The Governor's Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) provides leadership and support to aid the Governor in ensuring that Utahns receive continuously improving services at lower costs; that the State of Utah uses fiscally responsible and sound budgeting practices; and that agencies are encouraged to establish workplaces that foster continual innovation and operational excellence. Activities include ensuring informed decision-making by providing key economic data, budget information, and policy briefs; providing practical resources and tools to improve agency performance; ensuring transparency and accountability for how well the State's programs and services are delivered by establishing performance benchmarks and measures; and by sharing best practices and successes.
The GOMB line item consists of the following programs:
- Administration
- Planning and Budget Analysis
- Demographic and Economic Analysis
- Information Technology
- State and Local Planning
- General State Fiscal Stabilization Program
- School Readiness Initiative
During the 2015 General Session, the Legislature appropriated for Fiscal Year 2016, $5,118,000 from all sources for Governor's Office of Management and Budget. This is a 14 percent reduction from Fiscal Year 2015 revised estimated amounts from all sources. The total includes $4,892,000 from the General/Education Funds, an increase of 17.3 percent from revised Fiscal Year 2015 estimates.
In addition to statewide compensation and internal service fund cost increases, the following appropriation adjustments were made during the 2015 General Session:
GOMB's goal for all state government programs and services is to demonstrate improvement of at least 25 percent by January 2017 on key performance metrics.
Progress toward 25 percent improvement in state government programs and services
An improvement in state government programs and services of at least 25 percent by January 2017. The other programs do not need to show performance measures.
Beginning July 1, 2013, the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget was reorganized into three main functions: 1) Operational Excellence 2) Budget and Policy, and 3) State and Local Planning. In addition to this reorganization, the office was renamed the Governor's Office and Management and Budget (GOMB).
Although these three core functions define the new office and its operations, the budgeting process for this line item has been retained from the former Governor's Office of Planning and Budget - the same programs exist within the budget.
As a result, a description of the three core functions in the new GOMB is contained in this "Background" section. Following this line item description, the programs which comprise the GOMB budget - listed above - are explained in detail.
Operational Excellence
Using a variety of tools to include the SUCCESS Framework, management principles, process improvement practices, and other methodologies, the operational excellence team works closely with individual state agencies and key personnel at the enterprise level to increase quality and throughput (capacity) while maintaining or reducing operating expenses. The goal is to help agencies, and thereby the state as a whole, to reach peak performance and improvement targets by sharing the tools and skill sets needed to integrate individual functions into a single system and framework.
Budget and Policy
The GOMB budget and policy program consists of two major functions or group of activities. The first set of activities is performed by a team of analysts and economists responsible for analyzing the state's budget drivers and policy issues. Activities include interpreting and evaluating budget requests in the context of the state's enterprise demands as well as individual agency needs; conducting cost-benefit analysis; justifying budget requests; preparing revenue and expenditure forecasts; making policy recommendations and monitoring the implementation and effectiveness of policy objectives and positions; and preparing briefing papers, letters, and memos. The second set of activities is performed by a team of financial operations specialists responsible for technical budget analysis and reporting. Activities include preparing budget documents; coordinating data entry into the Budget Prep and Fee Prep systems; ensuring compliance with the Budgetary Procedures Act; evaluating actual expenditures against planned expenditures; monitoring the statutory appropriations limit; calculating the costs and funding sources of statewide building blocks (e.g. ISF rate impacts and compensation); and making recommendations to better align budget structures with agency and statewide operations.
State and Local Planning
State and local planning functions include providing staff support to the State Planning Coordinator and facilitating the coordination of state and local planning activities at all levels of government (local, county, state). Activities of the office include providing technical assistance to local governments upon request for land use planning, development, and implementation; strategic and comprehensive planning and technical assistance; and fulfills the statutory obligations of the Governor's Office of Management and Budget to staff the Utah Quality Growth Commission. The Quality Growth Commission administers local government planning grants and the LeRay McAllister Critical Land Conservation Program. The state and local program staff also makes recommendations to the Legislature regarding growth issues and the implementation of quality growth principles.
COBI contains unaudited data as presented to the Legislature by state agencies at the time of publication. For audited financial data see the State of Utah's Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports.