How well does the agency preform? Does it typically meet its performance targets?

The Written Report
The written report will be due Friday, March 25. You should begin writing while planning your oral report. It will take the same form as your presentation and summarize the important points. It should also include a follow-up to any unanswered questions during the presentation. The report should be roughly 4-6 pages long. Feel free to reference your presentation to save space when writing. You will use the “Project Two” assignment on canvas to submit your report. Only one report per group please.

When writing, be succinct. Say what you mean and nothing more. Avoid using industry terms or acronyms without explanation. Use organizational devices like headings and transitional statements to improve the readability of your report and make it easy to find important information. I encourage you to split the writing between group members, but don’t just cut and paste the final product together. Be sure to review the finished document to reconcile varied writing styles and put the whole report in one voice. Make sure to identify where to find your source documents but don’t feel obligated to include a full bibliography with citations. Don’t quote my lecture slides. The information there comes from the Mikesell text. If you’d like to reference those ideas, quote Dr. Mikesell. If you have questions about writing or would like me to review a draft of your papers, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Random Ideas
Below, I’ve included a list of major topics and some specific questions related to each. These questions are designed to help guide your writing. Your reports will be graded based on how well you address each major topic. However, the questions I’ve listed under each topic are just general ideas to consider when crafting your reports. Don’t feel obligated to address each question specifically or limited to only addressing these questions. You don’t need to use these headings or organize your report in this way. Organize your work in the way that makes the most sense to you. Again, these are simply ideas to help guide your writing.

Nature of the Organization
This section will tell us about the organization. Give us enough background to add context to the budget documents and the proposals you will be discussing later. But, don’t focus too much of your presentation on this section of the report.

What type of agency is it? What do they do? Why is it important that they do that? What is their mission statement? Do they have a comprehensive plan? Do they follow it?
How well does the agency preform? Does it typically meet its performance targets? Does congress or the American people like it? Is it constantly facing cuts or attacks on its mission? Is it a well-loved agency with generous public support? Why and how was the agency started? How has it changed since it began?
How big is the agency? How many employees? Has it been growing or shrinking? How big is their total budget? Is it bigger or smaller than similar organizations?
Have they recently faced tough times or budget related issues? If so, what were the major contributing factors?
Are they (or should they be) concerned about anything coming up in the near future?

The Budget Documents
In this section, you will describe and analyze the budget documents. Remember to include samples from the documents to illustrate your points.

What type of budget did you find? Line-item? Performance? Program? Why do they use that format? What are the benefits of that format for your organization? Should they be using a different format? Why? What value would using a different format add to the process?
Describe the agency’s budget process. Do they use a zero-based approach? How do they involve citizens in the process? Can you trace the path of a program from proposal to appropriation?
Describe the most recent budget documents. Does it start with a narrative? What information does the narrative provide? What type of summaries are provided? Are there charts and graphs? Are they easy to read? How are expenses categorized? How much detail is provided about line-items? Does it include guides describing what line-items mean? Do you like the way they’ve organized the information? Can you suggest a better way?
If they’ve used a performance or program budget, how well is that information presented? What performance measures do they use? What do those measures tell you about the organization? Are they using the right performance measures? What do you think of their program structure? Do you think they’ve labeled their programs properly? Is there a better way to split the organization into programs? If they haven’t provided a program budget or performance measures, should they? What value would that add to the organization?
What are the total expense? Are they going up or down? If expenses are increasing, what’s driving it? Health insurance? Fuel costs? New or expanded programs? If they are decreasing, what’s driving that? Across the board budget cuts? Targeted cuts? Decreases in revenue? Decreases in demand?
Does the organization have any source of revenue outside of appropriations from federal treasuries? If so, what is it? How do they collect the money? Who pays it? How much do they pay? How much total revenue does it raise every year? What portion of their budget is financed by this revenue? Do they have any cash or significant assets? How much? What are they? Are they considering or have they recently implemented any new revenues? If so, what do you think about them?

Cost-saving or Revenue-generating Proposals
We all know that our federal government runs a deficit of 10 to 20% every year. To balance the budget, all agencies will need to make significant budget cuts or find new sources of revenue. In this section you will discuss any proposals in the budget designed to cut costs or expand revenues. If the budget proposal doesn’t include any ideas or discuss any recent cuts, try to suggest some of your own. Tell us about specific proposals such as a cost saving ideas or new sources of revenue that have happened recently or are currently under consideration. What do you think about the proposals? Can you make any suggestion to improve them? What are the goals of the proposals? Do you think they will work?

Conclusion
Be sure to include a conclusion in your reports that summarizes your overall impressions of the agency and its documents. Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns.