This is an excellent question. What usually happens is that managers make no attempt to do Work Measurement because a function’s processes vary in time. The other extreme is that followed by the US government where an elaborate effort is made to set Standards on all processes so that productivity can be measured. I disagree with the US government approach because a valid Standard can only be set on non-variable processes for the measurement of productivity. If a process varies in the length of time to perform it then the measurement of a process’s productivity becomes invalid and therefore useless. Besides; most employees are smart enough to manipulate their productivity reports to their advantage. I don’t recommend productivity reporting because it is usually invalid and wastes the employee’s time.

The approach I recommend:
First have a Lean Team study a function’s Process Flow to determine the best way of performing the function.

Second have a budget Analyst analyze the Lean Team’s method and determine the staffing and expenses required for each process in a function and then document the function’s processes their staffing and costs in spread sheet. Then get out of the employees’ way and let them do their job. Don’t badger employees with recording and reporting their productivity. Staffing does not require measurement to the level of detail that a Standard requires for productivity reporting. The staffing of a function can be an estimate because you cannot staff with less than a full person.

All this effort is to arrive at a satisfactory staffing base with a bottoms-up budget. This simplifies the budgeting process based on real numbers rather than a top-down budget based on last years staffing and expenses.

Now to answer your question: How do you handle variations in process times when staffing a function? This depends on the characteristics of the process and how it varies. But don’t throw up your hands too soon remember it does not have to be perfect.

For analysis purposes a functions processes can be divided into classifications based on the characteristics of the work content of the processes. The following characteristics may be used:

Technical Capability Involvement:
I have found that technical tasks can vary directly with the experience and capability of the employee doing the task. An employee with 3 years experience can do a job in half the time of a new employee. With a new employee I would staff using the pay level of a 3 year employee and expect to absorb the difference in pay grade in overtime expense for the new employee.

An engineer with 10 years experience may be five times more efficient than a new engineering employee. In this case you may have to hire more engineers when the experienced engineer retires but don’t change the budget until he retires.

Routine Activities versus Non-Routine Activities:
This is the case where on the job decisions must be made. For example an inspector on a dock inspects incoming pallets of equipment. A time for doing this job can be estimated based on the number of pallets that arrive on the dock based on history. But what varies is when the inspector finds a defective pallet of equipment. This again is best handled by historical data. Remember if the inspector falls behind then due to increased problems then overtime may be necessary. To prevent overtime abuse I have recommended that all employees be a part of a team that works together to get the job done.

Where decisions are the job:
All work involves continuous decision making it is just that we are so unaware of the routine decisions that we make that we don’t recognize them as decisions. All decisions can have a preset approach that can lead to more efficiency. Think of an original big decision as a set of known small decisions with something new added. This is generally done by management leaving the position just to be filled.

Then there are the lower level routine decisions which are repeatable within limits. Here again use historical data to determine staffing. I don’t recommend putting a time limit on making important original decisions other pressures will generally determine a time limit.

If this does not answer your question please e-mail me at: lawrence2007@embarqmail.com

From this article I chose to look at the size of the budget gap as a % of current fiscal funds and the ability to fix the states problems through legislative vote. The following six states with the largest budget gaps will require drastic measures in the next two years to pull themselves out of the recession. In addition one half of these states will experience greater difficulty in resolving their problems through the requirement of a super majority vote in the legislature. States with a super majority requirement indicated by a Yes appear to be stunned into inactivity unable to reach a consensus on how to fix the states fiscal problems. With the seriousness of the states’ fiscal problems inactivity is not an option.

California 49.3% Yes
Illinois 47.3% No
Arizona 41.1% Yes
Nevada 37.8% Yes
New York 32.3% No
New Jersey 29.9% No

These are My Recommendations:
Step One Clear the Way for Reforms
The states with the super majority requirement should try to mitigate the effects of the requirement by a vote to put everything on the table for cuts eliminating all sacred cows.
High powered lobbying by government employee unions should be dealt with through legislative action opening the door to the necessary downsizing required. Unless this problem is addressed you will find that only newly hired young people will be laid off leaving the high paid management staff to do the work a sure fire killer for the maintenance of public services. This is also the time to determine what functions the state should not be doing these should be shut down now because it doesn’t make since to make functions more efficient that are going away.

Step Two Begin Implementations of Major State Government Reforms
Start by making government more efficient by the implementation of Lean Teams to study every function within the government. I cite Minnesota as being the best example of a start on this extensive Lean Team implementation. The Lean Teams are both high level cross functional teams and Lean Teams assigned to study each function. Special Training in Lean is required for all teams but the individual functional Lean Teams will require the help of facilitators to assist in their startup. I recommend that the states training staff take over these activities. If there are not enough personnel to do this I would enlist the HRM position description writers to assist in this operation since position description writers will be redundant when all the reforms are in place.

Step Three Use Work Measurement to build a Staffing Base and a Bottoms-up Budget
Use the resulting Processes Flows from the Lean Team studies as a basis for Work Measurement to build a Staffing Base leading to a Funding Formula and finally to a Bottoms-up Budget. The Bottoms-up Budget documents the least staffing required to do a function and shows exactly where and by how much cuts can be made without reducing public services. This is a big advantage over across the board cuts when downsizing. With these states in such fiscal trouble when the bottoms-up budget is completed downsizing should immediately begin by reducing employees where indicated. Other states without these fiscal problems can reduce employees through attrition over several years. See my Article 113. Private Versus Public Budgeting Practices

Step Four Streamlining and Consolidating State Boards and Commissions
A high level Lean Team is organized to study how to streamline and consolidate the state’s boards and commissions it will then logically group them into 5 to 15 (This number is determined when the grouping is actually done) high level Group organizations. For example most states have several boards and commissions dealing with the welfare of children I would group these organizations with other family support organizations into a single Family Services Group.

While all this is going on a separate Customer Relations Management (CRM) team is established to build a State Telephone 311 Portal. The state IT department will develop a Frequently Asked Question Database for each of the new High level Group organizations. This is done to aid the newly trained call takers in answering questions and providing services to the public. The CRM is not intended to supplant the States website services but rather to supplement it. 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 articles 101, 102, 154 and 158.

Step Five Elimination of the Bureaucratic Organization
Once the CRM is up and running further reforms will follow with each high level group organization being managed by a Steering Team. The functions are grouped under new combined Group management names. The new Group Steering Teams will manage the activities of the new Functional Teams formed from the Functional Lean Teams as stated in step two.
The functional Lean Team becomes the Functional Management Team for each of the Group’s functions. Many mid management levels between the Functional management and Group Management become redundant. Group Management now becomes a Group Steering Management Team which has the role of guiding and steering the organization while the Functional Management Teams deal with the day to day operation of the 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.

This reform brings a positive cultural change to the organization. Employees become members of Teams and are motivated by empowering them to improve their jobs through innovation. By bringing innovation and continuous improvement to the government’s processes the state will have savings through increased efficiency in the future. The reform amounts to a win win situation for government union employees as well as the tax payers of the state by employee empowerment and by ending bureaucratic waste.

Now is the time to consider a four day work week that has been successfully implemented in Utah. Utah is considering my recommendation for a CRM centralized telephone portal which will allow 24/7 service to the public.

What’s Different?
The multilevel career path of the former bureaucracy is now reduced to one step from the Functional Management Teams to the Group Steering Management Team. Gone are employee Position Descriptions and the hundreds of hours of endless manipulation of employee evaluations. Gone also is the endless bickering and negotiation over the budget. Performance budgeting is no longer needed once the agency has been properly staffed because the functional teams monitor their own progress and if they start to fall behind they can take their own corrective action.

Where is the Savings?
These reforms have a low cost of implementation since current personnel are used to make the reforms. Savings can be attributed to Lean teams methods improvements in finding the best way to perform the function resulting in decreased expenses, man hours and better service to the public. Savings from functional staff reductions will most likely be more than 10% since Work Measurement has never been used in government. Savings from management reductions with the elimination of layers of management and the bureaucracy could be as high as 40% of management.

Estimated savings with the minimum starting at 10% of current payroll
California $950,690,000 to $2 billion
Illinois $259,020,000 to $600 million
Arizona $117,060,000 to $300 million
Nevada $49,390,000 to $100 million
New York $569,110,000 to $1.5 billion
New Jersey $250,760,000 to $600 million

See my Article 106. Where do the Government Reform Savings Come From?

Two other recommended reforms are not included in the above because of the required investment. One is the consolidation of all state support services into a single agency. Many states have already made this reform consolidating the states support services into an efficient organization. If the consolidation of state support services is pursued I recommend that it be done as a part of Step One. See my Article 142. Huge Savings from State Centralized Services

The second reform is modernization of the states IT services by building a Centralized State Data Facility using a Relational Database Management System (RDMS). Washington State is currently implementing a Centralize state data Facility.
See my articles:
Article 120. Collaborative Innovation between States and Federal Government
Article 138. State Information Technology Centralized Data Centers
Article 142. Huge Savings from State Centralized Services
Article 143. Examples of a Relational Database Management System
Article 144. Why States Lose Millions by Using Obsolete Computer Systems
Article 145. The Coming Revolution in Information Technology Systems

Eliminating the Practice of Throwing Money at Problems

It’s a sad fact that legislatures in many states and the federal government still solve problems by throwing money at the likely solution expecting it to go away. Seldom it seams is the alternative “no money is required” considered.

Consider for example the Department of Homeland Security. Suppose we could go back to a few months before 9-11when an FBI agent tried for months to get the attention of his superiors in the FBI bureaucracy by telling them that possible Arab terrorists were taking flight training lessons in commercial airlines. The agent even suggested that they could fly an airliner into the World Trade Center. Had the FBI bureaucracy listened there would be no Department Homeland Security and probably no Afghan war. I point this out as reminder of how costly a bureaucracy with many levels of bureaucratic organization can be. But I also suggest that had the President and Federal Legislature recognized the problem as the “bureaucracy” within the FBI and fixed that problem at virtually no cost the enormous expense of Home Land Security might have been significantly less.

But there is some good news. Some states have well developed legislative support groups for studying problems and coming up with the best bipartisan legislative solutions.

Changing from Top-Down to Bottoms-up Budgeting

I suggest that these Legislative support groups should recommend that the state legislature implement Lean study teams to study the processes flows for all of the state’s services. Making the Lean Teams a part of legislated state policy insures that they are not thrown out by the next governor’s administration. Minnesota has successfully done this and currently leads the nation in state government Lean study teams. These Lean teams have been used to cut red tape and reduce document turn around times. But the results of their study efforts could also be used for Work Measurement leading to a bottoms-up budget.

Lean teams find the best way to perform a service. The “best way” is then analyzed using Work Measurement and documented by a Budget Analyst to determine all staffing and expense costs to perform the function. I call this a Funding Formula which remains valid until the method changes and needs revision. Each year the Funding Formula is tweaked by adding the cost of living and inflation expenses before multiplying by the projected number of times the function is to be performed during the next budget period. The Funding Formula provides a solid budget for the function after management and support costs are added. This is what I call a bottoms-up budget when you know what the real costs should be as opposed to a top-down budget where the old budget is carried forward from the previous budget. Both methods require the addition cost of living and other increased expenses but there the similarity ends. See my
Article 113. Private Versus Public Budgeting Practices.

Misuse of Productivity Reporting

Many states try to get efficiency from an over staffed bureaucracy when using the top-down budget by implementing measuring and productivity reporting. I suggest that this type productivity reporting is misleading meaningless and down right insulting. In industry productivity reporting is used in production areas and is based on the manufacturing of widgets with non-varying standards. It is easy to staff a non-varying set of processes based on standards. But where processes vary as in most of government services you can still establish what I call a Staffing Base by analyzing each set of processes of a function. Once the Staffing Base is established it is unnecessary to measure productivity but manage back logs instead to prevent public services from falling behind. See my Article 131. Measuring Efficiency Efficiently.

Moving Decisions from the Legislature to the branch of Government that “Owns” the Problem

Why not have the legislature establish the practice of asking for a detailed solution to a problem from the branch of government which “owns” the problem. This can save the legislature considerable time in focusing on a solution. Some state legislatures do this while others try to invent and their solution.

The Cross Functional Decision Making Process

Where a problem is deemed to be owned by several government agencies before the legislature becomes involved a Cross Functional Lean Team should be organized to come up with the best bipartisan solution. With the results of the Lean team’s study the legislature can then proceed to the next steps. See my Article 26. Reorganizing (Restructuring) using Vertical and Horizontal Functions or their Processes, Article 151. The Promise of Going ‘Lean’ and Article 152. The Process of Replacing Bureaucratic Management With Lean Teams.

The governor’s plan, which seeks to close a deficit for this fiscal year projected to be $3 billion, includes cuts to education and Medicaid as well as a grab bag of other strategies, including creating a tax amnesty program and raiding the state’s environmental protection fund.
The plan, which needs legislative approval, also includes a $2 billion reduction in spending for the next fiscal year, which starts in April.

The Governor’s budget cuts are necessary to solve the state’s immediate fiscal problems. But the state has serious roadblocks to the implementation of the major reforms needed to meet its future obligations. These reforms will require Legislative approval for resting control from employee unions which employees are to be laid off. This is important to when downsizing to be sure to reduce management currently protected by length of service to balance layoffs of lower level newer employees. The reforms I recommend will require significant reductions in the state’s management. The reform moves the state’s government from its 19th century bureaucratic structure to a 21st century team managed organization eliminating several levels of management.

The second major roadblock is in the need for the legislature to take control of the states Information Technology systems reform. Most states including New York have “IBM shops” in these the IT managers are closely connected IBM. These IT managers are the first consulted for advice on the reform of state’s IT systems. In most cases as found in other states the IT manager has recommended an IBM solution using IBM’s computers and proprietary software. This may be acceptable in adding to the present obsolete systems. But where major IT systems are to be reformed and the state wants a new integrated IT system following the wrong recommendation could cost the state $billions. An IBM proprietary recommendation would cut out competitors from doing business with the state and may be illegal.

This occurred in the state of Washington where the IT manager tried to use the obsolete IBM proprietary software in the state’s new centralized Data Center. Fortunately the fact that the new center would not have integrated systems was disclosed to the Governor who replaced the state’s IT manager. The state of Washington is now considering the implementation of a Relational Database Management system.

Third reason for action by the state legislature is that the reforms must be sanctioned by law and not seen as an initiative sponsored only by the governor since the reforms will likely take some years to be fully implemented.

The following is a summary of my reforms to the New York state government.

The Streamlining of New York’s Boards and Commissions Using Lean
I recommend the following approach, organize a select group of employees into a high level Lean Team to study this process to find the best way for the public to interface with government for services similar to what the state of Iowa is doing. Then organize functional Lean Teams in each of the boards’ and commissions’ functions to find the best way of doing each function similar to the way Minnesota is doing it.

Next, I would follow one of the best examples of government innovation developed by the city of Hampton Virginia. (On my website read my Article 101. The Hampton Virginia Innovation story.) With the Hampton Virginia system adapted by the state the public when needing services would call a State Centralized telephone Portal called a Customer Relations Management (CRM) system for services rather than going to each agency. Telephone call takers answer questions take applications and do anything required for the service for all of the 270 agencies. Call takers are supported by a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) database. The agencies and entities are streamlined and combined with the number of them being significantly reduced to around 25. Service to the public is provided 24/7 with the number of trained call takers on duty dependent on the number of customer calls received.

I further recommend the implementation of a new Centralized Relational Database Management System RDMS similar to that being developed in Washington State. The RDMS is developed completely separate from the current obsolete agency computer systems. No funds should have been wasted on trying to patch the old systems. When the New Centralized Data Center and its systems are up and running the plug is pulled on the old systems.

Another recommendation is for the consolidation of all government services into a single state wide organization. The idea is to combine all support services into a centralized state Shared Services Department (SSD). Within the SSD organization is: Purchasing, Information Technology, Janitorial Services, Waste Management, Travel and expense, and others.
My final recommendation is for streamlining by eliminating levels of government and downsizing the way agencies are organized through the elimination of their bureaucratic structure. The high level Lean Team after completing their work on the reorganization of New York’s board’s and commissions’ is then merged with Top Management to become the Top Management Steering Team. Group Steering Management Teams are formed from mid management with Functional Lean Team Management reporting to them from the lower level.

What’s different from these reforms?
The State of New York has moved from its 19th century bureaucratic organization to the 21st century Steering Management Teams and Functional Management Teams. The state has a Centralized Database facility with a RDMS with query capabilities similar to that of Google and costing far less than the current systems to maintain.

See the details of these reforms in my articles on my website: http://managementconsultant.blogsome.com
Article 151. The Promise of Going ‘Lean’
Article 152. The Process of Replacing Bureaucratic Management With Lean Teams
Article 153. Example of the Advantage of a Relational Database
Article 154. Streamlining Iowa Boards and Commissions Using Lean and More
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 159. Mean, Lean Reform In Government Accounting
Article 160. Minnesota State Government Leads the Nation in Lean
Article 161. IBM The Most Costly Hoax of the Century
Article 162. Bringing Virginia’s State Government Back on Track

Update November 25, 2009

GOVERNOR PATERSON PROPOSES EMERGENCY LEGISLATION IN ADDRESS TO NEW YORKERS

Executive Authority Option Grants One-Time Authority to Close Current-Year Budget Deficit. Permits Governor to Administratively Reduce Payments Across-the-Board by an Amount Needed to Bring the 2009-10 Budget Back into Balance
Legislation Provides Critical Tool to Protect State’s Finances during Unprecedented Fiscal Crisis.
Grants the Executive Branch the one-time authority to administratively direct the reduction of 2009-10 fiscal year payments in order to close a $3.2 billion current-year budget gap. This is directed at the current budget shortfall.

This may lead the way to legislate the reforms needed to meet future budget shortfalls as I have suggested above.

The saying is that good things come in small packages, a saying that certainly holds true for Singapore where the pace of public sector financial management reform has hastened in recent years according to Chua Geok Wah, the Singaporean accountant-general.

‘We see financial reform as a continuous journey. The journey towards developing a more robust public service through better deployment of financial resources is a never-ending one,’ she says.
Chua Geok Wah FCPA was appointed accountant-general on 1 April 2000.

Comments by Lawrence Rosier
When you compare the accrual method of accounting to the cash method used by most states you find that there is a lot of creative accounting going on to balance state budgets. The primary difference between the two methods in matching state revenues with state expenses. The following may help to explain the Matching principle.

Matching principle From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matching principle is a cornerstone of accrual accounting together with the revenue recognition principle. They both determine the accounting period, in which revenues and expenses are recognized. According to the principle, expenses are recognized when obligations are (1) incurred (usually when goods are transferred or services rendered, e.g. sold), and (2) offset against recognized revenues, which were generated from those expenses (related on the cause-and-effect basis), no matter when cash is paid out. In cash accounting—in contrast—expenses are recognized when cash is paid out, no matter when obligations are incurred through transfer of goods or rendition of services: e.g., sale.

Prepaid expenses, such as worker wages or subcontractor fees paid out or promised, are not recognized as expenses (cost of goods sold), but as assets (deferred expenses), until the actual products are sold.
The matching principle allows better evaluation of actual profitability and performance (shows how much was spent to earn revenue), and reduces noise from timing mismatch between when costs are incurred and when revenue is realized.

See also https://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/SID-3F57FECB-CC789079/cpa/hs.xsl/2449_3178_ENA_HTML.htm

Overview
We will start by getting the legislature and executive branches of the state government to commit to the Lean reforms. An extensive Lean training program will then be started. Next a high level lean team will be appointed to manage and steer the reforms. This is followed by the breakdown of the 152 organizations into functions. A function is identified by the products and services it produces. The personnel working within each function are organized into Functional Lean teams to study the process flows used to produce their product or service and determine the best method. The high level Lean Team will then logically group the 152 organizations into 5 to 10 high level Group organizations.

While all this is going on a separate Customer Relations Management (CRM) team is established to build a State Telephone 311 Portal. The state IT department will develop a Frequently Asked Question Database for each of the new High level Group organizations. This is done to aid the newly trained call takers in answering questions and providing services to the public. The CRM is not intended to supplant the States website services. Once the CRM is up and running further reforms will follow with each high level group organization being managed by a Steering Team. The new group Steering Teams will manage the activities of the new Functional Teams formed from the Functional Lean Teams.

Managing the Hype
Government Personnel as well as the public needs to be informed about the reorganization and consolidation changes that will be taking place. Vocal objections made to the public need to be responded to. Termination rules need to be in place for personnel that refuse to follow directives needed in making the reforms. Manage hype by emphasizing the positive aspects of the reform: “streamlining agencies for improved public services”, “employees will take an active role in improvements and in the management of government”; down play savings.

Establishing a culture of employee innovation through teams is one of the best ways to get an efficient operation with continuous improvement. Because the employee is close to the day to day operation he can detect problems sooner and has the opportunity to come up with an innovative solution before the problem is even known to management. This is an advantage over most bureaucratic organizations where it’s difficult to get employee innovation for three reasons. First employees are generally not asked to be innovative and are intimidated by the culture of the organization. Second if they do have a good idea it is generally ignored due to the competitive nature found at the work place. And the third reason is little or no responsibility is delegated to the employee for making improvements to their work processes. See my article 116.

Initiating the Lean Training
The first steps are to obtain agreement with HRM to provide Lean training personnel who will be Lean trainers for the high level Lean Teams and for others to be trained to fill the role of Facilitators for the Functional Lean Teams. Training of the Facilitators will include monitoring the organization and the election of a team leader for the Functional Lean Teams and training them in how to do Process Flow Charts (PFC). Selected Budgeting personnel will also be required to attend the training sessions in how to do the PFCs. Budgeting personnel will be required to analyze the PFCs determining required man-hour and other associated costs such as mileage for each process of the function.

Functional Breakdown
A Function is the name of a part of an organization that uses a unique set of processes to achieve a product or service that satisfies a specific public need. Processes are the steps required to achieve the desired product or service and are studied by the Functional Lean Team using a Process Flow Chart (PFC) to determine the best way to perform the function.

Because functions can precisely describe a task, breaking down the budget into functions simplifies the budgeting process. This allows functions to be easily excluded or included in the budget as a funded entity. To begin the process I would request all organizations to make a preliminary break down of their current budget into functions. This is done to prepare the way for identifying and organizing a function’s Lean Team.

There is also a benefit when consolidating government organizations. Functions identified as budgeted entities can easily be removed from one department and placed in another by moving the budget and the personnel performing the function.

After each of the functional Lean teams has been organized, elected its leader and is meeting once a week, monitored by a facilitator it will begin work on finding the best way to do their function. I have found that the most effective way for the Lean Team to make a PFC is to tape white butcher paper or brown wrapping paper around the conference room walls. After each Lean Team meeting the PFC can be easily rolled and put up at the next meeting. In order to maintain flexibility each process is written on 8 1/2x11in. paper and taped to the wall allowing for changes to be easily made. I would make two PFCs the first one is of the existing PFC and the second right under it the new improved method PFC. When the PFCs are completed and other improvements are known the budget analyst will review the PFCs to determine the cost savings from the new method. To do this the budget analyst will determine all associated costs for each process and enter the results into a spreadsheet. The total expenditures for the function become what I call the Funding Formula for the function. The budget for the function simply becomes the number of times that the function is expected to be performed in the budgeted year. Staffing is done from the calculated man-hours. The reason this can be easily estimated is that you cannot staff with less than a full person.

Role of the Budget Analyst
The Process Flow Charts done by the Lean teams provide a record of the costs associated with each Function. If a Function or one of its processes were to be removed all of its budget will also be removed. When the new and best method has been documented in the Process Flow Chart it is presented to the Group management. This is an important step which signifies Group management’s support and recognition of the Team’s accomplishments. Upon approval of the new method the Process Flow Chart is given over to the budget analyst to cost out the savings of the new method and to identify the proper staffing for the function. The budget analyst then documents the new method and its costs in a spread sheet which will provide input to the next budget. See my article 137.

The organization is now budgeted at the functional level. This I call bottoms up budgeting and when all the functions are totaled with the Steering Management costs you get the group level budget. This is the opposite of the old top down budget method for departments and agencies. See my article 113.

Consolidating the Many into the Manageable Few
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 Group management names. This will reduce the number of boards and commissions significantly to about 5 or 10. We can now initiate the balancing of the work loads for each of these grouped sets of functions. What we are doing is planning the best solution or way of doing this set of functions for a period of time usually a week. Work load planning is a common Industrial Engineering technique found in industry.

How Work Load Planning works
All of the new Group management’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 the processes in several 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 each new 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 Group 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 function’s budgets plus the Group’s management costs equals the Group’s budget. The budgeting of functions places the budgeting process more under legislative control.

Building the CRM
The suggested reform of a State Centralized Portal using a 311 telephone number eliminates a significant amount of red tape. 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 articles 101, 102 and 154.

Finalizing the Organizational Reform
First the functional Lean Team becomes the Functional Management Team for each of the Group’s functions. Second many of the mid management levels between the Functional management and Group Management become redundant. Group Management now becomes a Group Steering Management Team which has the role of guiding and steering the organization while the Functional Management Team deals with the day to day operation of the 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.

This reform brings a positive cultural change to the organization. Employees become members of Teams and are motivated by empowering them to improve their jobs through innovation. By bringing innovation and continuous improvement to the government’s processes the state will have savings through increased efficiency in the future. The reform amounts to a win win situation for government union employees as well as the tax payers of the state by employee empowerment and by ending bureaucratic waste.

What’s different?
The multilevel career path of the former bureaucracy is now reduced to 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 budget. Performance budgeting is no longer needed once the agency has been properly staffed because the functional teams monitor their own progress and if they start to fall behind they can take their own corrective action.

What are the benefits for Georgia’s State Government?
If the state of Georgia wanted to establish a four day week services would not decrease but actually increase from the 24/7 implementation of the CRM. The CRM 25 to 30 call takers would replace the more than 150 or more current call takers. Mid management in the boards and commissions could be reduced by more than 300. If the Steering Management and Functional Management Teams were to be implemented throughout the state government the minimum saving to Georgia is estimated to be $170 million to more than $500 million. See my articles 106 and 116.

Supplement
CRM was originally installed by the city of Hampton Virginia in 2000 and more recently in San Francisco. The Steering and functional management concept was implemented at the McDonnell Douglas Missile Systems Co. in 1983 after my proposal was accepted and approved by Sanford McDonnell CEO of the McDonnell Douglas Corp. The implementation was warmly received by employees and remained in place for more than ten years until the company was disbanded and sold to Boeing in 1997.

For example a first-class U.S. postage stamp costs 44 cents, up from 2 cents in 1950. Had its price kept pace with inflation, a stamp today would sell for only 18 cents. Instead, stamp prices grew nine times as fast as the general rate of inflation. They outpaced inflation largely because the U.S. Postal Service cannot profit from cost-reducing, quality-enhancing innovation the way that private carriers, such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service, can.

The inability to introduce incentives in government is the driving force for many states to outsource (privatize) government functions. Privatization encourages the search for process improvements leading to profits. Governments prevent improvements to services because there is a law (written or unwritten) against making a profit.

Budgets are set by the legislature and no government entity is going to argue with them if the budget is more than adequate. Most agencies departments and commissions spend all of their budgets because they might over-run their budgets in the future. They certainly do not want the Legislature to cut their budgets. This represents what I call top-down budgeting, “not knowing what the real costs are before funding”, as opposed to bottom-up budgeting “measuring and knowing the real costs before funding”, as used in private industry. This budgeting mindset is deeply embedded in the legislature and in the bureaucratic government organizations.

One of the main reasons that government is so inefficient compared with private companies, besides their bureaucratic structure, is found in the way that funding and budgeting is done. When private companies need to fix a problem they select the Department of the company that “owns” the problem and asks them to come up with the most satisfactory solution. If the problem spans several functions a high level Lean Team is chosen to study the problem and come up with the best solution. That is, to find the best but least costly solution that can be implemented quickly. Once the solution has been identified it is costed-out by industrial engineers or budget personnel, funded by the companies’ management and implemented.

When government encounters a similar problem it is usually first brought to the attention of the legislature by this time the problem is considered to be significant. There becomes an immediate political problem when each political party may or may not consider the problem worthy of consideration. A specific agency may be thought to have responsibility for the problem but they may or may not be asked to come up with a solution. One party may develop a solution to the problem and those against may come up with their own solution. Nearly all government problems are thought to require funding. Therefore there is an immediate effort to determine the funding needed for the solution even before the most satisfactory solution is known. The amount of funding is dependent on the party in power and their perception of the funding required not on the actual funding needed for the most satisfactory solution which may or may not even be known. Once the “solution” is funded it becomes a part of the budget by law. If the problem is thought to be large enough the Legislature may create a whole new agency as the solution. Otherwise the funds are passed to the most likely agency and the matter is thought solved unless the problem arises again at some later date. Note that once the funding becomes law the state’s budgeting personnel have little or no role in determining the level of funding required.

I call this government process Top-Down budgeting where little effort is put into finding the most efficient and effective solution before funding it. This is the opposite of that done in private industry which I call Bottom-Up budgeting finding the most appropriate solution before funding it. The bottom-up solution should be based on a Lean Team study to determine the best method for performing the function. When the best method has been found the set of processes are evaluated using Work Measurement and the development of a staffing base and all other costs are identified. This means that the best method for doing the function and the actual costs in labor and other expenses are known at the time of approval by private companies’ management.

There is hope for state governments the state of Iowa has accepted the practice that Lean studies should be made on problems within government processes. This is a giant step forward because it opens the door for state governments to use the best methods from private industry to find solutions to government problems. Lean has experienced great success in Iowa because it has been used to solve customer turnaround problems cutting months off of public environmental applications. Value Stream Mapping is the primary useful Lean tool used in government. Value stream mapping is a Lean manufacturing technique used to analyze the flow of materials and information required to bring a product or service to a consumer.

However Iowa’s Lean projects have generated little to no savings this is because the reformers are not looking for savings. When you continue to identify savings eventually someone will ask about reducing personnel and the entrenched bureaucracies are not about to let that happen. So what type of solutions do bureaucracies like? They especially like solutions that make them look good with the public because it puts pressure on law makers not to oppose an increase the budget that they want. Any innovation that enhances service to the public like Iowa’s Lean projects and makes the bureaucracy look good is a sure thing to be adopted. This leaves us with bureaucratic government standing directly in the path of generating savings and capitalizing on those savings through reduction in government personnel.

I contend that the 19th century bureaucratic government organization has long out lived its usefulness and should be replaced by a 21st century streamlined organization adapted from the best of private industry and government. I recommend that this reform be begun by initiating a high level Lean team within each agency to make the process flow study to determine the best organizational flow within the agency. When this is completed each Function within the agency is organized into a functional Lean team. Each functional Lean team will do a process flow analysis on the processes done by the function to determine the best method for doing the function. Lean Teams encourage innovation by empowering both management and employees to find the best processes for doing high level cross functions and the processes within functions. This method requires little investment by the state simply redirecting training efforts for this Lean implementation.

Notice the agency is now budgeted by functions and not departments within the agency. A function is defined as the name given to a set of processes for providing the public with specific item or service and its budget is determined by the number of times that the function will be performed during the budgeted period.

The Process Flow Charts done by the Lean teams provide a record of the costs associated with each Function. If a Function or one of its processes were to be removed all of its budget will also be removed. When the new and best method has been documented in the Process Flow Chart it is presented to the top management. This is an important step which signifies top management’s support and recognition of the Team’s accomplishments. Upon approval of the new method the Process Flow Chart is given over to the budget analyst to cost out the savings of the new method and to identify the proper staffing for the function. The budget analyst then documents the new method and its costs in a spread sheet which will provide input to the next budget. See my Article 137. Role of Lean Facilitator and Budget Analyst.

Budgets developed by the bottom-up method differ from the normal bureaucratic budget. What you have now is the real budget for doing the agencies Functions not that phony bloated budget that they present each year. True, you must add in the cost of managing but now for the first time you know what that cost is. This is a bottom-up budget with actual costs for doing the work known. All other costs are for management and fluff (which can be significant). In my experience in industry most unmeasured office areas are over staffed by 10% or more. Once you know what the real costs are for doing the work and top management is working closely with the Teams. The next steps in the government reform process can begin.

First the functional Team leaders become the Functional Management of the agencies functions. Second many of the mid management levels between the Functional management and top management become redundant. Top management now assumes the role of a Steering Management Team. The top level Lean team and possibly some but not all of mid management may become part of the Steering Management Team. Steering Management has the role of guiding and steering the organization while Functional Management deals with the day to day operation of the agency’s 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’s different? The multilevel career path of the former bureaucracy is now reduced to 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. Performance budgeting is no longer needed once the agency has been properly staffed because the functional teams monitor their own progress and if they start to fall behind they can take their own corrective action.

Given the amount of budget stress that states are presently under you might think that states would be willing to give up their bureaucratic organizations and downsize their agencies. Even with 42 states under economic stress except in only a few direr cases they still prefer to cut services and raise taxes than downsize. Any recommendation either Lean or any other method that gets its efficiency from reduced personnel has little chance of being implemented. This is why I advocate extensive government reforms.

The major portion of this reform has already been successfully implemented. I proposed the Steering and Functional management organization to the McDonnell Douglas Missile Systems Co. in 1983 with the approval of Sandy McDonnell CEO of the McDonnell Douglass Corp. It was very successful and was used for more than ten years until the Company was sold to Boeing in the late 1990’s. It was built on the Quality of Work Life (QWL, similar to TQM teams) Teams that were in place in 1983. Since then I have developed my unique method for Work Measurement to arrive at a Staffing Base and a solid budget.

I am currently looking for a state agency where I can pilot this reform in state government. But I fear that the only way that this can be done is for the legislature to act because most bureaucratic agencies are unlikely to volunteer its organization for the pilot.

Teresa Hay McMahon heads up the performance and results division in the Iowa Department of Management

In January 2008, public- and private-sector officials joined forces to create a “Lean Government Collaborative,” to work with and in state agencies to do process improvement. While the collaborative had Governor Culver’s support, executive-branch reformers such as McMahon were well aware of how ephemeral reform can be when it comes with a label and an elected executive’s name. So she and her allies turned to the legislature once again to try to codify good government in state statute.

Lean in Iowa, “is absolutely flourishing,” says McMahon. And it’s attracting some outside interest, as well. In June, her office hosted a “lean government exchange” that drew 130 people from state and local governments around the country, as well as federal officials, and officials from Mexico and Canada.

Streamlining Iowa Boards and Commissions Using Lean and More.
The following reform consists of more than just using the normal Lean study and implementation to streamline Iowa public services. I will show you how to reorganize the current bureaucratic organization into a Public Service Steering Management Team with the current work of Boards and Commissions being performed by Functional Management Teams.

Consider this reform for managing Iowa’s 178 or so boards and commissions. Currently the state On-line website and Departmental Telephone Directories aid the public in finding the particular organization they are looking for to provide a specific service such as: answering a question, making a request or filling out an application. But with this new reform all Iowa state public queries can be handled through a 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.

What is the system called?
The system is called Customer Relations Management (CRM) and uses a similar call center to that of a 911 center.

How does it work?
Each Telephone Call taker is trained in doing the current public service business found in one of several areas: State Offices, State Departments or State boards and Commissions. Calls are directed to the specifically trained call taker. That individual is assisted by a frequently asked Question (FAQ) database developed for each Office, department, Board and Commission. There must be trained personnel on duty at all times. See my Article 101. The Hampton Virginia Innovation Story, where CRM was first implemented in 2000.

How do you make this reform?
I recommend that this reform be initiated by a high level Lean team making the process flow study to determine the best organization for Iowa Services. The study will map customer interface with desired services to arrive at the most effective and efficient process flow. This is followed by the setting up of the State Services Call Center (the CRM).

While the high level Lean team is doing the high level study each agency function is organized into a functional Lean team. The functional Lean teams will do a process flow analysis on the processes done by each function to determine the best method for doing the function.

Notice the organization is budgeted by Functions and not boards and commissions. Boards and commissions can be used to describe the umbrella organization for several functions. A function is the name given to a set of processes for providing the public with specific item or service and is budgeted by the number of times that the function will be done during the year.

The Process Flow Charts done by the Lean teams provide a record of the costs associated with each process. If a process were to be eliminated all of its costs are also eliminated. A Process Flow Chart is done for each Function and if an entire Function were to be removed all of its budget will also be removed. When the new and best method has been documented in the Process Flow Chart it is presented to the top management. This is an important step which signifies top management’s support and recognition of the Team’s accomplishments. Upon approval of the new method the Process Flow Chart is given over to the budget analyst to cost out the savings of the new method and to identify the proper staffing for the function. The budget analyst then documents the new method and its costs in a spread sheet which will provide input to the next budget. See my Article 137. Role of Lean Facilitator and Budget Analyst.

Did I say budget? What you have now is the real budget for doing the boards’ and commissions’ Functions not that phony bloated budget that they present each year. True, you must add in the cost of managing but now for the first time you know what that cost is. This is a bottom-up budget with actual costs for doing the work known. All other costs are for management and fluff (which can be significant). In my experience in industry most unmeasured office areas are over staffed by 10% or more.

Once you know what the real costs are for doing the work and top management is working closely with the Teams. The government reform process can begin. First the functional Team leaders become the Functional Management of the Public Service functions. Second many of the mid management levels between the Functional management and top management become redundant. Top management now assumes the role of a Steering Management Team. The top level Lean team and possibly some but not all of mid management may become part of the Steering Management Team. Steering Management has the role of guiding and steering the organization while Functional Management deals with the day to day operation of the boards’ and Commissions’ 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.

So where are the savings?
In each of the 178 offices there must be at least one person available for taking public phone calls during working hours compared with as few as 24 (my example estimate) manning the phones 24/7. Note that this is more than a telephone answering service the business of the state is conducted by the CRM. When you combine these savings with the elimination of some boards and commissions, significant savings can be achieved. The number of current service call takers is reduced from 178 to 24 and more than 356 lower management positions may be eliminated for an estimated savings of $20 million.

What’s different?
The multilevel career path of the former bureaucracy is now reduced to 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 each of the board and commission’s budgets.

Now for the sad tale?
Lean has experienced great success in Iowa because it has been used to solve customer turnaround problems cutting months off of public environmental applications. Iowa’s Lean projects have generated little to no savings this is because the reformers are not looking for savings. When you continue to identify savings eventually someone will ask about reducing personnel and the entrenched bureaucracies are not about to let that happen. So what type of ideas do bureaucracies like? They especially like ideas that make them look good with the public because it puts pressure on law makers not to oppose an increase the budget that they want. Any innovation that enhances service to the public like Iowa’s Lean projects and makes the bureaucracy look good is a sure thing to be adopted.

Given the amount of budget stress that states are presently under you might think that states would be willing to give up their bureaucratic organizations and downsize their boards and commissions. Even with 42 states under economic stress except in only a few direr cases they still prefer to raise taxes than to downsize. Any recommendation either Lean or any other method that gets its efficiency from reduced personnel has little chance of being implemented. This is why I advocate major government reforms.
See the following articles for more information.
Article 156. Getting the most out of Lean as used in Government
Article 157. Using Lean to Balance Agency work Loads

Feather O’Connor Houstoun
is president of the William Penn Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the quality of life in the Greater Philadelphia region.

As a recovering public official who worked across many different program areas, I’ve marveled at how often we rationalize the continuation of practices that should have been augmented or replaced by technological advances. Sometimes the reason for missing an opportunity to innovate is limited resources, but more often it’s failure to look at the problem from a different perspective.

A multi-sector partnership, consisting of a state government, the federal government, and a start-up nonprofit, has transformed this cumbersome inefficient system into a streamlined process. Thanks to this stunning breakthrough, eligible but non-participating seniors are drawn toward benefits that could make a significant difference in their quality of life.
The nonprofit start-up, Benefits Data Trust, is the hub of a new outreach and enrollment system that combines a multi-agency back-office innovation with the individual agencies’ need to qualify applicants separately for each program. By cross-referencing information from federal, state, and private databases and membership rolls, it identifies individuals likely to be eligible but who are not receiving benefits. It then uses direct-marketing strategies to inform them that they may be eligible, and finally, supports them through the application process, often submitting the application on their behalf.

This is an example of using a Relational Database to store in one place the identification and address of an elderly or impaired individual such that the database allows a single enrollment for the person for several agencies. Each agency would require that the applicant fill out the paper work for each agency.

The method described above has been around for about twenty years it replaces the siloed eligibility determination used in multiple agency application programs. It uses a single centralized client Identification relational database to store a clients ID and address which can then be used for the processing of several agencies’ application programs. I use the same idea as that in the above article in the same way as one of the relational databases in my recommendation for a State Centralized IT Relational Database Management System RDMS.

I use this ID relational database to store all of the States households as input to many application programs: Medicaid, Driver’s Licenses, Voter Registration ID etc. I have recommended that the State RDMS be developed by a state IT or several states and funded by the Federal Government’s Dept. of Homeland Security. The ID RD can be linked together as a part of a national ID RDMS for the REAL ID mandate.

See my Articles:
Article 138. State Information Technology Centralized Data Centers
Article 142. Huge Savings from State Centralized Services
Article 143. Examples of a Relational Database Management System
Article 144. Why States Lose Millions by Using Obsolete Computer Systems
Article 145. The Coming Revolution in Information Technology Systems

A. Getting Top Management Support
This is a critical step for without top management support this reform is going no place. In some cases the top manager may have to be replaced with a reform manager.

B. Lean Training
Lean training is widely given throughout the organization both to the top managers and lower level employees as well. The focus of Lean is on making the processes of the organization more efficient. Out side training consultants may have to be brought in to train the internal trainers in Lean methods. Value Stream Mapping is the primary useful Lean tool in government. Value stream mapping is a Lean manufacturing technique used to analyze the flow of materials and information required to bring a product or service to a consumer.

C. Organize Lean Teams
Organize Lean Teams where recognized process flows exist within the Agency both for high level cross functional process flows and low level process flows within a function. The high level Lean Teams are made up of personnel who actually work in cross functional management and the Functional Lean Teams are from the work place where the function’s processes are performed. The best people to do an analysis of processes is Lean trained employees who actually do the work whether this is a high level skilled team or employees just loading trucks it is up to the team to define the best practices for doing the job.

D. Lean Team Meetings
I recommend flexibility in meeting times for busy managers this may be one hour before work while they are fresh in the morning or the setting aside of an entire day during the week. In any case the Lean Management Team should meet at least one time a week. The first order of business is to get organized by electing a leader of the Team by secret ballot.

Functional Lean Teams may require the services of a Lean trained facilitator to assist in getting the team organized and electing its leader. I would suggest that these teams meet for at least one hour each week. I propose that the process flows be done by the team on a large Process Flow Chart taped to the wall of the conference room with each process taped to the wall chart. This provides a flexible way of making changes to the chart during its construction. The method should start with the current process flow and to that is added the improved process flow.

E. Top Managements Role
Top management’s role is to encourage the implementation of Lean by being supportive of the Teams. They should send representatives at times to the Team meetings showing complete management support.

F. Costing Out the New Lean Process Flow Method
A Lean trained budget analyst will cost-out the savings between the old method and the new method and identify the staffing and other budget costs associated with the new method. Once this is done the budget including the staffing is established for this set of processes. The new method with the savings is presented to top management.

The Process Flow Charts provide a record of the costs associated with each process. If a process were to be eliminated all of its costs are also eliminated. A Process Flow Chart is done for each Function and if a Function were to be removed all of its budget will also be removed.

What you have now is the real budget for doing the Agency Functions not that phony bloated budget that the Agency presents each year. True, you must add in the cost of managing the Agency but now for the first time you know what that cost is. This is a bottom-up budget with actual costs for doing the work known. All other costs are for management and fluff (which can be significant). This is an example of Work Measurement in my experience in industry most unmeasured office areas are over staffed by 10% or more. Once you know what the real costs are for doing the Agencies work and top management is working closely with the Teams the government reform process can begin.

G. Replacing the Bureaucracy with Steering Management and Functional Management
First The Lean Management Team is combined with the new Steering Management Team headed by the Agencies top manager as team leader. The Steering Management Team has the role of guiding and steering the organization. Some but not all of mid management may become part of the Steering Management Team but most mid level managers between the Functional management and Steering Management will become redundant.

The Lean Team leaders in each function become the Functional Management Leaders of each of the Agencies functions. Functional Management deals with the day to day operation of the Agencies functions. Steering Management is responsible for guiding and setting the direction of Functional Management in “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.

H. Role of Support Services
Management Support service functions such as: Human Resources, Information Technology, Budgeting, Auditing, and Facilities become part of a Centralized Agency Support Organization. Each support service may have a single representative on the Steering Management Team.

So where do savings come from in this reform? If the Agency has never had Work Measurement performed and most have not, the minimum savings is at least 10% plus the savings from all the Lean activities this may be a minimum of 5% or more plus the reduction in management personnel which could be another 5% for a total of 20%. If this reform is done though out the entire State Government you can see that the savings become significant.

Ken Miller is the founder of the Change and Innovation Agency and the author of Governing’s book We Don’t Make Widgets: Overcoming the Myths that Keep Government from Radically Improving. His Better, Faster, Cheaper blog covers government efficiency. E-mail him at ken@changeagents.info.

What exactly is Lean Government? It’s a mindset and a discipline to increase our capacity to do more good. There are four key steps:
1. Be clear about your purpose and bottom line. What good are you trying to create?
2. Know what customers want and what they value.
3. Build great widgets. Permits, child abuse investigation reports, substance abuse counseling programs, tax audits and so on.
4. Find a way to make the widgets better, faster and cheaper. Notice the sequence. To paraphrase Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, it does no good to make more efficient that which should not be made at all.

In these incredibly tough budget times, you would think government agencies would be working extra hard to find ways of doing things more efficiently. Unfortunately, leaders across the country are grabbing the same old playbook — hiring freezes, travel restrictions, delaying maintenance and so on.

That’s why the aftermath of this budget crisis is the perfect time to use the principles of Lean to radically rethink what we do and how we do it. We should use this time to help policy makers understand the potential of improving the operations of government. Will it succeed? If we can overcome our limiting beliefs, get past the language barrier and tap into people’s desire to make a difference, then we’ve got a real shot. In the meantime, I’m going to get my acid-washed jeans out of the dryer, put on my Snuggie and Twitter you about the progress.

Comments by Lawrence Rosier
This is an excellent article and I advocate the use of Lean by all Governments and I agree with the author’s objections to the Total Quality Managements approach to using quality tools for solving defects in widgets when this is not the problem in government.

In my own proposal for Lean Teams I emphasize the same analysis of processes that Lean uses to determine the best way to do a set of processes. Lean teams are actually management teams and working level teams. TQM has failed in many instances in bureaucratic government especially with a strong government employee union. Any recommendation either TQM or Lean that gets its efficiency from reduced personnel has little chance of being implemented. This why I advocate the major reform of government with the replacement of the bureaucratic form of organization with Management Steering teams and Functional teams. Both using Lean at the multi process high level and at the Functional team level in the work place.

The best people to do an analysis of processes is the employees who actually do the work whether this is a high level skilled team or employees just loading trucks it is up to the team to define the best practices for doing the job. I propose that this be done by the team on a large Process Flow Chart on a conference room wall. Once this is done a budget analyst can cost-out the savings between the old method and the new method and identify the staffing and other budget costs associated with the new method. Once this is done the budget including the staffing is established for this set of processes. I call this method Work Measurement where this not done i have found that over staffing can be as much as 10%.

Too often Lean is seen only as tool that top management uses for the development of high level processes but for day to day continuous improvement Toyota still uses the TQM teams to implement Lean at the work place level.
Governing Magazine The Promise of Going ‘Lean’

Donald Rumsfeld provides us with a good example of what I call the amateur top down approach from my articles 92, 104 and 146. The method is a kind of knee jerk approach. You know that the organization is overstaffed and you guess at how many employees you can remove without shutting down operations. Note that this method does not provide a way of finding out where and the over staffing occurs and by how many personnel. This method generally involves across the board cuts which punishes the best managed areas by cutting into their capability to provide services and has no effect on real overstaffed areas. This is also one of the best incentives to overstaff a bureaucratic organization.

“Five Ways to Downsize Government” By: Donald H. Rumsfeld
Published In: Heartland Perspectives Publication Date: August 4, 1995
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Eliminate Bureaucracy
Congress should move swiftly to cut management and get personnel costs under control. It is guaranteed that there are more managers and more staff in the federal government than are needed. In less than seven months, Scott Paper Company eliminated 11,200 people, one-third of its workforce. The company cut 71 percent of the headquarters staff, 50 percent of management, and 20 percent of the hourly employees. If the national government is as overstaffed as was Scott Paper, some 140,000 government managers could be cut immediately, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

The Secret Approach to Downsizing

I call this the secret approach because it is used secretly by major downsizing Management Consulting firms among them a firm which I was trained by, Alexander Proudfoot of Chicago. The primary method they use is called Short Interval Scheduling. After time-studying both shop and office functions (Work Measurement) a reporting system called Short Interval Scheduling is implemented. The Short Interval Scheduling reports made to management guarantees that production and services will not be interrupted and if there is a problem management will know about it within a few hours. In some of my articles I have called this method the Cost and Schedule approach. See my Article 12.

The following is a detailed example of my personal experience using Alexander Proudfoot techniques. This is an example is of a company wide downsizing operation made by Alexander Proudfoot. The client company was Clark Equipment at the Battle Creek, Michigan plant. Clark Equipment is a well-known forklift manufacturer. The company was under heavy competition from Japanese competitors using TQM and had to resort to extreme measures to survive. My assignment was in the Production Control Department and was to analyze the function, “servicing the manufacturing assembly line”. Several forklift drivers were involved in the transporting of parts on a timely basis to the manufacturing areas either to and from individual milling machines or directly to the assembly line of a particular forklift product.

My approach was to time study all the activities necessary to the servicing of the forklift production line. I followed and timed each forklift driver into the storage yards and counted the number of parts loaded on each pallet for each trip making sure that I had missed nothing. The number of parts to be loaded on the pallets was specified by the Production Control Planning System. My job was to be sure that the pallets were fully loaded or contained all of the parts required. At the assembly line the pallets of parts were placed near the assembly line so that they could be easily moved to the assembly line worker as needed. The study of the manufacturing areas took me about two weeks.

Now let’s do the data analysis. I needed to determine what “Product” was being produced by the Function. This appears to be difficult but what you must do is to break down all of the processes observed and find its smallest element. In other words this element or a multiple of it can be found in all the processes being performed in doing this function. Since all processes involved a forklift I found that the shortest process was when a forklift moved a pallet from its dropped location near the assembly line to the assembly line. I called this process a “forklift move” and the name of the element became “Move”, which I determined to be one minute long. This was very convenient because the entire analysis was done in minutes. If the Product “Move” had been five minutes long you would simply divide the total time for each process by five to get the number of move elements. Since each pallet moved had parts on it for more than one forklift and since I had counted and recorded the number of parts on all of the pallets we can analyze each pallet to determine if more than one part is required for each forklift. Adding the total time for the forklift driver to go to the storage area count the number of parts needed put them on a particular pallet and bring the pallet to the assembly area gives us the time to the drop-off place near the assembly line. To that we add the one minute required for a second forklift driver to bring the pallet from the staging area to the assembly line worker. We divide this total time by the number of parts moved (adjusted for the number of parts required per forklift). This process is repeated for all the pallets. When added together we know the total time spent in servicing this particular forklift product’s production line.

We cannot assume that all work will be performed at the standard 100% rate so we assume the actual rate is closer to 75% for staffing which adds 25% more time to the total. Multiplying this total adjusted time to service one forklift product by the current production rate (forklifts per month) gives us the adjusted time spent by all the forklift drivers for the month. When we convert the time in minutes to hours and divide this by the standard hours worked per month by a forklift driver we arrive at the total number of forklift drivers required at this particular production rate.
Given the total adjusted time to service one forklift product we can calculate Staffing levels for any manufacturing rate. It was also determined that since all the forklift products contained nearly the same number of parts the analysis could be used for all of the companies forklift products made on this particular production line.

Now let’s review the actual results of this analysis. During the study I stayed focused on the processes being performed and the time actually being spent. But since the analysis was being done in the cold of winter I noticed that every time I stopped by one of the four or five warming huts five or six people would get up and leave. Since I had no idea what these people were supposed to be doing I paid little attention to them. The results were shocking to the Clark Company senior management when they discovered that the actual number of employees required could be reduced by sixty a more than 50% reduction. The annual savings adjusted for today’s dollars amounted to more than one million dollars. If I had not conducted the study myself I probably would not have believed the results. After the removal of the redundant employees the Short interval Scheduling reporting was implemented.

So what’s wrong with this method of downsizing? Nothing if the plant is in danger of shutting its doors and quick solution must be had. But the method destroys employee morale by such severe measures and may create a permanent problem with unions resulting in ill will lasting for years. The Short Interval Scheduling reporting system forcibly maintains employee productivity. The costs are high in that there is little or no employee innovation for continuous improvement to the work methods. Note that this approach is used by Alexander Proudfoot through out the plant and in the office areas. It’s a real killer for morale and employee innovation. This is a very expensive operation because Management Consultants receive a substantial fee for their efforts.

The Lean and Work Measurement Method

The objective of the amateur method was simply to reduce personnel mostly likely to meet a short fall in the budget. The objective of the Management Consulting secret method is simply to downsize to known level determined by Work Measurement and to maintain production and service levels using the Short Interval Scheduling reporting system.

The objective of the Lean and Work Measurement method is to replace the 19th century bureaucratic structure found in industry and government with a downsized streamlined 21st century organization with fewer levels of management that encourages innovation by empowering both management and employees. To do this I recommend the adoption and use of the best techniques from business and government.

Bureaucratic Organizations have a reputation for resisting change but it is difficult for them to reject a method that brings innovation to the organization. That method adapted from industry is Lean. Value Stream Mapping is the primary useful Lean tool in government. Value stream mapping is a lean manufacturing technique used to analyze the flow of materials and information to bring a product or service to a consumer. Lean brings innovation to high level cross functional processes and to lower level functions. The low level Lean Teams meet once a week to discuss how to improve the processes that they use in their daily work. Their activities bring continuous improvement to the methods used in doing their job. A Lean Team objective is to study their job Function by making a Process Flow Chart of the current job processes followed by a second Process Flow Chart of the improved method. A budget analyst costs out the new method to determine the cost savings and the Team presents these savings to top management of the Organization. See my Article 137. Role of Lean Facilitator and Budget Analyst.

Top management’s role is to encourage the implementation of Lean both at the high and at the functional level. They should send representatives to Team meetings showing complete management support. Each functional Lean Team elects it own leader to chair the meetings and over see the making of the Process Flow Charts. The Top Management must support the Lean implementation or they should be replaced.

The Process Flow Charts provide a record of the costs associated with each process. If a process were to be eliminated all of its costs are also eliminated. A Process Flow Chart is done for each Function and if a Function were to be removed all of its budget will also be removed.
What you have now is the real budget for doing the Functions not that phony bloated budget that the Organization presents each year. True, you must add in the cost of managing the Organization but now for the first time you know what that cost is. This is a bottom-up budget with actual costs for doing the work known. All other costs are for management and fluff (which can be significant). In my experience in industry most unmeasured office areas are over staffed by 10% or more.

Once you know what the real costs are for doing the Organization’s work and top management is working closely with the Teams the reform process can begin. First the functional Team leaders become the Functional Management of the Organization. Second most of the mid management levels between the Functional management and top management become redundant. Top management now assumes the role of a Steering Management Team. Some but not all of mid management may become part of the Steering Management Team. Steering Management has the role of guiding and steering the organization while Functional Management deals with the day to day operation of the Organization’s 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’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 organization’s budget. This method requires little investment by the organization by redirecting training efforts to this implementation. See my articles: 103,104,106,119,132,135 and 137.

Lawrence Rosier’s most significant achievement was the proposal and acceptance by Sanford McDonnell CEO of McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1983 of a modification to the company’s Quality of Work Life (QWL) implementation. The modification replaced the existing bureaucratic organization with a two tier organization consisting of Steering Management and Functional Management for the McDonnell Douglas Missile Systems Co. This management style was enthusiastically received by employees and was used successfully for over ten years until the sale of the company to Boeing in the late 1990’s. In 2005 he came up with his method of building on to the QWL implementation by replacing it with Lean and using Process Flow Charts to determine Work Measurement and a Staffing Base necessary for downsizing. The QWL team’s name was unfortunately confusing in 1983 has been renamed the Lean Team which better describes what they actually do.

In late June, with the support of Mayor Franklin, the city council voted 8-7 to increase city property taxes by more than 40 percent. In light of this tax hike, officials chose to discontinue the reduced work schedule.The furlough programs were mostly ended at the beginning of July, and Atlanta’s employees are back to the old nine-to-five.

Let’s take another look at what is going on here city employees working 36 hours per week still produce the same as when they worked 40 hours per week. This proves that the city is at least over staffed by 10%. I have stated in numerous articles that where Work Measurement is not used there exists at least 10% over staffing. But since the city of Atlanta does not do Work Measurement over staffing is most likely more than 10%.

My recommendations for Mayor Franklin is to continue the 36 hour work week, repeal the 40% increase in city property taxes and implement the following reforms to the city of Atlanta government.

I recommend two major reform initiatives one is the streamlining of service to the public. You can reduce their number of offices by the implantation of a Customer Relations Management 311 telephone portal and give 24/7 service to the public. Read how Hampton Virginia did this in my Article 101. The Hampton Virginia Innovation Story and Article 154. Streamlining Iowa Boards and Commissions Using Lean and More. See also other articles: 102 and 141.

The objective of the second reform is to replace the 19th century bureaucratic structure of the Atlanta city government with a downsized streamlined 21st century organization with fewer levels of management that encourages innovation by empowering both management and employees. This method requires little investment by the city but the redirecting of training efforts for the implementation of Lean Teams. The method uses Work Measurement to establish a staffing base for the city’s functions. See details of how to do this in my articles: 103,104,106,119,132,135 and 137.

Example Step 1. State Centralized Pubic Service Portal
For example the Government Reform Committee has managed to consolidate more than one hundred Commissions and Agencies into fifty. But there is a problem all those Commissions and Agencies were originally separated so that the public could easily find the office providing the service they needed. The solution is to build a Customer Relations Management (CRM) state telephone portal where the public can call a 311 number (similar to a 911 call) to get the services they need. A customer call is answered by a call taker, logged-in, then directed to one of several expertise areas for service. Each expertise call taker is specially trained for giving service to some part of the fifty Commissions and Agencies. The call takers are assisted by a customer log-in Relational Database (RD) and several Frequently Asked Question RDs. The FAQs with answers are collected from each Commission and Agency and loaded into the FAQ RDs. The CRM gives 24/7 service to the public while reducing the number of employees answering service phones by more than one hundred. See Articles: 101, 102 and 141.

Example Step 2. State Centralized Government Services
The idea for states is to combine all government support services into a centralized state Shared Services Department (SSD). Within the SSD organization is: Purchasing, Information Technology, Janitorial Services, Waste Management, Travel and expense, and others. The RDs that support the services should eventually be developed as a part of a state Centralized IT Data Center as in Example Step 5. See also Article 142.

Example Step 3. Decision for Major State Government Reform or Downsizing by Lay-offs
The governor must decide with his staff and the Government reform Committee whether or not to pursue major state government reform or resort to the standard method of downsizing by layoffs. Announcing that layoffs are coming can cause a number of problems. Personnel that know that layoffs are coming may perform poorly on the job while others with special skills may seek employment elsewhere. And another big problem the state does know where to make the cuts. These problems all lead to poor service to the public. Even employee furloughs cause interruptions in public services. See Article 146.

Should the decision be made for major state government reform the following steps are best taken:

Example Step 4. Implement Total Quality Management
Announce publicly the new direction of the state government to form Total Quality Management Teams and support this with a new state employee policy statement.

Example of a state employee policy statement:
Our dedication to principles of simplicity, innovation, and public trust has made us one of the most forward looking states in the nation. We are committed to achieving public service leadership by living our values and embracing strong principles.

Teamwork and Synergy:
We achieve synergy through the skills and ideas of all participants. Through collaboration, we strive for win/win solutions to issues and problems. Personal success is realized through team achievements.
See Articles 116.

I have recommended that reforms begin with the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM). This reform brings a positive cultural change to the organization. Employees become members of Work Improvement Teams (eventually self directed teams) and are motivated by empowering them to improve their jobs through innovation. By bringing innovation and continuous improvement to the government’s processes the state will save $ millions through increased efficiency in the future. The reform amounts to a win win situation for government union employees as well as the tax payers of the state by employee empowerment and by ending bureaucratic waste.

The implementation of TQM is followed by the use of Work Measurement to set staffing levels using Process Flow Charts. And this is followed by replacing the current organization with a two tier form of government based on Steering Management and Functional management. See my articles 103, 104, 132, 135, 136, 137 and 146.

Example Step 5. Managing State Resources by a state IT Centralized Data Center
Most states have been developing or purchasing stand alone application programs which store their own data internally. When it becomes necessary to link one application with another a special linking program has to be developed so that an application program can share data with another. This obsolete system is more costly to maintain than a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) using SQL (Structured Query Language). A RDMS has a different architecture, an application program does not store its data within itself but rather stores its data in separate relational databases (RDs). All application programs in the system can access any of the relational databases (RDs) as it needs data for running its application. This means that the amount of stored data in a RDBMS is significantly less since it is not duplicated over and over as it is in the old application programs.

This step obviously requires significant funding but the returns far out weight the investment. Note I suggested that the RDBMS be developed by one or more state IT departments, funded by the Federal Government and given to the states to facilitate a complete integrated system. The Federal Government’s Dept. of Homeland Security could tap into the system for a national driver’s license database.
See Articles 84, 120, 138, 143 144 and 145.

Budget cuts test state personnel policies
By Christine Vestal, Stateline.org Staff Writer August 27, 2009

Forced to dramatically cut payrolls, some states are finding low-cost ways to boost employee morale, even as they struggle to maintain basic human resource functions such as training, recruiting, hiring and regular performance reviews.

In 2009, more than 800,000 state employees were affected by budget cuts – mostly through unpaid days off, or furloughs. Hundreds of workers were laid off and thousands of positions were left unfilled, putting additional stress on those left behind. For the fiscal year that began July 1, states already have announced payroll cuts affecting at least a million workers and the numbers are expected to spiral even higher.
Despite these pressures, the Pew Center on the States is urging state policymakers to find creative ways to ramp up proven personnel practices so that shrinking state workforces have the support they need to continue to deliver quality government services.

Comments by Lawrence Rosier
The key message is that states do not know where to make cuts in personnel and still maintain government services. The reason they do not know is that they have not implemented Work Measurement in their government organizations. Once Work Measurement has been implemented they will know what Departments and Agencies are over staffed and how many personnel are needed to maintain government services. This is where precision cuts have an advantage over across the board cuts. Across the board cuts harms areas where government services are under staffed and has little to no effect on other bloated areas of the bureaucracy.

I have recommended that reforms begin with the implementation of Lean Teams. This reform brings a positive cultural change to the organization. There is a high level management Lean Team which focuses its studies on the high level processes of the organization and low level functional Lean Teams. Employees become members of Lean Teams (eventually self directed teams) and are motivated by empowering them to improve their jobs through innovation. By bringing innovation and continuous improvement to the government’s processes the state will save $ millions through increased efficiency both now and in the future. The reform amounts to a win win situation for government union employees as well as the tax payers of the state by employee empowerment and by ending bureaucratic waste. This is followed by the use of Work Measurement to set staffing levels using Process Flow Charts. And this is followed by replacing the current organization with a two tier form of government based on Steering Management and Functional management. See my articles 103, 104, 106, 147,148, 149, 151 and 152.

More and more people are using the internet query methods made popular by Google and others allowing the easy search of Relational Databases throughout the world. They will demand that IT Managers stop this insane practice of continuing the development of obsolete computer systems. The failure to manage state resources in all areas but especially in welfare and Medicaid is costing states $billions. Most state computer systems are incredibly obsolete with information silos, duplicated data and inability to share information leaving the state vulnerable to open fraud.

Systems integration is achieved when separate databases for storing data are created using the Structured Query Language (SQL) database language. This allows IBM, Digital Equipment and other Vendors using SQL to access the databases. The process works this way when an application program needs to retrieve or store data it uses an SQL request to find data or store data it needs in separate relational databases. This is the similar to the relational database structure used by Google on the Internet and allows queries to be made easily without having to write a program for the query.

Most of the public including government and academics still are not aware of the problem. They seam to be unaware that the programming skills used in the obsolete systems are no longer needed for the new RDMS. The following is one example where academics are concerned about the loss of competent IT workers when the real problem is how to get competent RDMS workers and what to do with obsolete IT workers. In short “they just don’t get it”.

Dusty Data By Katherine Barrett & Richard Greene
Governing Magazine August 20, 2009
How to hang on to IT staff? Very few states, counties or cities want competent IT workers to leave their jobs. Although the recession may have led to some loosening of the job market, once a technology expert is familiar with the workings of a particular entity, she’s worth her weight in gold-sheathed silicon. Enter the University of Arkansas, where professors Margaret Reid and Myria Allen, along with colleagues at Baylor University and Florida State University, have some answers. In a presentation they’ve put together, the academics offer some keys to hanging on to these cherished employees. Among their suggestions: Help employees avoid becoming exhausted from overwork; provide an environment that is conducive to continual learning and change; make sure they work for knowledgeable managers; and provide the chance to receive cross-training. The absence of these elements is responsible for a big chunk of IT turnover.

So why is a revolution required to get the new RDMS? The revolution is in the State IT Departments after all you can not expect someone worth their weight in gold-sheathed silicon to give up their powerful knowledge for a new system that makes them redundant.

What is needed is for one state to develop or lead the development of the nearly 50 application programs and 30 relational databases to run the state’s Centralized IT Systems. And since the new software can be universally used on many different computer vendor platforms once it is developed it can be replicated on most other state computer platforms. I have recommended that the federal government pay for the development of this state computer system and then make it freely available to all states for their implementation. See my articles 120, 138, 143 and 144.

First example: in the obsolete system a resident of a state can have his name and address stored in every application’s data that he has come in contact with. That is in: the state vehicle records, the state income tax records, the voter registration records, unemployment records, state higher education records, criminal justice system records, and others. If the person moves to a new address all of these records are obsolete and need to be updated. This where the cost of maintaining the obsolete systems is much more than the single address data found in the new (RDBMS).

The logic of what should go into a State Centralized Data Center’s new relational databases is not always straight forward. But for this example the first relational database (RD) created I would name the “Resident Household RD”. This RD would contain the unique identifiers of a resident of the state: the name, the address, the age, a physical description (height, hair color), driver’s license, social security number, a picture and the finger prints of the person. If the person is not a US citizen the country of origin should be noted. All the state’s application programs when seeking the name and address of a resident would query this RD first to retrieve the data.

Second example: the state Voter Registration application program would query the Resident Household RD first when updating a resident’s voting status. The voting status of the resident would then be processed in the state’s Voter Registration’s application program and stored under the residents name in the state “Voter Registration RD”. Note that this is one of the best opportunities to process a change of address along with the annual driver’s license renewal application.

Third example: a resident applying for Medicaid assistance would need to identify himself by first filling out an application in a state Medicaid office. If the applicant should supply any piece of information on their application form that is different from that in the Resident Household RD they could be arrested for attempted fraud. If the interview is done on the phone to the state Customer Relations Management service and the applicant is suspected of committing fraud. The applicant should be directed to the nearest state office to fill out an application form and upon the submission of the false information be arrested on the spot. If the applicant submits a valid request the information is entered into the Medicaid application program, processed and saved to the Medicaid RD.

Fourth example: a resident applying to Homeland Security for disaster aid could be quickly identified by accessing the Resident Household RD. If the applicant submits a valid request the information is entered into the Homeland Security application program processed and saved to the Homeland Security RD. Disaster aid could be awarded in some cases on the spot rather than six months later.

Note that in each example the application program is completely separated from the RD. This system is much more cost effective not only because the data storage is smaller but also because the application programs can be run on any vendor computer and the computer can be upgraded with out having to rewrite the application or the RD software.
So why don’t all the states use the RDMS? Cost is the reason, none of the current application programs and their attached databases can be used they must be scrapped and replaced by the new system.

In 2005 the Federal Government i.e. Homeland Security put an unfunded mandate requirement on the states to comply with the Real ID system by linking each state’s driver’s License databases into a nation wide system. This initiative has failed because each state has its own unique proprietary Drivers License application programs resulting in a virtual impossibility to link these to a Federal system. With the Resident Household RD implementations in each state the Real ID initiative becomes a possibility. But this is only one part of a state’s RDMS. This is why I have recommended that the Federal Government pay for the development of all of the new state Application Programs and RDs. I am aware of two states Washington and Colorado that are interested in the development of a Centralized RDBMS. They should combine their efforts with funding from the Federal Government in the development of a Centralized RDBMS which could then be made available to the rest of the states. Each state would implement the new systems by bringing up the new application programs and RDs on their new updated computers in a Centralized Data Center facility. The data from the old systems would then be copied into the new RDs and after all tests are completed the old system is then shut down.

See the following articles:
Article 46. Why some Computer System Implementations Fail.
Article 84. The Failure to Manage State Resources due to Obsolete Computer System
Article 102. Government Reform of California Agencies and Commissions
Article 106. Where do the Government Reform Savings Come From?
Article 118. Examples of Cooperative Innovation
Article 119. Not Just Another Grass Roots Movement to Reform Government
Article 120. Collaborative Innovation between States and Federal Government
Article 138. State Information Technology Centralized Data Centers
Article 142. Huge Savings from State Centralized Services

The idea for states is to combine all support services into a centralized state Shared Services Department (SSD). Within the SSD organization is: Purchasing, Information Technology, Janitorial Services, Waste Management, Travel and expense, and others.

One way that Boeing’s SSG improves the bottom line is through economies of scale, such as the leverage it has in purchasing of support equipment and supplies. That extensive list ranges from office supplies and computers to janitorial services, tools and safety glasses. By establishing standards and consolidating purchasing contracts SSG saved Boeing more than $750 million in 2007. The improvement in the quality of its support services is one of its goals. An approach by SSG is the use of a value stream mapping technique to gain end user perspectives and make improvement to its processes.
SSG uses Lean + tools through-out its organization to achieve productivity and total cost improvements.

To Gain more insight on Lean + I recommend the following explanation and a list of Lean + tools at:
Throughput Solutions Lean Manufacturing website: http://www.tpslean.com.

From the Throughput Solutions website:
Self-Directed Work Teams
Through the natural evolution of the Lean work environment, associates begin to work more as interdependent teams in order to accomplish area and company goals. When this begins, it is time to support the transition to a self-directed workforce, capable of managing their own areas with greatly reduced supervision and oversight. Self-Directed Work Teams, to a large degree, voluntarily interact with internal customers and suppliers to improve area effectiveness and effectively deal with area issues.
Implementation: Once you’re ready to begin formalizing Self-Directed Work Teams, we take eligible teams through a series of team-building exercises geared toward increasing trust, cooperation, communication, and responsibility for self and others. This is a truly incredible and powerful process that results in personal and group change to allow for a very rapid, but consistent evolution of the team.

Teams quickly learn to function at a basic level, determining simple things like who reorders consumables, how to adjust schedules, and resolving minor area issues. Later, team development may include providing input on hiring, discipline, advanced area troubleshooting, and production scheduling (within the area). Effective self-directed work teams yield highly competent and capable employees with a genuine investment in area and company success.

The Self Directed Work Teams are the same as my recommended Work Improvement Teams (WIT). To understand how these teams are to be used let’s examine Purchasing as an example.

The first thing to do is to break Purchasing into its logical functions. The purchasing of tools and supplies appears to be a logical function because the processes are different from the purchase of personal computers which is another function. Similar items may use the same processes as that used for computers such as copying machines and printers. The point is that each function has a unique set of processes and these determine what a function is, not what is being purchased. Although the Lean + Tools should be used where they apply I recommend Process Flow Charts for determining the function’s staffing base.

The self directed work team follows my recommendation for the elected WIT leaders to take over the management of the Function. Along with my further recommendation for Steering Management.
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.

All the functions found in a centralized state Shared Services Department (SSD) should be dealt with in a similar manor like in the above Purchasing example.

See the following articles:
Article 21. Centralized Purchasing- The Best Way to Balance State Budgets
Article 22. Functional Restructuring of State Government rather than Departmental Restructuring.
Article 28. Making Centralized Purchasing Work using Aggressive Negotiation
Article 46. Why some Computer System Implementations Fail.
Article 47. Changing the Workplace Environment to get Innovation.
Article 49. Practices that Encourage Teamwork and Continuous Improvement.
Article 50. Implementing Work Improvement Teams With Government Employee Unions.
Article 101. The Hampton Virginia Innovation Story
Article 102. Government Reform of California Agencies and Commissions
Article 103. Reforming Bureaucratic Government the Subtle way by Bringing Innovation to Government
Article 104. Down Sizing State Government the Easy and Safe Way
Article 106. Where do the Government Reform Savings Come From?
Article 137. Role of TQM Facilitator and Budget Analyst
Article 138. State Information Technology Centralized Data Centers

From The Olympian August 4, 2009
Rep. Reuven Carlyle, a Seattle Democrat and software entrepreneur, says the state is making a mistake with the data-center portion of the project, which accounts for $180 million of the $255 million project cost. Carlyle said it ignores the biggest problem, the state’s aging pieces of information technology that do not have the ability to talk to each other.

Carlyle is correct if this project does not upgrade the states information technology (computers and software) allowing for the ability to talk to each other then this project is one huge boondoggle. The answer is in making computers and software independent. Software should be easily integrated with other software and able to run on any off-the-shelf computer. This allows for the flexibility of upgrading to a newer faster computer from any supplier without having to rewrite all of the software which runs on the current computer.

The Problem and a Solution:
Most states have been developing or purchasing stand alone application programs which store their own data internally. When it becomes necessary to link one application with another a special linking program has to be developed so that an application program can share data with another. This obsolete system is more costly to maintain than a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) using SQL (Structured Query Language). A RDMS has a different architecture, an application program does not store its data within itself but rather stores its data in separate relational databases (RDs). All application programs in the system can access any of the relational databases (RDs) as it needs data for running its application. This means that the amount of stored data in a RDBMS is significantly less since it is not duplicated over and over as it is in the old application programs. If the state of Washington is not using the above architecture or one of similar capability then it is indeed making a $180 million mistake.

Since this software can be universally used on many different computer platforms once it is developed it can be transported to any state computer platform. I have recommended that the federal government pay for the development of this state computer system and then make it freely available to all states for their implementation.

So why would the federal government want to do this?
Homeland Security is trying to find a way to link all of the state’s motor vehicle registration databases through a program called the Real ID. On the surface this appears to be nearly impossible task since nearly all of these databases have been developed as proprietary systems. The answer is to have the federal government fund the development of the software application program for a state motor vehicle Relational Database (RD) and give the software to each of the states. Each state would then load the new RD with the motor vehicle data from their old proprietary database. Since the state RDs are easily linked this would provide a giant national motor vehicle RD which could be easily accessed by law enforcement and Homeland Security. It is an easy step up to having the Federal Government fund a state to develop all the Application Programs and RDs of a completely integrated state computer system. The system could then be made available to all of the states. See my Article 120. Collaborative Innovation between States and Federal Government.

The roles of Facilitator and Budget Analyst play a very important part in the implementation of Lean Teams at the functional level. This role is different from the normal implementation of Lean which is at the management level of the organization. This implementation of Lean starts the same but ends in the transformation of the organization from the 19th century bureaucratic structure with a downsized streamlined 21st century organization with fewer levels of management that encourages innovation by empowering both management and employees.

The implementation of Lean Teams begins with an agency’s development of a new Mission Statement reflecting the change in the organizations goals and policies incorporating the Lean philosophy of process quality. This step should reflect the input of as many of the agency’s personnel as possible with open discussions of what the new direction of the agency should be. See the example of this in my Article 116.

The facilitators are selected from the current training staff and the budget analysts are selected from the budgeting staff. The facilitators and budget analysts are given special training in Lean and analysis of Flow Process Charts. When the training is completed a facilitator and a budget analyst are selected to work together as a team in identifying each of the organization’s Functions. A Function is a standalone budgeted entity which produces a product or performs some service for the public. Each Function will have its own Lean Team made up of all the personnel who work in the Function.

The facilitator will organize the Lean Team and provide training at the it’s weekly meetings. At the first meeting the Team will elect its own leader. Subsequent meetings will involve finding the best way to do the work of the Function through the development of a Process Flow Chart. The budget analyst will assist the Team in the development of the process Flow Chart. When the new and best method has been documented in the Process Flow Chart it is presented to the top management. This is an important step which signifies top management’s support and recognition of the Team’s accomplishments. Upon approval of the new method the Process Flow Chart is given over to the budget analyst to cost out the savings of the new method and to identify the proper staffing for the function. The budget analyst then documents the new method and its costs in a spread sheet which will provide input to the next budget.

It is important to understand what is actually happening in the agency during this process. First the top management must support the Lean implementation in the development of the new mission statement, the training of the facilitators and budget analysts and the organization and recognition of the Team’s accomplishments. Support from much of the rest of the organization’s personnel may be negative but this can be ignored for the time being. You can think of this process as the facilitator and budget analyst team reaching into the organization and pulling out (identifying) a function and its personnel. The key here is that the team interviews workers in the function to find out the names of those who actually work in the function. This saves some time later when personnel who find that they do not have a functional job may be assigned to a function. This is a little like musical chairs for those who do not work on a function may find themselves redundant.

At the same time when functions and their personnel are being identified the facilitator and budget analyst will meet once a week with top management to coordinate the implementation at the functional level.

The management level Lean Team is the beginning of what will eventually become the Steering Management Team and Functional teams become the Functional Management for each function.

All that remains now is to identify the support functions and their personnel who support the agency. Now is time to decide how to organize support organizations. Human Resources, Facilities, Information Technology and Purchasing should have only a single representative as a coordinator on the Steering Management Team. These functions should be centralized in state government.

Now we turn our attention to all those left in the organization those deemed as redundant. Under the current difficult budgeting time these personnel will be laid off. In better times they could be retrained for new jobs. In any case we now know what the proper staffing should be for each function and unless the work actually changes the staffing should not change. See my article 106. for the minimum savings for each state.

Please note the analysis of Process Flow Charts are not as straight forward as I have presented. The difficulty occurs when the amount time to do a process is the same or varies each time it is done. When the time is the same the method is easily calculated but when the process varies as most do, other special methods must be invoked.

Each of the function’s processes must be examined to determine which are varying and by how much. Those that vary no more than 10% should be averaged (from historical data) and treated the same as a non-varying function. But if the function varies significantly for example a process which varies as much as 100% involves decision making and should be approached as a decision making process. This involves breaking the decision making process down into parts those that are common repeatable decisions which can be assigned a time allowance and the part which is unpredictable. This smaller part of the decision is estimated and the total is summed for the proper staffing. The goal is to establish a staffing base for the Function’s budget. You should not make something difficult out of this process just because you are unable to get the exact number of hours required for the process. The reason is you are staffing with the work of a full time person. The establishment of a staffing base may sound difficult but I think that it is not beyond the capabilities of a budget analyst. See my articles 121 and 122.

See also the following Articles:
Article 19. Assumptions in work Measurement for Staffing
Article 20. Approaches for Different Types of Organizations
Article 21. Centralized Purchasing- The Best Way to Balance State Budgets
Article 22. Functional Restructuring of State Government rather than Departmental Restructuring.
Article 23. The Relationship between Needs, Functions, Funding Formulas, and Performance Budgeting
Article 24. Establishing a Funding Formula for Performance Budgeting.
Article 28. Making Centralized Purchasing Work using Aggressive Negotiation
Article 29. Rethinking Performance Budgeting
Article 30. Example of Current Versus Proposed Performance Budgeting
Article 32. How to Bring a Bureaucracy under Control
Article 42. Declaring War on Bureaucratic Complexity
Article 62. Enhanced Auditing a Tool for Government Reform
Article 64. Getting Efficient Government Through Enhanced Auditing
Article 103. Reforming Bureaucratic Government the Subtle way by Bringing Innovation to Government
Article 104. Down Sizing State Government the Easy and Safe Way
Article 106. Where do the Government Reform Savings Come From?
Article 113. Private Versus Public Budgeting Practices
Article 116. Private Industry Example of Lean Teams
Article 117. Overcoming Bureaucratic Resistance to Government Reform
Article 121. Setting Standards and developing a Staffing Base
Article 122. How to get Efficiency in Making Decisions

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.

How do we manage this process of governing and keep it simple?
First 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 Total Quality Management

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 Functional Management do to improve work tasks?
The main tool for starting this process is the implementation of Lean with its 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

The governors of Minnesota and Wisconsin still like to spar over their interstate sports rivalries, but the recession is pushing them to team up in delivering some basic state services to save taxpayers on both sides of their border up to $10 million to start.

In Minnesota, school districts already purchase equipment through the state or through one of nine regional cooperatives, first created in the 1970s. One, the Northwest Service Cooperative, for instance, works with 43 school districts and organizes food programs, negotiates contracts for office supplies, trains local school staffers on how to comply with federal workplace-safety laws and sells 54,000 health insurance contracts a year.

For more information see my articles:
Article 21. Centralized Purchasing- The Best Way to Balance State Budgets and Article 28. Centralized Purchasing- Making Centralized Purchasing Work using Aggressive Negotiation.
For even more purchasing clout try joining a national purchasing organization see:
UScommunities.

Begin by forming a variation of the Lean Team. I would call it by a more relevant name such as Classroom Quality Team (CQT). Each curriculum area English, history life Sciences and others would have their own CQT. The CQT would meet as required more often at the start of the semester and maybe once a month later. The CQTs are qualified to determine their own curriculum eliminating the need for a curriculum coordinator. While we are doing this we may as well eliminate the paperwork that the coordinators do. We should keep the measures used for student progress they determine success and failure not only of the student but of the entire system. A Key element for maintaining teaching quality is the support given to inexperienced teachers through the CQT. Experienced teachers should submit their best lesson plans to the CQT for review and documentation as a standard set of lesson plans to be shared with new teachers. This solves a critical problem for new teachers who don’t have the time or the experience to develop their own lesson plans. The CQT would continually evaluate and improve their teaching methods in relation to student achievement.

Now let’s talk about parental involvement first I am not talking about parents who support school sports. This is good thing but most parents don’t get involved until they can be entertained. High school is too late even grade school is not soon enough. We know that learning starts at birth and maybe even before. We also know that the fastest learning for a child is in his brain development years from birth to two or three years old. This is the age where the parents critically affect the education of the child. If we are going to address TQM of education this is where we should begin. A Parents As Teachers organization is the minimum that should be done. This program and other early efforts is a critical part of TQM and must not be ignored. This all occurs before kindergarten. After students start grade school is the time to get tough on parents. Get them to pledge to shut off the TV for a couple of hours each evening and sit down with their kids for study time. There is no way that this activity should be avoided it will soon become a daily routine to be followed through high school.

The next critical area is in class sizes especially in the first two years of elementary school where students are learning to read. Individual attention to each student is vital to learning to read therefore there should not be more than a dozen students in each class.

The next area of effort should be in the teaching of students to write. The only way for students learn to write is to write. The problem is that an English teacher needs to read, correct mistakes and evaluate each paper a job not possible when it should occur on a daily basis. Reduced class size would help but a teacher’s aid may be of more help.

Open the school’s libraries and gyms on Saturdays and staff it with community volunteers. Open the school at night for Parent’s As Teachers meetings and Adult Education classes. Make the school the center of the community involvement in public education. Have the parents pledge to shut off the TV set for two hours of study time each night before school.

I am convinced that if we concentrate our education efforts in the above areas many of the later problems in high school will be solved.

For more information see the following:
Article 69. Ideas for Child Rearing that the State can Do
Article 107. Saving the Cost of Foreign Speaking Child Education
Article 111. Example of a Lean Team in the Classroom

The second key area for savings is in Work Measurement where the work performed by each Function is measured and standards set. The result is the known number of hours required to do each Function which also determines the staffing required. I use a general rule of thumb to define “over staffing” as 10% of the work force in all areas where work measurement is not done. I have also found that this over staffing number may be significantly higher than 10%. One of the main reasons for this is that work assignments are usually made to individual employees regardless of the actual time required to do the job. This means that one employee may have a task that occupies 90% and another just 30% of his time. These inequalities show up during the process of Work Measurement. This problem goes away when a Lean Team is assigned these tasks because the Team has responsibility for finding the best way to get the task completed with no time lost.

The third area where staffing is reduced is during the final Government Reform process of changing from a Bureaucratic hierarchically structured organization to a Steering Managed and Functional Managed two level organization. In this process all middle managers become redundant eliminating the Bureaucratic hierarchical structure of government.

If you have thought carefully about what you have just read you may have already guessed that over-staffing may be very significant. I offer this experience: in my first two weeks working for the Management Consulting firm Alexander Proudfoot of Chicago. While doing Work Measurement at a client company in Michigan their management was blown away by the discovery that 60 employees out of 110 were found by me to be redundant. This was in the Production Control area when at that time most companies measured only their production lines but not other areas of the plant. See my articles 103,104,105 and 113.

The savings from over staffing is in addition to savings from combining and streamlining government through implementation of centralized Relational Data Bases. They can eliminate much government red tape in the management of agency interface with the public. See my articles 101, 102, 118, 120 and 123.

Supplement:
The following is the minimum expected savings from my recommendations for each state based on state payroll data from the US census bureau.

Alabama $90,900,000
Alaska 22,730,000
Arizona 117,060,000
Arkansas 48,080,000
California 950,690,000
Colorado 102,980,000
Connecticut 85,790,000
Delaware 19,940,000
Florida 328,260,000
Georgia 170,400,000
Hawaii 28,790,000
Idaho 25,770,000
Illinois 259,020,000
Indiana 112,260,000
Iowa 64,850,000
Kansas 60,030,000
Kentucky 73,780,000
Louisiana 81,200,000
Maine 25,240,000
Maryland 132,100,000
Massachusetts 146,030,000
Michigan 198,640,000
Minnesota 112,630,000
Mississippi 54,130,000
Missouri 101,220,000
Montana 17,760,000
Nebraska 38,330,000
Nevada 49,390,000
New Hampshire 25,220,000
New Jersey 250,760,000
New Mexico 41,420,000
New York 569,110,000
North Carolina 181,290,000
North Dakota 13,680,000
Ohio 229,060,000
Oklahoma 65,110,000
Oregon 73,620,000
Pennsylvania 227,170,000
Rhode Island 23,910,000
South Carolina 79,000,000
South Dakota 13,060,000
Tennessee 104,000,000
Texas 449,690,000
Utah 46,190,000
Vermont 14,240,000
Virginia 162,330,000
Washington 149,470,000
West Virginia 30,300,000
Wisconsin 108,420,000
Wyoming 16,500,000

One of the first efforts is to develop an all inclusive Mission Statement. Mission statements are not easy to develop but the difficulty can be somewhat eased by developing a proposed list of accomplishments which the organization thinks it can achieve. Then try to boil these down into a single goal statement which includes all stake holders as well as the general public. Remember that volunteer workers can be a significant asset to the state. This is where the “role of state health care” is defined a necessary step given the limitation of state resources. Many states have differing roles especially in the area of Medicare Management.

This was the “inspiring” portion of the approach the next step is in bringing innovation in health care through Lean Teams which I would rename to something more relevant such as: Health Quality Teams (HQT). A facilitator trains and guides each HQT as it elects its own leader. The goal is to “empower” health care workers in each function to develop ways of improving the health care processes and raise the level of health care quality in their function.

The team should review the current processes used by the function. The best way to do this is to create a 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. 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 top management 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.

Note that there is a closer relationship developing between top management and the HQT functional teams. The empowerment of HQTs inspires them do more innovation and to continuously improve the function’s processes. The second phase of government reform begins by making the HQT leaders the leaders of Functional Management teams. Top management becomes the Steering Management team. The lower level managers at this point become redundant however some may be required as part of the Steering Management team. Steering Management has the role of guiding and steering the organization while Functional Management deals with the day to day operation of the 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.

The goal is to reduce bureaucracy by removing layers of management while putting more functional employees to work thus improving health services. The overall difficulty is in finding the best balance of choices for what should be done with what can be done with limited resources.
For more information see: Article 8. Work Place Continuous Improvement. Article 49. Practices that Encourage Teamwork and Continuous Improvement. ]]> http://managementconsultant.blogsome.com/2009/02/08/article-105-making-total-quality-management-work-in-health-care/feed/