Winning Ways: Setting Budget Priorities and Getting Support

1. Winning Ways: Setting Budget Priorities and Getting Support Andrew Graham School of Policy Studies Queens University

2. So, you need more money, staff and equipment • You understand how the budget is set in the Service • You have some ideas that would really improve things (so do your colleagues, but the way) • Your Deputy and Chief have to sort out these ideas and weight them against what they have and what they can sell

3. How Priorities are Set • Bottom up and top down: what are the elements of this process?

4. Tools Police Services Use to Set Budget Priorities • Knowing and working within scope of flexibility • Effective business planning • Effective ways to set priorities • Defining a process, involving all key players with a clear understanding that senior management will have to make decisions in the end, sticking to it

5. Who are the players? Does it end there?

6. Key Drivers for Budget Increases • External forces: • Legal requirements • Political imperatives: more cops on the street • Collective bargaining – salary costs • New standards • Population growth – do you have an established formula? • Technology and equipment turnover • Crime rates? • New crime patterns

7. Key Drivers for Budget Increases • Internal forces: • Standardized growth formulae – good or bad? • Commitments • Previous history • Politics and power

8. Defining Budget Success • Is it just getting more money? • Other factors come into play as competition for scarce resources never ends • One time win can create downstream costs. How? • There is always a tomorrow.

9. Elements of Success: Internal • Good planning • Building strategic linkage • Knowing how the systems works – formal and informal • Building a constituency and coalitions – getting the corporate/ financial and Chief’s Office people on side

10. Elements of Success: Internal • Doing your homework • Good understanding of cost and cost drivers • Building a good business case as a tool not an end in itself • Creating a distinctive product • Take a mature time perspective

11. A Good Business Plan is a Useful Start Questions a good business plan has to answer: • What exactly do you want to do? • How does it link to what we want to do? • How much will it cost? Are these costs fully inclusive and for how long?

12. A Good Business Plan is a Useful Start • What are risks you are addressing? • What are the measures of success? • What is the implementation plan? When and how? • What can you stop doing that will fund this?

13. Fault Lines and Dangers for the Budget Advocate • Avoid one-time money that creates long-term commitments • Check the conditions of approvals • What makes sense to you may be nonsense to others. • Assume that the business case sells itself • Overpromising – you may be fooling yourself • Track record • Threats and wolf crying

14. Selling the Police Budget • Understand the context • Never surprise the decision-makers • Engage supporters – what does HR say about your plans for more training in your unit? What does your corporate financial analyst think about those IT upgrades you need? • Compare and contrast • Link to known measures – where do you fit. • Never forget history – don’t look like you are asking for money your bosses, Council or Treasury Board thought they gave you last year

15. Winning Techniques: what you need to do to win support • Using a couple of examples: Peel and Brockville • Quite different but each uses important techniques • These apply equally well within an RCMP context and I have seen them used effectively (in fact, I have used most of them)

16. Quick Checklist: Winning Techniques: what you need to do to win support • Start with what you have done with what you got in past years: focus on accomplishments • Clearly show what substantive factors are driving your current presentation • Address your weaknesses and risks frontally, e.g. Delayed recruitment, overtime, major incidents • Avoid dramatic, crisis-oriented language – save that you may need it. • Show what has changed year to year – most budgets only have incremental changes.

17. Quick Checklist: Winning Techniques: what you need to do to win support • Focus on the good management of resources and what efficiencies you have achieved – everybody but you think you can do more with what you have • Avoid detail – use graphics • Make it concrete – numbers scare people, but the number of new officers or cost per household of the increase are a nice focus • Show the impact of what you are proposing • Signal future issues – you will be back.

18. Sorting Out Business Cases • Your are the Chief’s budget group • Review and discuss these business cases • You need to do two things, neither of which is directly related to the merits of each case: • Indicate what other information you would need about the Service’s financial situation to recommend approval of the cases, and • Suggest a set of criteria that you would put in place to assess these business cases.

19. Sorting Business Cases with an Eye to Success and Sustainability