In Iowa Lean is used to make state government “work”. We should not be satisfied with just using Lean to make government “work” but organize it to work efficiently.

Here is what Iowa is doing:
From: Lean Legacy in Iowa By Jonathan Walters Governing Magazine August 2009
The aim of the Lean effort was for a leaner, more responsive government. In 2005 the Department of Natural Resources first introduced Lean “Hot Teams” which reduced turnaround time for air-quality permits from 62 days to six days, and for wastewater discharge permits from 28 months to four-and-a-half months (without reducing environmental protection, the DNR claims); the Department of Human Services increased health care coverage for children by 12 percent; the Department of Corrections reduced probation-failure rates by nearly 20 percent; and across all charter agencies, the turnaround time for key personnel actions was reduced from months to mere days.

Here is what Iowa should be doing:
The tremendous improvement in turnaround times for processing government requests is to be hailed as a great leap forward in government. The Lean process flows for the above studies document the Air Quality Function and the Wastewater Discharge Function within the DNR. Lean studies need to be made for the remaining functions found in all the 178 Iowa state services. Optimizing these functions using Lean teams is the first step to the reorganization of Iowa state services. It is obvious that since each of these agencies operated independently they are significantly overstaffed because they do not work together to efficiently process the states work. In other words when there is no work to do the personnel in each of the178 agencies simply wait until there is work to do.

To begin the reform a top level Lean study is initiated for the purpose of combining agency functions through similarity of their process flows developed by the functional Lean teams. The functions are grouped under new combined agency names. This will reduce the number of agencies significantly. We can now initiate the balancing of the work loads for each of these grouped sets of functions. What we are doing is trying to plan the best solution or way of doing this set of functions for a period of time usually a week.

This example may help explain this process. Most states have from 5 to 8 state child service agencies each has one or more functions that they perform. We will group all these agencies under one agency called Child Services. All of the new agency’s functions are grouped according to similarity of the processes done in each function. Note that each function takes a different length of time to complete. In planning the work load the back log in each group of functions is balanced out for the day or the week to keep the work load leveled. Employees are cross trained to do all of the processes in each of the group’s functions.

We know the employee time required to do each function by using the Lean flow process study for the function. The staffing base for the new Child services agency is established by adding the hours required for each function and multiplying by the number of expected occurrences of the function for the year (from data obtained in past years). When all of the totaled hours are added the result is multiplied by 1.25 to allow for normal working conditions rated at 75% not 100%. The Staffing Base or the total number of employees doing the work in the Child Services Agency is found by dividing the total hours rated at 75% by the number of hours normally worked in a year. This staffing base plus expenses incurred in the year is documented on a spread sheet for each of the agency’s functions. This becomes the budget for the function. The Total of all the functions plus the agency’s management costs equals the agency’s budget. The budgeting of functions places the agency’s budget more under legislative control.

This provides some of the background for the suggested reform of an Iowa state Centralized Portal using a 311 telephone number. The 24 hour State Services Call Center can provide almost instant service to the public not just information. This portal eliminates the need for the public to search for a specific government organization and opens the way for the complete reorganization of the states services system. No longer requiring public interface, boards and commissions can be consolidated into a much more responsive and efficient organizations resulting in the elimination of many management and public interface employee positions. See my Article 154.

This should help in understanding where savings will come from in reorganizing a state’s 100 or so agency services. See the following articles:
Article 101. The Hampton Virginia Innovation Story
Article 102. Government Reform of California Agencies and Commissions
Article 106. Where do the Government Reform Savings Come From?
Article 135. Eliminating Road Blocks to Government Innovation
Article 136. The best Example of Why Work Measurement Should be used by Government
Article 137. Role of Lean Facilitator and Budget Analyst
Article 148. Where Less is More Efficient
Article 149. Secret and Not so Secret Methods for Downsizing
Article 151. The Promise of Going ‘Lean’
Article 152. The Process of Replacing Bureaucratic Management With Lean Teams
Article 154. Streamlining Iowa Boards and Commissions Using Lean and More
Article 155. Why not Privatize State Government- All of It?
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 160. Minnesota State Government Leads the Nation in Lean