Technical Aspects of Budget Work

Budget work and the work of budget analysts involves techniques for doing analysis and for formally presenting the results of the analysis.  Budgeting involves numbers and making projections using numbers, so the techniques related to making projections must be mastered.  This page presents some of these techniques, which are later explored in more detail.

The following are types of analyses that primarily are done in the context of agency budget analysis.  Some of the items on this list are linked to pages that provide more details.  (This list will grow.)  Budget analysts and other staff working on budgets need to be familiar with the analyses related to each of these and be able to easily switch among them, as circumstances dictate.  (See ANALYST for a description of budget analysis tools and skills.)   Personnel costs, or personnel compensation and benefits calculations. Travel and transportation costs. Continued funding for multiyear projects for the outyears. Costs of continuing activities. Costing out new programs or recurring programs or activities for future years. Fixed costs associated with difficult to change operations, essential operations, or for operations that need long-term actions for phasing out. Short-term funding requirements, for less than a full fiscal year, such as may be required for a continuing resolution (see  CR for an explanation of what a CR is) or for other reasons, such as a special project with time duration different from the fiscal year. Expenditures or outlays and their relationship to program funding, usually expressed as obligational authority.

There are many other types of budget analyses that require different techniques, such as for National accounts budget surplus or deficit estimates.  These are generally not used for agency budgeting, and are not addressed here.

Presentation techniques also involve analysis, and include:   Analysis of changes from one year to the next, and presentation of the information in an understandable fashion. Presentation of data on a comparable basis, that is, the information is adjusted for different years to make the data truly comparable.

The Analyst will continue to add materials to this page and to the explanations of how to use the techniques.