ABSTRACT
The characteristics of a useful budget structure were seen to be: the allocation of money costs to defined objectives; the presentation of accounts in such a way as to facilitate comparisons between different ways of achieving the same objectives; the inclusion of output measures to accompany each program or sub-program; the categorisation of expenditure and outputs into sufficiently discrete activities to enable cost effectiveness studies to be made. Education may seem an extreme case, but decisions about life and death are left to doctors on precisely analogous grounds. Social policy is concerned with people not products or processes. The services are delivered by professionals working locally and with a very high degree of independence. In trying to resolve these issues program planners ‘sidestepped' them and relied instead on structures which were client based or institution-based or were groupings of similar activities. The reforms have had their uses, but also bring their dangers.
