moving atlanta forward 2026 annual review - august 2026
|
Moving Atlanta Forward 2026 Annual Review
Released: August 2026 Download the Full Report here We conducted this fourth annual review of the Moving Atlanta Forward Infrastructure Program, as required by Ordinance No. 22-O-1369, which requests the city auditor to review the program’s financials and project delivery. The program is continuing to progress. Spending has increased, and all projects have now started. We made one recommendation to the Department of Parks and Recreation to provide financial transparency; the recommendation focuses on ensuring that purchase orders on Parks’ internal financial tracker are reconciled with Oracle’s financials. |
|
We found:
- The Moving Atlanta Forward Infrastructure Initiative has shown additional progress in spending and project development. By the end of fiscal year 2026, spending reached $162 million, a $65 million increase since June 2025, and 25% of the $660 million planned project budget had been spent. As of March 2026, all projects had started. Program leadership expect most projects to be in
construction and most funds to be encumbered by the end of calendar year 2027. Almost 40% of projects are in the construction or closeout phases, most of which are managed by Enterprise Asset Management and Parks and Recreation. Transportation is responsible for more than half of the projects and the planning and scoping phase has the largest number of projects. - In response to our previous recommendations, the city created a program management office, within the Mayor’s Office, to centralize oversight of the program. The program management office developed a management guide which defines new controls for monitoring budget and schedule changes. The guide also specifies data verification procedures for the public project tracking
dashboard, which are likely to improve data quality and consistency. Project management could also be further strengthened if project managers completed and maintained all required project documents. The dashboard is now managed by the program management office, rather than by a single department. The dashboard also identifies projects at risk of having budget overruns or schedule
delays. - In a prior report, we found that Parks and Recreation was manually tracking and monitoring all financial data using an Excel spreadsheet rather than using the Oracle PnG module for project-level reporting. In our current review, we identified some purchase orders that were not tracked in that spreadsheet, leading to underreported project spending. Reconciliation of purchase orders
with Oracle project numbers would ensure all spending is captured.