Article 16. How your State Compares in the Current Financial Crisis.
November 16, 2005
All 50 states are graded for their handling of the current financial crisis of the last few years by the Government Performance Project (GPP) at the following website:
http://results.gpponline.org/states.aspx
The website describes the process in the following quote:
“The GPP’s research team, made up of academics and journalists have provided insights into the way states have weathered the fiscal crisis and found promising innovations they crafted to cope with an uncertain future.
The report grades states on how well they manage their Money, People, Infrastructure, and Information – the foundation necessary to successfully provide services to citizens. The goal of the project is to give states information they can use to improve management and achieve their goals.”
I found Missouri’s 2005 overall grade of “B” to be very good only six states are actually doing better than Missouri. I also found that the Missouri Department of Transportation (MOT) has been implementing the very same recommendations I have made in my articles as illustrated by this quote from the GPP summary.
“If your job were painting yellow stripes on Missouri highways, you would begin each day knowing precisely how many stripes you were expected to paint. Your boss at the district level would be accountable for the number of miles completed in a timely way, and top-level management would be checking all the work against an ultimate goal: trying to decrease the number of fatalities on the road.”
The piece goes on to say: “…it’s a good metaphor for Missouri’s commitment to setting high-level objectives and then making sure they cascade down to the lowest levels of the organization.”
I have a slightly different take on the above statement “high-level objectives” “cascading down” from my perspective all real reform begins with work measurement and cascades up to the setting of realistic monitored high-level objectives set by the budgeting process. I have related two very different approaches both are based on work measurement “Cost and Schedule” and “Work Improvement Teams”. For recommendations on when and how each should be applied see: Article 12. “Which Approach to use in State Government “Cost and Schedule or “Work Improvement Teams”. Efficiency in government starts by determining the best set of processes to perform a function and measuring how long it takes to complete the processes. Performance is monitored on a timely basis and reported to upper management becoming the input for determining the next years budget.
For the full story on the Missouri’s State Government’s 2005 grade of “B” by the GPP see: http://www.governing.com/gpp/2005/mo.htm
For the State Report Cards for 2005 click on it in the side bar.
