THE ROAD FROM ZBB.

In this article the author focuses on the success of zero-base budgeting (ZBB) in the U.S. The fiscal 1979 budget projects an expenditure growth of $40 billion, all but $8 billion of which is due to mandatory inflation and workload increases. The fiscal 1979 budget comes out just about where disembodied incrementalism would tend to. The budget is properly restrained in its claims for ZBB. By one vital measure, ZBB was a remarkable success. The new system was speedily installed throughout the federal bureaucracy. Even more astounding, ZBB was much more than an ancillary submission, merely supplementing the standard budget documents which continued to receive the lion's share of attention. The core budget estimates submitted by most federal agencies conformed to the ZBB guidelines. ZBB was introduced quickly and painlessly because it did not alter either "the rules of evidence" for budgeting or the structure for budget choices. Agency after agency accommodated ZBB to its existing budgetary framework. If an agency had a program budget, it selected programs as decision units, if its budget still was oriented to organizational lines, these became its ZBB categories.