Lean Government

Topic: Management Improvement

Making Government Work by Tom Vilsack via Panta Rei:

We redesigned the child welfare system to place greater focus on the complex and hard cases that people live out every day. We cut down paperwork so workers would have more time to spend helping children. That effort was part of our charter agency effort, which the Kennedy School at Harvard and the Ash Institute recently recognized as an Innovation of the Year award winner.

We committed ourselves to reconfiguring the way permitting and other processes worked in our government. By using Kaizen and other forward-thinking management techniques, we cut down the amount of time and staff used in the permitting process without sacrificing quality.

All of these efforts and results are outlined in our results website, at www.resultsiowa.org.

The Innovation Awards have long been a good source for learning about some of the good work done in government.

I am intrigued by what I see on the resultsiowa.org web site. I need to spend more time looking at it but at the very least they have put significant thought into their strategic priorities. That is important, and something rarely done well.

I was one of the founding board members on the ASQ Public Sector Network (now the ASQ Government Division). I also, created and have maintained the Public Sector Continuous Improvement web site for a decade. Some additional details on my background.

There have been many great efforts in the government, but still so much more needs to be done. Here are articles exploring what has been done:

• Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin by William G. Hunter, Jan O'Neill, and Carol Wallen
• Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency by March Laree Jacques
• Quality in the Community: One City's Experience
  by George Box, Laurel W. Joiner, Sue Rohan and F. Joseph Sensenbrenner
• Quality Best Practices in Government by Thomas J. Mosgaller
• "Quality Comes to City Hall," Joseph Sensenbrenner. The former mayor of Madison reports on his experience. HBR, March 1991, reprint number 91208.

Ok, so I am biased. My father, Bill Hunter, was a significant part of the success in Madison, Wisconsin. And I worked with Gerald Suarez at the White House Military Office (after the article above was written). Well it is my blog, so I get to include what I think is most worth including. There is a great deal of great work being done in government.

I was skeptical reading Governor Vilsack's statement:

I don't believe in platitudes. I believe in making sure that government works and fulfills its promises to our communities.

Who admits they believe in platitudes? Unfortunately many politicians say they want do improve the management of government, but few actually follow through on those statements. The web site indicates he may be serious. I am intrigued enough to spend some time seeing what they are up to in Iowa.

John Hunter