11 minutes
Reading the distribution An average is a summary, not a finding. Underspending is a question, not a saving. Some of what you most need to know about an allocation is not in any record the division holds.
What you’ll be able to do Read a spending, staffing or caseload distribution with the overall figure set aside, name at least two things the record cannot see, and say who you would have to ask to learn them. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What do you say before that reduction is written in? Document a next step for Reading the distribution: Take one figure you report regularly. Break it out by region, program, language or another grouping that matters for the decision it feeds, and write down one thing you now want to ask a person about. Set the total aside Totals and averages are built to summarize, which means they are built to hide variation. That is useful when you need one number for a briefing and actively misleading when you are deciding where money should go next. A division-wide amount per person can look steady for years while the spread underneath it moves a long way.
The first habit worth building is simple: before you trust a figure, break it out one level further than you normally would. By region. By program. By preferred language. By whether the person reached the service through a provider, a county, a family member or on their own. You are not looking for a finding at this stage. You are looking for whether the overall number is describing one pattern or several averaged together.
The second habit is to keep the denominator honest. Spending per enrolled person tells you about the people who got in. Spending per eligible person tells you about the people the service was meant for. Those two figures often point in opposite directions, and the gap between them is usually the most interesting thing on the page.
Where would you find this out? How much of the interpreting and accessible formats line was spent.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it Why one regional office stopped submitting requests against that line.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it How many people needed a translated notice and never asked for one.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it Which contracts were amended mid-term, and by how much.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it What an organization decided not to bid on, and why.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it The average award size by region.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it How many hours a family spent making an inaccessible process work.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it Whether staff knew the access line existed and how to draw on it.
Choose a category The spending record shows it Only a conversation shows it Nothing we hold shows it Check matches Reset Four costs that rarely appear on a line Staff hours spent working around a design When a form is unusable, someone walks people through it by phone. That time is real, it is paid, and it appears nowhere as the cost of the form. A design problem that consumes a few hours a week across a unit will outspend the fix many times over and never show up as a comparison.
Waiting and travel carried by the person A process that requires an in-person visit during business hours moves cost onto whoever has to take unpaid leave, arrange transport, or find support for the trip. The division's budget is unaffected. The household's is not, and the people for whom that cost is highest are the ones most likely to drop out of the process.
Unpaid work by partner organizations Community organizations routinely translate, explain, accompany and vouch for state processes without being paid for any of it. It is generous and it is not free: it is a subsidy running from small organizations to the state. Paying for that work is not a favor; it is recognizing a cost that already exists.
The cost of the process failing A missed renewal, a wrongly closed case, an appeal, a complaint, a re-application: each of these has staff time behind it and appears in the record as workload rather than as the price of the original design. Very few budgets put the fix and the failure on the same page where anyone can compare them.
Ask before you cut the line What you can change You control whether an unspent access line is treated as a saving to be harvested or as a finding to be explained before anything moves.
What to watch for Do not reduce a line because it went unused without first asking why. A quiet line is at least as likely to mean a broken route as an absent need, and cutting it makes the route permanent.
Your next step The next time you see an underspend on a line meant to remove a barrier, write the four ordinary explanations next to it and name who will check which one is true.
Five questions to put to any distribution Compared with what?
A figure alone means little. Compared with last cycle, with another region, with the eligible population, or with what the same money bought somewhere else, it starts to mean something.
Per what?
Per enrolled person, per eligible person, per household, per staff hour. Changing the denominator often reverses which region looks well served.
Who is missing from the denominator?
People who were never enrolled, never applied, or never learned the service existed do not appear in a rate built from enrollment. They are the group most allocation decisions are meant to reach.
What did we count as a cost?
Invoices are counted. Staff workaround hours, waiting, travel and unpaid partner work usually are not, which makes an inaccessible design look cheaper than it is.
What would only a person tell us?
Why a request was never made, why an organization did not bid, what a family did instead. If the answer matters to the decision, budget the time to go and ask, and pay people for their expertise when you do.
A private pause, for you only and recorded nowhere: looking at the last distribution you signed off on, whose expertise was missing from the room when the number was set, and what might they have seen that the record could not?
Carry this forward Break the figure out before you trust it. Two regions with the same amount per person can be reaching very different shares of the people who are eligible.
Low spending on an access line is a question, not a saving. It usually means requests were not made, not known about, refused, or never routed to that line in the first place.
Cost is not only the invoice. Staff hours, travel, waiting, and the unpaid work families and organizations do to make a process function are all real costs, and only some of them appear anywhere.
Naming what the record cannot see, before the decision is made, is far more useful than explaining it afterwards.
A scenario about a year-end underspend on an interpreting and accessible formats line, and sorting practice separating what the spending record shows from what only a person can tell you.
Take one figure you report regularly. Break it out by region, program, language or another grouping that matters for the decision it feeds, and write down one thing you now want to ask a person about.
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