I worked on: raising a city's standards of financial management.
Start date: 1 December 2010
End date: 27 October tout (subject to re-election)
Location: Burlington. Toronto
Namer: Paul Sharman ACMA, CGMA
Organisation: Burlington City Council, Canada
Role: councillor
Industry: public sector
CPAA qualifled: 1980
Before I started working as an elected official to professionalise the running of Burlington's finances, I'd held several finance jobs in big companies and then founded a consultancy specialising in cost and performance management. I helped to instil change at firms such as DuPont and Toyota Motor Credit Corporation and Volkswagen Canada, and also at public-sector organisations including Burlington City Council--an engagement that gave me some understanding of the city's financial structure and operating processes.
Several years later I stood successfully for election as a councillor in Burlington. I was immediately surprised to find that the city's council had no strategic plan to speak of and also lacked an effective budgeting process. Performance management was rudimentary and there was little data on which to base long-term decisions.
My colleagues and I influenced the city's senior managers to hire a respected consultant with private-sector experience to help them drastically improve the strategic plan. Soon after this was completed, we had the chance to recruit a new city manager, the most senior executive among the council's employees. We were lucky enough to find a strategic thinker with a long and successful record as a municipal CEO. Under his guidance the organisation has since initiated a series of changes, including the following:
* Results-based accountability, in which city departments look at the cost and non-financial performance of every service provided. The goal is to identify the gap between the existing standard of performance and that which represents highly satisfactory service to citizens.
* Process analysis, in which every operation is reviewed and redesigned to improve its effectiveness and efficiency. * Service-based budgeting, which is designed to improve on the traditional form of departmental budgeting by applying the activity-based assignment of costs to each line of service. This supports results-based accountability.
* A performance management system in which people's rewards are aligned with the organisation's achievements.
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