“I am not a fan of being a customer of my government” – Luke Hohmann

Luke Hohmann, CEO of The Innovation Games Company, creates games that corporations use to make better decisions when it comes to their budgets. Now he is bringing this same innovative and surpirsing approach to budget management from the corporate world to the government.

Starting in 2011 Hohmann used these “serious games” to help out the city of San Jose. About 1,000 volunteers made up of citizens, neighborhood associations leaders and  the youth commission from around the city broke up into to small groups of seven to use these games to remake the government budget. Citizens had to take the actual budget and make cuts to it in order to balance it and also streamline desired city services.

Results showed how citizens were able to balance the city budget by working together to cut programs and raising taxes. To make a change in the virtual budget citizens had to agree unanimously.Hohmann said that the citizens didn’t always spend all of the available money when taxes were raised. This might sound all positive but citizens observed how regulations on the tax system set up hindered the budget process.

For example, by adding a sales tax of one quarter of a cent they raised about $20 million dollars more than they needed, but because the law mandates they can’t raise it by any less than a quarter of a cent, they were not able to raise it by a smaller amount. This meant that instead of being able to raise it by the needed amount, the citizens would be overtaxed and government would be incentivised to spend more money.be

Overall, these “serious games” showed how powerful citizens can be when they have an accessible means by which to make change. In fact, they were so successful that the city of San Jose actually implemented many of the results that were proposed in the 2011 budget including: reductions in fire and police department staffing, and elimination of some services and funding of key proposals. The 2012 budget has not been finalized yet.

More information can be found at InnovationGames.com.