The Growing Use of Performance Information in the Budget Process in the United States The Convergence of Performance Budgeting and the Digital Transformation

This chapter explores the twin developments. It focuses on two powerful trends —the growing use of performance information and the digital transformation. These twin developments are enabling policy officials and managers to more readily assemble and use evaluative information in the US federal budget process. Efforts in the US to insert more program performance information into the budget process bogged down, at least partially, under the difficulties and burden of assembling the information needed for analysis. The budget process is the premier arena in which public priorities are articulated and debated, and ultimately where important public policy choices are made. Two powerful trends—a growing use of performance information in the budget process and the digital transformation—are converging to accelerate and change the way performance information is being used for decision making. The movement toward performance budgeting and the use of performance information has been evolutionary.