¶ … public budgeting comparisons of the federal, state and local budget distributions. This thesis will be focused on whether or not the increased budget allocations for transportation in the federal, state and local government will enhance travel security, efficiency, performance measures and R&D development in the domain. The thesis will start off with a proposal for an agency that works across and is allocated budget in all the federal, state and local legislatures. The agency chosen for the thesis is the United States Department of Transportation. The proposal will include a detailed overview of the chosen agency inclusive of some financial data in recent years for the agency and a comparative analysis of the performance measures accomplished with those measures that were not completed. This will be followed by the details and comparative analysis of the budgetary performances of the federal, state and local budget departments in the United States which is the primary focus of the thesis. This will include relevant theory of budget distribution and will be complemented by some relevant financial statistics. The last part of the thesis will present a proposed strategy for efficient budget distribution for future transportations projects. This will be a PowerPoint presentation and will present strategies-based conclusions and analysis made in the prior two sections. The paper will aim to prove or refute the following hypotheses: 1) increased budget allocation in transportation across all legislatures (federal, state and local) may lead to increased security; 2) increased budget allocation in transportation across all legislatures (federal, state and local) may lead to increased efficiency; 3) increased budget allocation in transportation across all legislatures (federal, state and local) may lead to increased accomplishment of performance measures; and, 4) increased budget allocation in transportation across all legislatures (federal, state and local) may lead to increased R&D efficiency and accuracy. Agency Name

United States Department of Transportation (DOT or Department) is the agency that has been selected for this paper. An overview of the financial performance of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT or Department) has been explained in the Agency's Financial Report (AFR). This report provides the financial information for the fiscal year (FY) 2011 and coming years (U.S. DOT, 2011).

DOT Mission

It is the mission of the Department to enhance the lives of the people of United States by providing them with a better, efficient, safe and accessible transportation system. The Department aims at not only enhancing and improving the present of the people of United States but also their future by ensuring that the transportation system meets their requirements and needs (U.S. DOT, 2011).

DOT Values

Professionalism: DOT considers itself a responsible public servant. It is very important to DOT to demonstrate respect, highest standards of integrity and excellence in their working environment (U.S. DOT, 2011).

Teamwork: DOT as an organization is united. It respects and considers the ideas and differences of other people and it is very important to them that they work in a united fashion.

Customer Focus: It is important to DOT to provide its customers with the services that they want. For this reason DOT believes in bringing innovations and being creative to accommodate their customers in the best possible manner (U.S. DOT, 2011).

History

DOT was developed in 1967. It works in collaboration with the United States private and local sector partners and it has made the Federal transportation policy with the help and agreement of all these sectors. DOT's main goal is to ensure that the transportation whether its railways, airways, roads or seaways is secure, efficient, safe and fast. It is also the goal of DOT to ensure interconnected National transportation all over the U.S. DOT uses all these goals as the guidelines towards ensuring the establishment and maintenance of the ideal transportation system for the people of U.S. (U.S. DOT, 2011)

There are approximately 60,000 people all around the country who have been employed by DOT. These employees are located in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation (OST) as well as the bureaus and the twelve Operating Administrations (OAs). The OST, OAs and the bureaus all have their own organizational structure and management (U.S. DOT, 2011).

The Office of the Secretary of Transportation works as the leader. All the major management guidelines, programs for consumer protection, economic guidelines and administrative support are provided by the Office of the Secretary of Transportation. Although the Surface Transportation...

DOT, 2011).
Proposal Name

In order to get to understand and get to know about the Department's performance with regards to the budgetary resources, the financial reporting and the performance AFR is being done. It has become a requirement under the Office of Management and Budget's Program to have the AFR delivered among many other reports. The purpose behind this is to get to know about the Alternative Approaches regarding Accountability Reporting and the Performance. This is a voluntary program in which the Department is participating and it's the second year that this has been done. The Department is aiming at providing a more transparent and accountable system that can provide detailed information about the resources and the performance of the system to its readers. The strengths, highest priorities of the Department as well as the challenges being faced by it are also mentioned in the report (U.S. DOT, 2011).

Financial Details (All financial data was retrieved from U.S. DOT, 2011)

Fiscal Year 2007-2011

In the table below, the data has been presented on the overall research and development that was completed by DOT for the fiscal year 2007 to 2011.

In the table below, we see a comparative analysis of DOT's budget with the Federal U.S. Budget allotted to transportation.

Fiscal Performance -- Past, Present and Future

In the graph below, we see the FAA allocation of capital fund for DOT for the year 2008 to 2016 showing steady growth in the trust in the abilities of DOT to deliver on the safe transportation facilities for the masses in the United States (U.S. DOT, 2011).

Measure of Success

The Strategic Plan of the Department for the Fiscal Years 2006-2011 is "New Ideas for a Nation on the Move." This is the last year that the Department will report on this strategic plan. The strategies and measures that have been mentioned in the upcoming pages have been followed by the Department to improve the performance and efficiency of the system. However, some of those measures might have been dropped by the Department while it adopts new ones since its main goal is to bring more and more improvement to the system (U.S. DOT, 2011).

The preliminary results for this year show that approximately 80% of the performance targets that had been set by the Department were met. However, there still exist some areas that need some improvement (U.S. DOT, 2011). Given below is a concise explanation of the results regarding the strategic objectives:

Safety Performance

The main purpose of Safety Dot is to keep a track of safety of the American people who are travelling through airways, roads or railways. It was observed from the preliminary results that about 9 out of 10 safety goals were achieved. The decline of the general aviation (GA) fatalities didn't take place as quickly as it was being imagined. It was observed that most of these fatalities took place in the experimental aircrafts. The fatal accidents in the GA accounted for approximately 26% of the fatalities. A lot of different approaches are being taken by the FAA in order to address this issue (U.S. DOT, 2011). Please refer to the details below for performance measures on safety performance (U.S. DOT, 2011).

Reduced Congestion

It is one of the strategic objectives of DOT to make sure that the congestion in the modes of transportation is reduced. DOT is trying to make this happen with the help of various factors such as ensuring that it gets proper funding to maintain the highways in good state, by efficiently managing the air traffic and by trying to persuade the people to use mass transit. However, it is being observed by the DOT that the trend of mass transit being used by the people has been declining for two continuous years now. There are many reasons that are responsible for this decrease such as the unemployment, inflations, economic decline and the decline in the local and state tax revenues that were used to ensure that the mass transits were in good states (U.S. DOT, 2011). Please refer to the details below for performance measures on reduced congestion (U.S. DOT, 2011).

Global Connectivity

Global connectivity not only helps the American economy but also enables the American market to stay in touch with the markets all around the world. This is done by the transportation of vehicles, products and goods by trying to keep the delay to the minimum. The St. Lawrence Seaway is a major seaway with the help of which the upper West stays connected to the global markets. In the FY 2011 it was mentioned that the St. Lawrence…