Program Budgeting (PPBS)

Program budgeting, formalised as the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS), structures the budget around the government's objectives and the programs that serve them rather than around organisational units or input line items. It couples that program structure with systematic analysis of alternative ways to achieve each objective, multi-year cost projections, and cost-effectiveness comparison. Developed at the RAND Corporation and set out in David Novick's 1965 edited volume, it was adopted across the U.S. federal government under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Johnson. Allen Schick's 1966 essay 'The Road to PPB' placed it as the culmination of budgeting's evolution toward a planning orientation.