Sustainable Public Financial Management

Aldo Segastume, FreeBalance Director of New Products, described how knowledge management tools could be used to augment capacity building in developing nation governments at the FreeBalance International Steering Committee conference.  Mr. Segastume described how training can be augmented by current FreeBalance products – Civil Service Management (Talent and Training modules), Capacity Building (e-Learning and Adaptable Help) and Performance Management (Document and Records Management). He described other modules that are in development available for roadmap voting tomorrow.

Mr. Segastume pointed out that people learn differently. It is important to capture courseware and use collaborative tools to accelerate capacity building. He emphasized that software vendors typically provide training systems only for their software. Developing nation governments require IT, accounting, human resources and management capacity building, as shown in the recent FreeBalance Customer Survey.

The product vision for additional modules was described in detail. Mr. Segastume described the technical vision that enables integrating the content across knowledge management tools and ease of navigation among these tools.

About FISC

The annual FreeBalance International Steering Committee (FISC) conference runs from January 16 – 19, 2011 in Madeira, Portugal. FISC provides an interactive forum to exchange Public Financial Management (PFM) good practices among international customers and PFM thought leaders. FISC drives the FreeBalance Accountability Suite product vision to direct FreeBalance GRP solutions. Previous FISC events were held in Mt. Tremblant, Canada (2010); Prague, Czech Republic (2009); Cascais, Portugal (2008); and London, United Kingdom (2007).

Grant Thornton and FreeBalance White Paper

This white paper is co-authored by Government 2.0 thought leaders Martha Batorski, Director at Grant Thornton, and Doug Hadden, Vice President of Products at FreeBalance. “Government 2.0 is driving transformation in transparency, participation and collaboration,” said Doug Hadden, Vice President of Products at FreeBalance. “Our vision is that knowledge management and collaboration are integral to Government Resource Planning.”

The FreeBalance Grant Thornton paper encapsulates the essence of a series of articles from the FreeBalance Sustainable Public Financial Management blog to respond to a growing demand among Grant Thornton clients for greater clarity on what leaders need to do different to successfully transition to Government 2.0. Articles about Government 2.0 received substantial interest and attention from social enterprises and the broader public financial management community. The white paper shows how to employ effective change management skills in the emerging Government 2.0 open environment and  describes the new skills and mindsets government leaders need to adopt to address and the many, emerging new challenges they face.

Embracing Government 2.0 Leading Trans Formative Change in the Public Sector

Martha Batorski has over 20 years experience leading business transformation initiatives in the public and private sector.  She is currently leading Grant Thornton’s Government 2.0 and Change Management 2.0 practice in the Global Public Sector. And, she was a recent speaker at the Potomac Forum February 2009 Conference on “Planning and Implementing Social Media and Open Government Strategy and Efforts: What Executives and Managers Need to Know ” in Washington DC.

Martha Batorski writes about a key difference in leading change in the Government 2.0 era.   “Traditional change management frameworks work for a mandated, roll-out of change – where change is pushed to a target audience.   Change Management in the Web 2.0 era (Change 2.0) is more peer-to-peer, viral – change is pulled by participants, constituents, employees, customers.  One key difference for leaders is in the need to engage with others, to convert value from the network into meaningful products and services and knowledge, and to quickly identify practical solutions to challenges.”

Doug Hadden has over 20 years of management, sales, marketing and product management experience. He has been instrumental in creating a vision for GRP software that incorporates Web 2.0 collaboration and content. Recently, Mr. Hadden hosted an interactive session detailing how Government 2.0 will transform the practice of government performance and public financial management. And he participated on the “Government 2.0: The Next Wave of Open Government?” panel at the ICGFM Winter 2009 conference.