re you dreading the upcoming annual budget battle?

Are this year’s decisions even more difficult than usual?

Wondering how to deal with the risks at the various stages of the public financial management cycle?

This course will prepare you to manage the complete processes of budgeting and budget execution, as well as the planning and delivery of services.

What you will learn in this course:

• The role of budgeting in the public sector and why it matters
• The financial and operational challenges of budget preparation and service planning
• The role of stakeholder-impact budgets (such as gender-based budgeting) and multi-annual budgets
• The challenges of performance-based budgeting
• Insights on how auditors can help public sector bodies improve their management of budgets and services

By the end of the course you will be able to:

• Plan budgets according to service priorities that make the best use of limited resources
• Use budgets and service planning as tools to manage public services, including the process of setting the relevant KPIs for services
• Identify and know how to manage unfavourable outcomes of the financial management cycle, like going over-budget or not achieving performance targets
• Drive better cooperation between finance professionals and service managers to ensure better results of the planning and delivery of the budget
• Deal smoothly with unexpected challenges that may arise in the public financial management cycle

Whom is this course for:

This workshop is for all officials related to budget management, including:

• Finance professionals experienced in preparing budgets
• Service managers who need to understand budgets and financial and operational management reports
• Auditors

This course is directly relevant for officials in European institutions/agencies, ministries, national executive agencies, regional governments, municipalities, and other public sector bodies.

Course methodology and highlights:

This course will include plenty of examples and case studies to demonstrate how things work across the EU at the national and sub-national levels.

You will participate in lots of exercises to get a practical understanding of the processes and the challenges. You will also be able to discuss with our experts and other participants specific challenges that you are facing in your financial management process.