medium-term planning is substantially improved through strategic plans. and performance budgeting applied through the program budget system. The Balanced Scorecard or Balanced Scorecard must also be applied to the monitoring of strategic plans.
