This is very true. During my days working for a computer retail store they use to dedicate one guy to government sales for the entire month.

Christmas is also celebrated in March for computer outlets.

Yes, in fact government spends a large amount of money at the end of eash fiscal year. In one instance, DVA bought X amount of computers to ensure the entire budget was spent by the end of the fiscal year. If that wasn't enough, they hired security to watch these computers while they sat in warehousing, until such time they could rid themselves of the functioning computers in use at HQ's.

While this is a common government practice, what is the alternative? How does the government give equal and fair budgets to departments if it's unclear what their needs will be from year to year or if their spending doesn't match the fiscal cycle? Just curious what you see as the solution.

Wouldn't it be possible for the government to allow departments to rollover their leftover money to the next year? The federal budget itself has a rainy day fund ($3 billion/yr) so why can't individual departments also have a rainy day fund except that the money is put into escrow and used to fund larger projects. Perhaps a rule stating that after 3 years the money is used to pay off the debt would work too.

. . . then you'd have the same probably, only it'd be every three years rather than yearly.

But a 3 year rule (or even a 5 year rule) would allow money to build up, perhaps enough that worthwhile projects could be undertaken rather than foolish purchases of pencils and such.

Allowing money to build up, or at least be guaranteed for that department does have some merit. The problem then would be that there still is no overall savings to the cost of operating the gov’t. Wacky things would then be attempted every 3-5 years or even worse, people would just spend their budget every year and disregard the idea of saving money for rainy days. I think we need to look at some sort of budget monitoring process, maybe at a peer to peer level. Where managers who implement their objective in the most efficient manner are promoted or rewarded. I also think that these managers should have the role of a government POUNDED into their heads. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard govt managers say “oh well it’s not our money”.

<p>Yeah, this starts to get into the issues of varying levels of government and how they see each other. Take this fictional example:</p>

<blockquote>Large government says to small government, we'll give you $5 million for project X if you put in $1 million of your own.

Small government thinks project X is totally useless (let's say it's a 75-meter-tall statue of Anne of Green Gables). However, small government thinks - if we don't put in our mil, we won't get any of the big-gov money - and they do it.</blockquote>

There may be multiple levels of government, but there is only one tax-payer.

Another government waste story:
In the days gone by my father used to drive heavy equipment up north (northern Alberta & Sask). Every year the crew would drive their year old bulldozers out onto the ice and take a pickup back to shore. As the summer came the ice would break up and the bulldozers would sink to the bottom. A few weeks later their new bulldozers would arrive.

They're building a 75 meter-tall statue of Anne of Green Gables?? And i thought the liscence plates were bad...

They are pulling down such statutes in Baghdad right now...

What about a financial ombudsman with real powers?

His (or her) job would be to investigate whether departments in an organization were abusing funds by grossly wasteful spending. Managers would be rewarded with modest bonuses for prudent spending and reprimanded for abusing public funds. Employees could even be confindentially rewarded for whistlblowing. The ombudsman would make publicly available reports, to expose the mismanagement to the public eye and create heat for the government during question period.

Departmental budget rollovers would be a good idea, too.

Isn't this what the auditor general is supposed to do? She seems toothless in Canada. An ombudsman is a good idea, although knowing the government they'd probably then have a whole bunch of ombuds(wo)men wasting their budgets every year :-).

Something more organic, more intrinsic seems appropriate. We need John Nash to help us...

Rukavina replies on his blog - fair points Peter, but I'd say provincial and federal are two different worlds.

I don't see why they are that different, as I replied to Peter. I recall as summer job of a pal in NS cleaning a clean beach for ten weeks - she tanned. I have been told of the program with no name in PEI and have receieved benefit of March spending.

Your post (and others) got me thinking, the result of which was this post: Calling all economists: Is efficiency a good thing?