Expenditure tracking as a performance measurement system

Abstract

Operating as a reorganized command resulting from a large Naval Special Warfare (NSW) community-wide reorganization, called NSW-21, Naval Special Warfare Group One (NSWG-1) identified a significant budgeting challenge. In late calendar year 2001, while NSWG-1 was working out the initial financial ramifications of its new organization, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) began. With the GWOT came extraordinarily large supplemental appropriations. These appropriations helped subsidize some of NSWG-1's new funding needs. Thus, NSWG-1 recognized it might face a future funding deficit if, and when, supplemental appropriations are discontinued. As a result, the NSWG-1 leadership formed a budget team determining how to more closely scrutinize the normal year budget to find discretionary funding for emergent needs. They executed improvements to NSWG-1's expenditure tracking system to capture more specific expenditure data upon which to base future spending decisions, and to establish a new baseline of normal, post transition needs. The purpose of this project is to document and analyze the improvements NSWG-1 made to its expenditure tracking system and how it serves as a performance measurement system.