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The Indiana State Budget Committee meets this Friday (October 23, 2009) with the FSSA Secretary in the wake of the cancellation of the IBM contract.  Madam Secretary will have the opportunity to disclose FSSA’s hybrid plan.  As a critic of the way government runs in this country there are certain questions I would like to see answered that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Most of the focus has been on the ACS contract.  The reality is even before the Daniels administration, Indiana state government was highly outsourced.  This is nothing new so whether Democrat or Republican outsourcing and/or privatization is not a partisan issue.  What I am more concerned with is . . . are we learning about provisioning services to people in our State that provides good service to our neediest families/individuals and lower costs to taxpayers?

The pursuit of service that is good and achieving lower costs is not a zero-sum game as most people seem to think.  In fact, government management cannot achieve lower costs without good service.  This is a counter-intuitive truth that must be adopted in government at any level.

 So, Madam Secretary here are some questions that would be good for us to know the answers to in Indiana:

  1. Have you personally gotten knowledge about the process that welfare recipients have to go through to get services?  Reason for ?:  Reports and reporting is not enough.  An executive must go to the work to understand the “what and why” of current performance.  This cannot be delegated to a contractor or employee of the State.  Plans not based on knowledge are just hopes, dreams and conjecture.
  2. What are the High-Frequency Value Demands that applicants are giving to the State?  Reason for ?:  If the State understands the demands from applicants they can design a training program for state workers around the high-frequency demands.  This also will help prioritizing which demands need to run smoothly. 
  3. What is the failure demand percentage of all contacts at the point of transaction?  Reason for ?:  Meeting the federal requirements is not enough.  An important metric for government is to determine how many contacts are failure (the failure to do something or do something right for an applicant).  My guess is that this number is between 60-90% of all demands from an applicant or a legislator, special interest group, guardian, etc. on behalf of the applicant. 
  4.  What are the end-to-end measures derived from applicant purpose?  Reason for ?:  Spending time getting knowledge allows the State to understand what matters to applicants.  A timely response is most likely one of them, how long does it take today and how predictable is that measure.  There will be other important measures derived from what matters to applicants.  It is important to understand that costs are not from economies of scale, but economies of flow.
  5. Is the State or the State’s vendors using targets and incentives with workers?  Reason for ?:  Targets become the defacto purpose as workers get focused on the target (usually with incentive) rather than serving the customer (applicant in this case).  This typically is a source for failure demand (described above), waste and sub-optimization.

If or when government management begins to understand that improving the design and management of work is the issue, we can move on to saving taxpayers money.  I am not talking about a little, but a lot.  Our thinking around the design and management of work must transcend politics and be the foundation to improving service and lowering costs.

Being good stewards of the State’s money means constantly uncovering better ways to think about the provisioning of services and even achieving public sector innovation.  Unfortunately, the prevailing thinking in US government and business is made up of command and control thinking.  We can do better than this.

Leave me a comment. . . share your opinion!  Click on comments below.

For more on the public sector and systems thinking go to www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps service executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.