HINTZE, Jorge <br/><br/>
Gestión presupuestaria de estructuras :  un instrumento para la gestión por resultado 

 - Caracas :  CLAD,  Octubre 2001 
<br/><br/> In recent decades, results-oriented contracts, projects, programs and other horizontal forms of management have become routine in public administrations throughout the region, both because of the influence of new trends in State reform that put forward results-oriented practices and because of strong intervention by international cooperation agencies. However, public agencies are a long way from having formed horizontal organizations that are completely integrated to daily management and results-oriented accountability mechanisms. In this context, budget management of organization structures is not a new tool in respect of its basic elements (the budget and organizational structures). However, it is often set into motion in vacuum within the process of accountability: the relationship between institutional ends, the allocation of resources and delegation of authority. Consequently, it shoud be aimed at filling the void and facilitating the conditions for results-oriented management, integrated within an institutional framework; in other words, not based on "ad hoc" contractual mechanisms that remain isolated from organizational ends. This would contribute, firts, to the question of strategic planning and its relation to resource allocation, demonstrating how this relationship could occur by means of certain relatively simple tools, such as the external production matrix, which can be used as an input for organizational structure budget management. Second, this paper deals with the question of assigning responsibilities and how they relate to goals, resources and the authority to use them. To this concept is added a second toll that severs to record the assignment of the principal responsibilities to some institutional actors and  co-responsibilities to others; this is called the "co-responsibility matrix". Third, reference is made to the relation between the co-responsibility matrix and the budget; that is to say, to preparation of "co-responsibility budget matrices" and the idea that such matrices are, in actual fact, the raw material for management contracts that constitute undertakings between institutional actors and serve as the basis for results-oriented accountability. Lastly, the stages for application of this type of methodology are briefly described. The intention is to give a general impression of theri difficulties and requirements. To this end, some examples of tools for recording external production and co-responsibility matries are given