Optimal use of taxpayers' money
Maximising impact with limited budgets - through transparent portfolio optimisation
Public budgets are under structural pressure: Investment requirements are increasing, budgets are limited, priorities are competing. Schools, infrastructure, digitalisation, climate, security, social issues - each measure is plausible in its own right.
The crucial question is:
Which combination of projects maximises the overall impact within the available budget - under real-world constraints?
Initial situation: Many good projects, one fixed budget
A typical scenario in municipalities and public authorities:
- 50 projects are up for decision
- 81 million. EUR budget are firmly available
- 220 mill. EUR total investment costs are on the table
The challenge is not, finding a "good" project. The challenge is to form the best permissible combination from many meaningful projects.
Why classic prioritisation reaches its structural limits
In practice, projects are often evaluated individually: Benefit argumentation, scorecards, departmental priorities, political consideration, Excel lists. This leads to decisions that seem comprehensible - but do not systematically consider the overall decision space.
Because portfolios are combinatorial: For 50 projects there are 250 possible portfolio combinations. Not all are permissible (budget, personnel, dependencies), but the space remains extremely large.
Pure workshops, linear scoring models or reporting approaches are not structurally designed to fully penetrate this space. The result is often local optima: plausible portfolios that do not necessarily deliver the highest overall impact within the budget.
From individual project to portfolio decision
Optimising the use of taxpayers' money does not mean choosing "the best project", but to create the best portfolio:
- Budget restrictions as hard constraints (e.g. 81 mio. E.g. 81 Mio. EUR)
- Capacities (personnel, planning, construction, Allocation) as resource constraints
- dependencies between projects as logical constraints
- Multi-period payment profiles (cash flows) across financial years
- Strategic minimum ratios (e. g. B. Education, climate, Digitisation)
- Funding logics and legal requirements as binding framework conditions
Only when this reality is formally modelled, a precisely defined decision space is created: Which combination of projects is permissible - and which of them maximises the target value?
StratePlan as a decision-making tool
{{ nStratePlan complements existing budget, ERP and reporting systems as an }}, ERP and reporting systems as a system of decision. Operative systems remain unchanged: They record budgets, costs, measures, plans and actual data.
StratePlan uses this pre-structured database, to:
- Target variables (impact, Benefit, risk reduction, sustainability)
- Formally define restrictions (budget, capacity, Dependencies) mathematically
- to calculate the optimal combinations among all permissible portfolios
The result is not a political ranking. It is a resilient portfolio design under real constraints - including justifiability.
Transparency, Governance and audit security
For top management, City council, ministry or supervisory authority, it is not only the result that is relevant, but also the traceability:
- Which restrictions were binding?
- Which projects were excluded - and why?
- Which assumptions influence the optimum?
- What are the opportunity costs of alternative portfolios?
This transparency strengthens governance, Auditability and decision-making quality - without disrupting operational processes.
Effect on public budgets
- More impact per euro through better portfolio tailoring
- Clear priorities despite conflicting objectives
- Comprehensible decisions vis-à-vis committees and review bodies
- Reduced misallocations through explicit constraints
- Faster scenario capability for budget changes or new specifications
Executive Summary
For 50 projects, 81 million EUR budget and EUR 220 million total investment costs , the central task is not prioritisation, but portfolio design.
optimising the use of taxpayers' money means, modelling reality (budget, capacity, dependencies, multi-year logic) formally and deriving the best permissible combination of projects from this.
In times of increasing investment requirements, this is not an IT detail - but an instrument of responsible, transparent financial management.
Book a consultation now to make the best use of taxpayers' money
