How to Break Down Budget Book Silos for Good

It was 2021, and the City of Long Beach had been through it all: moving into a new city hall building, implementing a new enterprise resource planning system… and of course,  like all of us, facing the uncertainty of a global pandemic. At least by now, the residents of Long Beach have access to toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

Through all of that change, as the GFOA’s Governing Finance Review notes, the City of Long Beach’s finance team discovered something crucial: collaboration isn’t just essential during times of crisis and uncertainty. It’s even more vital to proactively evaluate during periods of stability and routine.

The team found that a proactive approach to collaboration was most notable when creating public-facing documents like budget books. External stakeholders rely on these documents to understand the community’s financial health and strategic direction. If the budget books were disjointed or filled with conflicting perspectives, it could lead to confusion—and ultimately, a loss of trust from residents. This is because: 

Budget books aren’t just pages and numbers. It’s the physical representation of collaboration across your organization.

In other words, assembling a budget book is far from a one-person job. As Long Beach Revenue Management Officer Geraldine Alejo puts it, “Absolutely all of the details, everything, is a huge collaborative effort.” Managing collaboration is crucial in the budget book process, and we’ll discuss strategies for doing so in this article.

The Reality of Budget Book Silos: More Common Than You Think

Budget book preparation can often feel like herding cats—juggling inputs from multiple departments, chasing down last-minute updates, and trying to piece it all together into one clear, cohesive document. Under those conditions, its no surprise that silos can easily form, especially when you add outdated legacy systems and tight deadlines into the mix. But silos don’t just slow work down; they create real challenges: 

• Lack of transparency: Unclear roles and responsibilities block communication and create barriers to collective success.
• Miscommunication: Differing priorities and terminologies between departments often lead to misunderstandings.
• Manual processes: Teams ultimately spend more time tracking documents than aligning on strategy. 
• Data management struggles: Without a clear, centralized platform to work from, collaboration falls apart. 

How to Start Purposeful Collaboration: Lessons from Long Beach

The City of Long Beach learned some simple yet strong reminders of how to build up your organization’s collaboration muscles: 

• Have the difficult conversations: The Long Beach finance team found success by acknowledging miscommunications head-on and working through them directly.
• View departments as problem-solving partners: Budget leaders recognized that decisions couldn’t be made in isolation and invited cross-department collaboration at every turn.
• Create an open, comfortable environment: Collaboration flourishes when team members feel safe to voice concerns and ideas. As Long Beach Budget Manager Grace H. Yoon says, “It’s not about being this perfect team… it’s about creating that environment where people can be authentic.”
• Continuously reflect and reassess: Long Beach’s finance team didn’t settle for one-time fixes; they revisited processes to keep improving.

Technology’s Role in Budget Book Collaboration

The future of budgeting is inclusive, transparent, and forward-looking. It means creating shared digital spaces where every stakeholder, from department heads to finance staff, has real-time access to information and a voice in shaping decisions. 

It’s about establishing a culture where continuous improvement is standard practice, and technology serves as the enabler, not the barrier.

True collaboration happens when the right tools and culture are in place to let people focus on strategy, not paperwork. When your team has time to step back and ask, “How can we serve our community better this year?” — that’s the real win. 

That’s exactly what happened with the City of Bristol, CT. For years, they relied on a manual, time-consuming process of compiling their budget book. Their outdated approach made it difficult to objectively evaluate departmental requests and ultimately hindered transparency. When Bristol adopted ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book, everything changed. They streamlined collaboration across departments, improved accessibility for stakeholders, and created an easier path to their award-winning budget book. With ClearGov, department heads now enter their budget details directly into the platform, freeing the finance team to focus on higher-level analysis and long-term financial planning.

Similarly, Eagle County School District in Colorado traditionally depended on spreadsheets, Word documents, and external agencies to complete its budget book. The district leveraged Digital Budget Book’s features like auto-generated content and automatic data updates, the team was able to transform its process into a streamlined, collaborative effort— demonstrating that even large, complex organizations can break down silos and simplify workflows. 

See How ClearGov Can Help You Dissolve Silos During Your Budget Book Preperation

ClearGov helps government leaders make that shift by equipping teams with the right tools to confidently foster environments where silos dissolve, and shared accountability thrives. Learn more about how ClearGov can help with our Digital Budget Book solution.