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.
Read the full method
Sign in with a free account to read this section.
Method map
The neighbourhood of related methods — select a node to explore.
Sources
- Schick, A. (1966). The Road to PPB: The Stages of Budget Reform. Public Administration Review, 26(4), 243–258. DOI: 10.2307/973296 ↗
- Novick, D. (Ed.) (1965). Program Budgeting: Program Analysis and the Federal Budget. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN: 9780674710009
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (Program Budgeting). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/public-administration/program-budgeting-ppbs
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Government Performance MeasurementPublic Administration↔ compare
- Performance-Based BudgetingPublic Administration↔ compare
- Public Value MeasurementPublic Administration↔ compare
- Zero-Based BudgetingPublic Administration↔ compare