Zero-base budgeting in the federal government: a case study

The implementation of a zero-base budgeting system in Federal government agencies, instituted by President Carter in 1977, yielded quite different results, not only among the agencies but within specific departments as well. The experience of the Public Health Service with this budgeting process is documented and analyzed in this article. Though the individual PHS agencies generally felt that ZBB is a poor budgetary tool, the author's principal claims are that the technique was misused and that its application may well be inappropriate for the entire budget of a large political system. The result, according to Professor Herzlinger, was that those individuals who should have been the prime beneficiaries of the ZBB process were most disappointed by it.