Article 124. The Core Features of Innovative Reforms
The following Key material came from Chapter 2 of my book: “Ten Steps to Jumpstarting Government Reform”. You my download a free copy of this small 72 page Government Reform Guide book by clicking on the Ebook download link.
2.2 The Core Features of Innovative Reforms
In the article “The Replication Challenge” by Robert D. Behn, Behn suggests that to successfully replicate an innovation in government you must understand the core driving features of the innovation and its interaction with other key elements. Organizations have different missions and internal cultures which determine how they are managed. To replicate an innovation you must understand not only how it works, its core driving features, but also its effect on the organization’s mission and culture.
The following is from Behn’s article:
“… before the innovation can be replicated, someone has to answer two questions.
First: What are the core characteristics of the innovation? To employ the innovation in a different jurisdictional, political or organizational context, the replicators obviously need to know what, exactly, are the driving features of the innovation.
Second: What are the cause-and-effect interactions among the core features of the innovation, the context within which the innovation was implemented, and the consequences that it produced? Because the context in which any innovation will be replicated is bound to be somewhat different from the original set of circumstances, it is necessary to understand how its driving features work. After all, to make the innovation work in a new setting, it will need to be adapted in some way(s) - perhaps conspicuously, perhaps subtly. Yet, to be effective, such adaptations need to maintain not only the core features of the innovation but also the cause-and-effect relationships among these features and the context to ensure that the adaptation still produces similar benefits.
Innovating is relatively easy. Specifying the core components of the innovation and the cause-and-effect relationships among these components in such as way as to permit other jurisdictions to replicate the innovation is, however, a significant challenge.”
The following is my response to the challenge of Robert Behn’s excellent article. Within the ten steps to Government Reform found in this book there are three major implementations considered on their own to bring reform to government they are: Budgeting For Outcomes (BFO), Total Quality Management (TQM), and Performance Measurement (PM). The reformer needs to strip away all the hype to understand the core idea of each of the above items for success. Also within the ten steps are reforms which I have suggested which bring all of the steps together as a complete interrelated whole. These items are: Functional reorganization, Work Measurement, and the Funding Formula all of which make a major impact to the budgeting process.
The biggest advantage for knowing the core idea is that it allows reformers to cloak the implementation in the unique cultural context that is being used in making the reforms. When each of the reforms is examined for their core ideas they should all interact without discord and mesh with the cultural context. For example the mission statement: “To Make Hampton the Most Livable City in Virginia” seeks to bring together everyone in the community including city employees to work to improve the community. All of the reforms to the city government should fall within the context of the city’s mission statement. Budgeting for Outputs (BFO) takes input from the public to determine what the public wants done. Total Quality Management (TQM) empowers city employees to improve their jobs and provide services more efficiently to the pubic. Work Measurement makes sure that the city’s staffing fits the Function’s task and performance Measurement is used to ensure the quality of the tasks are maintained.
Literature on Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO) recommends that to achieve the best price for a service you may allow private companies to bid against government employees. This is an example of a direct conflict with the core of Total Quality Management (TQM) which seeks to empower employees. I do not recommend that reformers follow this practice.
When all of these changes are made in one year there is a considerable amount of multitasking taking place. I suggest that individual members of the Government Reform Committee be assigned direct responsibility for guiding one or more of the steps.
The reform process is in completing the following ten steps the first year:
1. Appointing the “Government Reform Committee”
2. Managing the “Culture Change”
3. Initiating “Budgeting for Outputs” and “Strategy management”
4. Breaking down Departments into “Functions”
5. Implementing “Total Quality Management”
6. Enabling “Work Improvement Teams” for continuous improvement
7. Determining proper staffing from “Work Measurement”
8. Developing “Funding Formulas” for functions as budget input
9. Implementing “Performance Measurement” controls in the new budget
10. Consolidating changes into “Steering and Functional Management”
A. Core Idea of Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO)
The core idea of Budgeting for Outcomes is in focusing on public priorities identified through surveys and other means as to what the public is willing to pay for a budgeted Function and in developing strategies for obtaining the outcomes desired by the public at the least cost. High priority budget items are funded down the list until all revenues have been expended lower priority items that fall below expected revenues are not funded. Simply put this process allows the public to tell government what it wants done and through priorities how much it is willing to spend on a Function. Then it is up to the BFO committee to find the best strategy for delivering the outcome of the item to the public.
B. Core Idea of Organizing for Functions
The core idea of a Function is to provide a unique budgeted entity for a set of processes that produces a product or outcome. Because Functions can precisely describe a task, breaking down a budget into Functions simplifies the budgeting process. This allows Functions to be easily excluded or included in the budget as a funded entity. Functions are costed-out from Work Measurement using a bottom-up budgeting strategy. In contrast departmental level funding using the Top-down budgeting strategy blurs the issue of just where and how the funds are being spent and leaves open the debate on the amount of departmental funding.
C. Core Idea of Total Quality Management (TQM)
The core idea of Total Quality Management (TQM) is in using what I call Work Improvement Teams (WIT). WITs focus on improving the “processes” of the Functions that they are doing at the lowest level of the organization. I have expanded this Team improvement Idea to all levels of the government organization, first in the Government Reform Committee and then to the Cross Functional Steering Committees. The key core driving element is in having employees take responsibility for decision making power at their level in the organization. The result is the pooling of the innovative resources of the entire organization to focus on improving the problems at hand. The idea can be stated as the driving down of the decision making process to the lowest level of effectiveness while holding those responsible through Performance Measurement. Another way of putting this is to have those who “own” a problem participate in the solving of that problem. The immediate effect is to awaken the idea within individuals that they can make a difference the exact opposite of a bureaucratic environment where individual initiative is sometimes squelched.
D. Core Idea of Work Measurement
Work Measurement provides an actual standard time for doing a specific process. It is arrived at by using either of two methods the analysis of a Function’s Process Flow Chart or by Time-studying each of the Function’s Processes. Work Measurement determines the standard staffing requirements for a Function and along with estimated expenses it is the foundation for a Function’s budget. Only when using Work Measurement does the Performance Measurement of productivity become valid i.e. when it is applied to a known standard time. This is a bottoms-up approach to budgeting using known costs as opposed to Top-down budgeting using estimated costs.
E. Core Idea of Funding Formulas
The staffing level for each Function as determined by Work Measurement of employees along with all expenses incurred by the Function is summed on a spread sheet and divided by the number of either “units produced” or “people served” for a one month period. The result is a Funding Formula which when multiplied by the estimated future “units” or “people served” becomes the next year’s budget. The Funding Formula which may be valid for several years with minor changes can be used as a direct input to each new budget.
F. Core Idea of Performance Measurement
The Performance Management Steering Committee creates performance measures for each Function to insure that the work performed by a WIT in doing the Function meets their requirements. Performance Measurement of productivity becomes valid only when it is applied to a known standard time developed using Work Measurement. The results should also meet the guidelines set by Strategies formed from the public surveys during the Budgeting for Outcomes process.
Note that the following Steps are uniquely of my own invention in order to make the government reform process function smoothly as a complete whole.
4. Breaking down Departments into “Functions”
7. Determining proper staffing from “Work Measurement”
8. Developing “Funding Formulas” for functions as budget input
10. Consolidating changes into “Steering and Functional Management”
Because the Steps provide a complete integrated approach to government reform I fear that those who read only my articles will miss the importance of the steps and the examples provided in the EBook.
