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Speaking with Federal government experience, I'm 99 percent certain that what you describe is go-to-jail illegal to do with Federal funds absent explicit author

Speaking with Federal government experience, I'm 99 percent certain that what you describe is go-to-jail illegal to do with Federal funds absent explicit authorization. There is some ability to move funds around to do different things, but generally only related things and only with a paper trail of sign-offs from the proper authorities. Congress programs a budget, and that budget is expected to be spent as designed in Federal land. If there's X dollars allocated for, say, sending reservists on travel for training, you can move that money around to send a different group of people to a different base, but you can't use it to renovate the office.

skissane 3y ago
It was state not federal, plus it wasn’t in the US. Maybe it is different in the US, but my experience is legislators generally don’t want to micromanage agency budgets - they’ll give the agency a bucket of money to spend but will leave it up to senior management to decide exactly how to spend it. Whether the agency spends $1 million on new LDAP servers or $1 million on new network switches is not the level of detail they want to drill down to, to them it is just “$10 million for X agency IT”. But for her, although she was responsible for proposing and delivering those projects, it was the level above her which had to approve carving them out of the overall budget, and that level was much more enthusiastic about paying for sexy stuff like identity management than boring stuff like replacing ancient network switches, even if the enterprise actually had a much more urgent need for the latter. So she just quietly redirected some of the sexy budget to help pay for those boring necessities
- Royce-CMR 3y ago
  Former contract worker, US State Government - 100% similar stuff happens. But it can be a much finer line. Example: Approved effort for call center expansion to meet the growing demand of the public. Includes improvements to the backend business software to improve cycle time for the call center to meet goal of addressing public demand. Those backend software improvements - which were real, and did help the call center cycle time - just happened to be the same improvements requested by mobile field workers for 5+ years, which were never approved. Did a leader see the opportunity to make the 5+ year requests happen and pull it into the budget ask? Absolutely. Were the changes necessary to accomplish the call center project with the resource / staffing levels in the budget proposal? Yep. I view the prior example as the same. Sexy projects don't work unless the foundation is operational; allocating funds under Sexy project to shore up foundations is surprisingly common. The real learning for me is the vicious circle. New upstairs leader sees everyone say don't need to spend on sustain, so doesn't spend on sustain, but nods to higher-than-actual costs for New Cool Thing, and the layers below upstairs work the game to get key sustain tied into New Cool Thing projects... which then supports upstairs view that don't need higher sustain costs. Tough to break this.

skissane 3y ago

It was state not federal, plus it wasn’t in the US. Maybe it is different in the US, but my experience is legislators generally don’t want to micromanage agency budgets - they’ll give the agency a bucket of money to spend but will leave it up to senior management to decide exactly how to spend it. Whether the agency spends $1 million on new LDAP servers or $1 million on new network switches is not the level of detail they want to drill down to, to them it is just “$10 million for X agency IT”. But for her, although she was responsible for proposing and delivering those projects, it was the level above her which had to approve carving them out of the overall budget, and that level was much more enthusiastic about paying for sexy stuff like identity management than boring stuff like replacing ancient network switches, even if the enterprise actually had a much more urgent need for the latter. So she just quietly redirected some of the sexy budget to help pay for those boring necessities

Royce-CMR 3y ago
Former contract worker, US State Government - 100% similar stuff happens. But it can be a much finer line. Example: Approved effort for call center expansion to meet the growing demand of the public. Includes improvements to the backend business software to improve cycle time for the call center to meet goal of addressing public demand. Those backend software improvements - which were real, and did help the call center cycle time - just happened to be the same improvements requested by mobile field workers for 5+ years, which were never approved. Did a leader see the opportunity to make the 5+ year requests happen and pull it into the budget ask? Absolutely. Were the changes necessary to accomplish the call center project with the resource / staffing levels in the budget proposal? Yep. I view the prior example as the same. Sexy projects don't work unless the foundation is operational; allocating funds under Sexy project to shore up foundations is surprisingly common. The real learning for me is the vicious circle. New upstairs leader sees everyone say don't need to spend on sustain, so doesn't spend on sustain, but nods to higher-than-actual costs for New Cool Thing, and the layers below upstairs work the game to get key sustain tied into New Cool Thing projects... which then supports upstairs view that don't need higher sustain costs. Tough to break this.