Program Classification

Abstract

The programmatic classification of expenditure—that is, the grouping of expenditure by common objective for budgeting purposes—is a basic information tool used by most contemporary performance budgeting systems. The program classification of expenditure is intended to introduce clarity about the objectives being pursued through public expenditure, the government activities aimed at achieving these, and about amounts being spent on them. Expenditure objectives would usually, at the program level, be defined by the intended results expected for society, or outcome. To borrow the words of the French legislation of 2001 which established the framework for the new performance budgeting system in that country, a program “groups together expenditures which finance actions or coherent groups of actions…[and] which have precise objectives defined in terms of outcomes of relevance to the public.”²

1. The authors would like to thank Philip Joyce for his valuable comments on a draft of this chapter.