To keep government simple you must answer the following questions.

What does the public want their government to do?
The main tool for managing this process is Budgeting For Outcomes (BFO).

A good way to respond to this is to conduct a citizenry survey to find out what the people want done and how much they are willing to pay for having it done. Have them prioritize their responses in their vision of the importance of each item and their willingness to spend the states revenues on it, starting with the most important item down to the least important item.

How do we use this information given to us by the public?
The analysis gives what the public wants done by item and a priority for the states revenues to be spent on each item. Note that this is a combination of the Public’s Needs and the public’s Wants or desires. Needs should be found near the top of the list and Wants further down the list. Next you spread the states revenues down the list based on real costs as far as the budget will go. Those items near the bottom of the list will not be funded because there are no funds for them.

How do we determine the real cost for each item?
First identify the Function that will provide the requested item or service to the public. A Function is composed of a set of processes that leads to a budgeted outcome or service to the public. Functions are funded entities similar to the items identified by the public but better defined in that a Function produces one output where as the item identified by the public may include several Functions. Functions are budgeted items incorporating all the employee staffing and expenses necessary to deliver the item or level of service requested by the public. The advantage of funding Functions over Departments is that they are uniquely described such that they and all of their funding can be moved to a different organization or be completely removed from the budget if the Function is no longer needed. An estimate of the cost of each Function based on past budgetary costs may be used to speed the budgetary process until more accurate budget cost data can be developed by Lean Teams.

How do we manage this process of governing and keep it simple?
We should develop a single unifying Mission Statement one that brings together the public with those that will perform the Functions. The Mission Statement sets a goal to which all can subscribe and provides a rallying cry for the entity be it city or state. Sub goals set out the important things that the entity stands for and wants to emphasize.
For a more detailed understanding of Mission Statement development I recommend the following articles:
Article 101. The Hampton Virginia Innovation Story
Article 116. Private Industry Example of Lean Teams.

Management of the entity should be as simple as possible yet capable of managing its resources. The best way to do this is through a Steering Committee whose leader is either appointed, elected by the public or by the other members of the Committee. Steering Committees manage from one to several related Functional Management Teams as well as supporting groups such as human resources and budget personnel. Each Functional Management Team is self-managed with its leader being elected by the working members of the Function.

Steering Management has the role of guiding and steering the organization while Functional Management deals with the day to day operation of the Agencies functions. Steering Management is responsible for telling Functional Management “what to do” but not “how to do it”. This is a loose-tight organization with Steering firmly in control of the budget leaving Functional Management free to determine how best to do the job. Those in industry will recognize this as straight from the book “In Search of Excellence- Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies” by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., Harper and Row, New York, 1982.

What should Management do to improve work tasks?
The main tool for starting this process is the implementation of a Lean Team to study cross functional processes and find the best way of doing the function. Then functional Lean teams are organized with the philosophy of continuous improvement in the Function’s processes. Then we develop the best method of performing the Function cost it out and properly staff the Function while providing a direct input to the Budget. This completes the task we started by costing out each item identified by the public in the Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO) process.

What’s different? The multilevel career path is now one step from the Functional Management Teams to the Steering Management Team. Gone are the hundreds of hours of endless manipulation of employee evaluations. Gone also is the endless bickering and negotiation over the Agency’s budget.

The best way to improve a Function’s operation is to have personnel who currently do the same or nearly the same Function develop the Function on a Process Flow Chart. And the best way to do this is to create a detailed Processes Flow Chart on long sheets of wrapping paper or butcher paper taped to the conference room walls. The long sheets can be taken down and rolled at the end of each meeting. Each process is created on 8 ½ x 11 sheets and taped to the wall allowing changes and corrections to be made to the wall as the method proceeds. After discussions an improvements to the process are agreed upon by the team a second Process Flow Chart is added to the wall chart showing the improved method.

The reason for doing this is to show the costs and the time to perform each of the processes in the improved method. But in the interests of improving quality the time to perform the new processes may actually be longer than the old method. If some way of getting the improved quality can not be found while reducing costs the method is still presented to Steering Management by Function management (a Lean Team) for approval as the improved processes to be used by the Function. If approved the method is documented and given to a budget analyst for costing-out the processes. The method now becomes the standard method of performing the Function and can be duplicated everywhere the Function is done in government.

Costing-out each Function provides a known way that the jobs should be done and by tallying staffing costs and expenses for each process on a spread sheet a Funding Formula is developed. And by multiplying the number of times that a Function’s processes (the Funding Formula) are expected to be repeated in the coming year the data can be used to directly calculate the budget for the Function.

Some Functions may have processes which vary in time to complete and do not lend themselves easily to the Funding Formula method. In those cases I would examine the processes that are varying and collect data over time. If the processes do not vary over 20% I would staff for the average time to do the varying processes. Any extra required time should be absorbed by overtime. Productivity reporting should not be done where you encounter varying processes because a stable base for a standard does not exist instead a measurement of effectiveness may be more helpful. One should always follow the rule to reduce the measurements made to their simplest while getting the management data needed for managing the Function and no more. See Article 121. Setting Standards and developing a Staffing Base

Another way to simplify government is the centralization of state Information Technology by building an integrated Relational Database Management system. This streamlines government through the elimination of obsolete and redundant agencies and in combining agencies. When these two approaches are used together through a state centralized 311 telephone portal such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) you can eliminate a significant amount of Red Tape and provide on-the-spot service to the public. The solution provides instant information to the government employee interfacing with the public through Relational Databases. See articles:
Article 84. The Failure to Manage State Resources due to Obsolete Computer System
Article 101. The Hampton Virginia Innovation Story
Article 102. Government Reform of California Agencies and Commissions
Article 120. Collaborative Innovation between States and Federal Government

Other related articles on simplifying government:
Article 42. Declaring War on Bureaucratic Complexity
Article 103. Reforming Bureaucratic Government the Subtle way by Bringing Innovation to Government
Article 106. Where do the Government Reform Savings Come From?
Article 113. Private Versus Public Budgeting Practices
Article 119. Not Just Another Grass Roots Movement to Reform Government
Article 152. The Process of Replacing Bureaucratic Management With Lean Teams
Article 156. Getting the most out of Lean as used in Government
Article 157. Using Lean to Balance Agency work Loads
Article 158. The Streamlining of Georgia Boards and Commissions Using Lean
Article 163. Solving New York State’s Roadblocks to Reform
Article 164. Minnesota Could Lead the Nation in Efficient Government
Article 165. Reform of Government Legislative Practices