Forecast with Confidence: Improving Your Skills to Make Better Decisions for Your Government

Forecasting is a foundational part of budgeting and financial planning. Forecasts allow public officials to anticipate future resource availability and plan accordingly and are essential for developing budgets that are balanced and affordable. Longer-term forecasts analyze the financial sustainability of existing policies and programs and provide warning of potential imbalances. A forecast can also be used to create a shared basis for discussion of what the fiscal future might look like and what actions can be taken to change the future. In this session, we will discuss the skills you need to make the best forecasts in the time you have available. We'll also discuss how forecasting practices can be adapted to volatile and uncertain environments.