PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS

This budget cycle, the City undertook four initiatives to improve its budget process. Several of these initiatives expanded on innovations the City started in its FY 2021-23 Biennial Budget cycle. They were chosen in large part because they advanced the City's overall mission to increase transparency, equity, and efficiency. They were also undertaken during a time when the City's Finance Department was projecting the most severe deficits the City has seen in the 21st century. The City invested in these initiatives to transform the way the City develops and evaluates budget proposals through moving its decision-making process to be guided more and more by robust data and comprehensive analysis on fiscal and service impacts.

OpenGov Online Platform

In an effort to increase transparency, the City is utilizing the OpenGov platform to present its entire budget in an online interactive website. Most tables and graphs on the platform allow the reader to drill-down, pivot, and even extract budget data. The next step in utilizing OpenGov will be to develop an interactive exploration of in-year revenue & expenditure data. The OpenGov platform will support the public monitoring of the City's finances, including analyzing its spending and revenue-generating trends. During this biennial budget, the City implemented OpenGov solutions to allow for deeper exploration of the Capital Improvements Program.

Integrating Equity Into The Budget Process

The City made a commitment to advancing racial equity citywide when it created the Department of Race & Equity in 2016. The City defines equity as integrating the principle of "fair and just" in all the City does in order to achieve equitable opportunities for all people and communities. Due to the extensive racial disparities that exist for Oakland's Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities, pursuing equity work also involves improving life outcomes for the City's BIPOC communities. The City's budget is where the City can make major strides to advance equity through the budget choices that are made. In the FY 2021-23 Biennial Budget cycle, the City began an intentional effort to reshape our budget approach to support this vision. It required the development of new tools, targeted capacity building for City staff and a steep learning curve for all. For this FY2023-25 Biennial Budget Cycle, the City is iterating upon the process it created in the prior cycle.

The Budget Bureau received departments' budget proposals at the beginning of February that included equity analysis of their proposed budget changes. For the department budget hearings that the Mayor and City Administrator scheduled in late March, departments were asked to provide equity analysis along with their proposed changes. When the Mayor decided her proposed changes, departments provided equity impact statements for the significant changes in their budget that affected service delivery.

The next phase of integrating equity into the budget begin when the City's Budget Book is published on May 1st. From this point forward, City Council provided its input on the City's budget, including offering budget amendments, hosting public hearings, and ultimately voting on the final budget. The Department of Race & Equity and Budget Bureau will support the Council in using equity as a part of their budget deliberations. The Budget Bureau and Department of Race & Equity will work closely with the Mayor and City Council to provide them with relevant data, when available, to further support them in using an equity lens in their budget decisions through this last phase of the budget process where the budget needs to be adopted by June 30th.

Service Inventory & Performance Metrics

In the prior FY2021-23 Biennial cycle, the Budget Bureau designed a service inventory process to catalog all the work that departments do as a part of fulfilling their mission. Completing a service inventory is a business practice similar to completing a product inventory where it supports performance improvements and improves organizational capacity. The Budget bureau condensed each department's service inventory to share on their individual page in OpenGov. This service inventory is the first step in systematically linking the services provided by the City to long term desired policy outcomes. The inventory will also help to facilitate additional data collection, including data around the equitable provision of services.

For this FY2023-25 Biennial cycle, the Budget Bureau proceeded to the next step of this work, which was to create performance metrics for departments to measure how they're providing services to Oakland residents and to identify what kind of outcomes would be considered successful. Departments submitted their draft of their performance metrics in February along with their department proposals. The Budget Bureau reviewed their drafts and gave feedback on their performance metrics where needed so the performance metrics could be concrete, time-bound, and realistic. Departments provided revised performance metrics in April. The Budget Bureau is including these preliminary performance metrics as a part of its online book. This is a major step in the City getting closer to linking services the City provides to long term desired policy outcomes. In subsequent cycles, the Budget Bureau will expand on its performance metrics work to make sure they measure success using racial equity principles. This will ultimately support the City's efforts to operationalize racial equity in every City department so that their service delivery and management decisions are made with an eye of advancing racial equity for Oakland's Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities who have been historically disenfranchised and underserved.

Direct Community Grants

During the budget development process, City Council has historically awarded grants to community-based organizations (CBOs) to provide services, programs, and resources to Oakland residents. The awarded grants support the organizations by providing a funding source to ensure the continuity or expansion of the service or programs provided. During the FY 2021-23 Biennial Budget cycle, City Council requested that staff return with a process and recommendation to award direct community grants. The process recommended mitigates inequitable grant awarding by conducting a fair process through a Request For Proposal (RFP) where all Oakland CBOs and non-profits are afforded the opportunity to request grant funding for programs or services that align with Council priorities. This process directly supports the City’s efforts to “increase fairness and opportunity for all people”, considers equitable impact in the budgeting of city revenues, significantly reduces the grant agreement execution time, and supports a responsible government by evaluating the grant programs successes or shortcomings for future granting consideration.