The Open Government Dialogue

With little fanfare, the While House announced that 29 agencies launched their Open Government weblinks on schedule (per an OMB directive), on Saturday, February 6^th.   Virtually all of them also invited citizens to participate in a dialogue on how they could improve their approaches to transparency, participation, collaboration, and innovation.  These dialogues will be open until March 19.  Afterwards, the insights will be summarized and used by agencies to help craft their OMB-required Open Government Plans that are due on April 7^th.

This simultaneous open dialogue by two dozen agencies is unheard of.  According to GSA’s Dave McClure, agencies have more than 500 moderators participating in the event.  There have been several bloggers commenting on the effort:

• The Sunlight Foundation’s Jake Brewer advocates a “National Transparency Campaign” and offers five guiding principles (such as “act like a movement,” and “listen and be authentic”).
• Mark Drapeau cited concerns that the initiative was a symptom of “check-box government” where the emphasis is on compliance with directives, not actual engaging, or a real strategy for doing so.
• And Tim Bonnemann thoughtfully identifies “Ten Things to Monitor As Agencies Invite Input On Open Government Plans,” including expectation management, community ground rules, and active involvement by the agency in engaging in discussions.

Being a former GAO auditor, I wanted to see for myself.  So I visited each of the 29 weblinks today.  What did I find?

The award for the most ironic Open Government link was the one for the Office of Personnel Management.  Its site said, simply, the government s “Closed” in a big, red box.   Okay, so government isn’t so open after all . . .  it is a Snow Day in Washington, DC!

Overall, there have been very few comments posted.  The sites with the most postings — such as Commerce and Defense – had prominently posted a banner or header inviting visitors to “share your ideas.”  Those with few or no comments as of today – like Education and the US Agency for International Development –  had buried their invitation further down on their Open Government webpage.

The dialogue platform, IdeaScale, was made available to agencies for free by the General Services Administration.  It was also “pre-certified” to be Section 508 compliant, and compliant with other federal requirements, so most agencies chose to use the platform.  It allows visitors to agencies across the government to use a common platform and each agency offered largely the same comment topic categories (transparency, participation, etc.).  However, you can’t register once.  You have to re-register with each agency.

Some agencies have moderators with names (such as Commerce).  Most agencies’ moderators are anonymous.  But the visitors are largely not anonymous, since they have to register with a name.

Some interesting visits:

• NASA’s site has a countdown clock until March 19^th,  including minutes and seconds left.  Will there be liftoff?!
• Social Security’s site offers a set of ground rules for participation that looks like the license for installing a software product: “I have read and agreed to these terms of participation.”  It looks ominous!
• Labor has a nice, brief “standards of behavior” page before you go to the IdeaScale site.  NASA’s site has one too, but it seems like you have to scroll forever to find the button to go to the IdeaScale site.
• Some agencies – like Defense and Labor – had a “Share Your Ideas” link to the IdeaScale site, but didn’t say what they wanted visitors to share thoughts on.  Others, like State, provided some brief narrative of what citizens were encouraged to help them think through.
• USDA’s site seems different than the others. It offers the option for visitors to discuss ideas generated by the department, or to post and share your own ideas.  It provides a useful context for contributing and offers a tag cloud of most discussed topics.

The real challenge, though, will be getting participation.  Who are agencies’ target audiences that they want to participate (constructively)?  Will the teabaggers know that IRS is in Treasury?  Will the “Obama Birthers” know that immigration is in Homeland Security?  Will the marijuana legalizers know that the DEA and FBI are in Justice?  Only the UFO believers will be sure to go to the right place – NASA!

Leaders Speak – A Conversation on Human Service Delivery in New York City

We are introducing a Special Edition of The Business of Government Hour — Leaders Speak —     focusing on human service delivery: the challenges being faced and innovations being forged in our local communities.

Today state and local governments are under tremendous pressure to do more with less. Nowhere is this more evident than in the delivery of human services – that social safety net bringing to those most in need, a leg up, well-being, and ultimately self sufficiency.  As we continue to engage government executives who are changing the way government does business, we explore human service delivery in the City of New York with three key city agency executives.

What about New York City’s ambitious plan to eliminate homelessness?  How are New York City social services agencies managing to do more with less? How is technology making human service delivery more efficient, effective, and citizen-centric? AND, what can federal agencies learn from these local efforts.

Today, our guests — Robert Hess, Commissioner, New York City Homeless Services, Kamal Bherwani, Executive Director, NYC’s HHS-Connect, and Robert Doar, Commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration — offer their extended reflections on such questions.

You may hear directly from our guests by clinking on the links embedded in this post.

All across America, small towns and large cities are facing the social realities of homelessness, and the steady increase in demand for homeless services.  While providing shelter and services to those in need is critical, the national conversation is shifting from managing to ending homelessness, especially chronic homelessness. New York City has embraced such a goal, and has begun to reshape and expand its services to prevent homelessness in a more comprehensive and coordinated way than ever before.  From a system that did little more than provide cots and meals to single adults and families, it is now recognized nationally and internationally for providing quality shelter and related services in humane settings, with a client-centered philosophy.

“The Department of Homeless Services in New York was created in the early ’90s.  Before that, we were part of the Human Resources Administration in the city,” explains Robert Hess, Commissioner, New York City Department of Homeless Services. The mission is to support individuals and families that are experiencing homelessness and to help them move back into the community.

Here’s Robert Hess, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Homeless Services on the: Challenges facing the NYC Department of Homeless Services

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a five-year plan to end chronic homelessness.  There’s no one size fits all approach to this issue and Commissioner Hess underscores the importance of finding strategies that work – and learning from doing: New York City’s five-year plan to end chronic homelessness

The New York City Human Resources Administration is the largest department of social services in the city of New York.  According to Robert Doar, Commissioner of HRA, “we have the biggest collection of programs and the largest groups of New Yorkers who we serve. We have the Medicaid program.  We provide health insurance to more than 2.5 million New York City residents.  We have the food stamp program.  We provide food assistance or benefits to help people purchase food for about 1.6 million New York City residents.  And we have the cash welfare program, which is a much smaller program, which we serve about 350,000 New Yorkers. We haveother programs in the area of social services: domestic violence, adult protective services.  Our principal role is to provide a safety net and a support for people who are particularly vulnerable or are struggling — help people get into employment.”

Commissioner Doar identifies three key challenges facing his agency and how he’s meeting these challenges: Challenges facing the New York City HRA

With the dramatic fall in city revenue and even more troubling revenue picture at the state level, they’ve required a series of spending reductions for all programs.  Commissioner Doar tells us how he’s doing more with less and meeting reduction targets: approaches to “doing more with less” in human services delivery

Local and state governments are under tremendous pressure to do more for citizens and to do it better. Technology has enabled governments to do just that and nowhere is this more evident than in the delivery of human services.  To meet such ends government Chief Information Officer’s have found it necessary to identify and implement technologies that make operations more responsive to the needs and expectations of its citizens. Over the last several years the city of New York has made a concerted effort to implement technologies design to make it more accessible, transparent, and accountable.

Kamal Bherwani, former chief information officer for New York City’s Health and Human Services and former executive director of HHS-Connect describes the city’s HHS-Connect initiative and the strategic vision that frames it: vision & principles behind NYC’s HHS-Connect

This post introduces three dedicated public servants delivering social and human services in one of the largest city’s in the world. You can access the complete program and hear the entire conversation at Leaders Speak – Human Service Delivery in New York City

Redefining the Role of Citizen in a Gov 2.0 World

What does it mean to be a citizen in a Gov 2.0 world?  President Obama’s FY 2011 budget is being dissected for its shift in the size and scope of government.  But several initiatives in the budget, and things happening at the state and local levels, point to subtle — but significant –shifts in the role of citizens in their government.

A prominent role these days is engaging citizens in oversight and accountability.  A CNNTech article by John Sutter, “Cities embrace mobile apps, ‘Gov 2.0’” describes how Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, sends an electronic note to San Francisco City Hall via an application called SeeClickFix to report an overheated train car.  Sutter says this gives citizens “more of a say in how their local tax money is spent.”  Cities all over the country are releasing public data to the web and mobile application developers are creating “mash up” applications to make it easy to use.  Some say it “could usher in a new era of grsssroots democracy.”

In DC the DC 311 iPhone app allows users to take photos of graffiti, potholes, etc., and send them to a city database that catalogs work requests.  The photos are linked to a GPS location so officials can see the problem, and other citizens can, as well.  Other examples of “citizen posses” include the “Coalition for an Accountable Recovery” which tracks the implementation of the Recovery Act.

But these examples do not offer the only vision of how citizens’ roles have changed.  After all, we can’t become a nation of fault finders.  There has to be a more positive view of the role of citizens than just conducting oversight.  Although, the Obama Administration encouraged this new role when it put in place Recovery.Gov, which posts all the spending of the $787 billion stimulus bill.

I can see a series of new or expanded roles for citizens, other than oversight.  These include:

Increased involvement in dialogue. This is where conversations are back and forth, and where both sides learn.  One example is the new on-line town hall format described in a new report by the Congressional Management Foundation.  There, members of Congress are beginning to engage citizens in far more meaningful discussions of issues.  The Obama Open Government initiative is encouraging agencies to use approaches like this.  On February 6^th, a wide range of agencies will be simultaneously launching public dialogue efforts, to run over a five-week period, to engage citizens around issues such as transparency and collaboration.  The General Services Administration has already launched its dialogue site to allow people to comment and vote on ideas.

Being better informed about issues.  This is where citizens can gain a broader understanding of the implications and tradeoffs in making big decisions, or even local decisions.  An example of becoming better informed about the larger context is understanding the progress and position of the US, or your community, in areas such as health care, environment, or the economy.  The stateoftheusa.org tries to provide such a perspective.  Another “big picture” forum examines the fiscal future of the country.  At the other end of the spectrum, there are sites that provide information about your neighborhood and encourage interactions and awareness at that level, like Neighbors-for-Neighbors in Boston, EveryBlock.com, or CrimeReports.com.

Providing ideas and solutions.  Sometimes people with different perspectives can solve problems that the experts have a hard time with.  A prominent example is the increased use of “crowdsourcing.’  This is where an organization sends a problem out to a group of people asking for contributions or solutions to a problem. One example is Apps for America, where a nonprofit group sponsored a contest to find the best uses of government-provided information.  The Obama budget for FY 2011 commits to expanding the use of contests and awards for innovations.

Being empowered by information to solving their own problems.  Too often, complexity creates a need for “middle men” such as tax advisors, lobbyists, and attorneys.  Reducing complexity, or providing information more openly or using “plain language” to describe things can make a huge difference.  The Open Data efforts by the Obama Administration are one step in this direction.  Ongoing efforts to create Plain Language in government writing is another.  Streamlining application processes to be more citizen-centered is also another approach, which seems to be a stronger trend in other countries.

Becoming involved in co-delivering public services.  This is more common at local levels, but a high-profile example at the federal level is called “peer-to-patent” where citizens could help determine whether an idea was new and worth being granted a patent.  Another is by helping the elderly complete their tax forms via a volunteer program called VITA.  And another is “citizen responders” in the case of emergencies.  This not only saves money, but involves citizens in a direct way in government.

Becoming engaged in framing public decisions.  In some communities, such as Des Moines, IA, citizens became engaged in measuring the performance of city services and then involved in helping set city budgeting priorities.  Similarly, citizens in Washington, DC, did the same when Tony Williams was mayor, in his citywide Citizen Summits.  At the federal level, several years ago Congress created a Citizens Health Care Working Group to engage citizens in developing recommendations for reforming health care.  Some advocacy groups want opportunities for citizens to actually make decisions, but this step may require some careful thought, especially given experiences such as California’s referenda being driven by special interest groups.  This has resulted in the legislature not being able to make needed trade-offs and the state now faces fiscal challenges that may be difficult to address.

The more traditional roles, of citizen participation via hearings or a spectrum of other forms of engagement, including innovative forums such as President Obama on YouTube answering questions about his new budget, will continue.  But the opportunities to actively engage citizens is still evolving.

If you have other ideas, please feel free to contribute!

Obama’s FY 2011 Management Initiatives

Most of the news media focused on the size of the budget and which agencies gained or lost.  However, the budget also included an overview of the Obama Administration’s management initiatives, as well.

The overall emphasis of these initiatives is on achieving defined mission-oriented results.  It de-emphasizes (but still addresses) improvements to mission-support functions and the reporting of performance information.

The section on “Performance and Management” describes three mutually reinforcing performance management strategies:

• Use performance information to lead, learn, and improve outcomes.
• Communicate performance coherently and concisely for better results and transparency.
• Strengthen problem-solving networks.

What’s New?

The sole mention of OMB’s Program Assessment Review Tool (PART) states that it “increased the production of measures in many agencies, resulting in the availability of better measures than previously existed; however, these initial success have not lead to increased use.”  So, it’s probably dead.

In its place, the Administration offers a series of interesting initiatives:

• 130 high priority agency-level performance goals. These goals will be tracked quarterly by agencies and OMB.  Bureau-level goals will be developed in coming year.  It also hints at use of the “Citi-Stat” approach.  For example, it notes that Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra recently held a “Tech-Stat” meeting at EPA, using the IT Dashboard, to detect IT investment problems. (scroll to “Chapter 19, Information Technology,” starting on p. 321 to find the budget’s technology initiatives).

• Creation of a “performance portal” to track performance goals, and a series of mission-support dashboards.  These would be in addition to the existing IT Dashboard.  Dashboards will be created for procurement, improper payments, and hiring.  It also committed to developing a “Citizen Services Dashboard” to display the quality of government services, by “service delivery touch points” for each major agency.

• Creation of — or expansion of existing — problem-solving networks. Communities of practice will be organized across agencies by (a) problems (e.g., climate change), (b) types of programs (e.g., regulatory or credit programs), and (3) methods (e.g., Lean Six Sigma).  For example, the performance management network will be led by the government-wide Performance Improvement Council, comprised of agency performance improvement officers.  There was also a commitment to create an electronic, cross-government collaboration platform.

What’s Intriguing?

In addition to these key initiatives, there are a number of other interesting elements:

• A commitment to increase tele-work by 50 percent by the end of FY 2011 (the 2009 baseline = 102,900 tele-workers)
• Creation of an interagency program evaluation working group.  The budget also invested an additional $100 million in program evaluation, in 17 agencies
• There was a long discussion of “personnel analytics” in budget, with an emphasis on employee feedback, and a table reporting agency rankings in the last OPM workforce survey.
• The budget announced a $158 million initiative to improve capacity of non-DOD acquisition workforce.  Previously, the Administration committed to increasing the DOD acquisition workforce by 20,000 positions.
• Federal civilian employment increased 15 percent between FY 2007 – 2011 (the percent change was the same in DOD vs. civilian agencies)
• The Administration says it will leverage FederalReporting.gov (created to feed data to the Recovery Act’s recovery.gov site) to expand USASpending.gov reporting to the sub-recipient level.
• The Administration will create web-based platforms to host challenges and incentive prizes for innovations.

Was there anything that caught your eye that should be added?

“Performance” in the FY 2011 Budget

Given what we have learned from experience and careful research, the performance management approach the Obama Administration lays out in the Analytic Perspectives section of the FY 2011 budget is very promising and represents a more aggressive, more coherent, and more comprehensive approach than that of past Administrations.   We know that when leaders focus on a few priority goals, we see tremendous performance improvement on those goals.   We are also learning (in fact, there is an interesting note on this in the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review) that a sense of progress is the greatest employee motivator.

So, I am very hopeful about the Administration’s decision to emphasize ownership of the goals by agency leaders and to report performance trends, not the percentage of targets met and program PART rating done on a five-year cycle.  The Obama approach is likely to be more effective at engaging the Federal workforce, improving performance, and making government more accountable to the public.

Leveraging research into healthcare quality, costs, outcomes, and patient safety

A Profile of Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, Director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Healthcare remains one of the most pressing issues of today, with a system mired in ever-increasing costs, inconsistent quality, and access pressures. Many of the healthcare reform proposals being reviewed in Congress attempt to remedy one or more of these issues. Research continues to identify ways to improve the quality and safety of healthcare, ensure access to care, increase the use of health information technology (IT), and find new ways to translate clinical research into practice. “The mission of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,” explains Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of AHRQ, “is to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of healthcare for all Americans. We pursue this goal by supporting research and working very closely with those who provide care—clinicians of all disciplines—as well as with patients and policymakers, so that they can use information to improve the delivery of healthcare.”

Dr. Clancy manages a broad portfolio of scientific research that promotes enhancements to clinical and health system practices. “About 80 percent of our budget goes to grants and contracts with many academic institutions, community health centers, and hospitals focusing on improving healthcare. We now fund work in almost all 50 states,” explains Clancy. She describes her main responsibility as one of ensuring that all parts of AHRQ work together. “My day-to-day work,” notes Clancy, “is actually communicating what it is that we’re trying to do—connecting the dots between the research we’re supporting and healthcare you’re going to get.” AHRQ comprises five research centers and three offices, but she states that, “We really organize our work around portfolios: comparative effectiveness; patient safety and quality; health IT; improving value in healthcare; prevention and care management; and innovations.”

The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet numerous studies have found that there is really no relationship between spending and the quality of care. For Clancy, it is critical to make sure that “what we do for patients matches their needs and preferences and actually helps them to get on with their lives.” Comparative effectiveness research (CER )—systematic research that compares different interventions and strategies to prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor health conditions—offers promise. According to Dr. Clancy, the purpose of this research is to inform patients, providers, and decision makers by responding to their needs about which interventions are most effective for patients under specific circumstances. The Recovery Act allocated about 1.1 billion dollars for CER , with some $300 million allocated to AHRQ’s already-established CER portfolio. “We live in a very exciting time,” admits Clancy, “because of all of the advances in biomedical science. More and more, it’s not the case that there’s one thing to do for a particular condition—there are multiple choices. How do you make those choices?” CER is looking to fill that gap. “We think this research will help make sense of all of the rapidly expanding options and innovations in medicine. It’s all about focusing on patients’ needs, and applying the best of science to meet those individual needs,” says Clancy. 

As the nation’s lead research agency on healthcare quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness, AHRQ plays a critical role in the drive to adopt health IT. “I think many people don’t grasp that healthcare today is, by and large, a paper enterprise.” Her agency funds research that identifies ways to expand health IT adoption and use. It seeks to identify best practices for making health IT work and tools that can help hospitals and clinicians successfully adopt it. According to AHRQ-funded research, electronic health record adoption continues to increase slowly. The initial capital investment continues to be a significant barrier to adoption. “We believe,” asserts Clancy, “that health IT can improve the quality of care….At the same time, it can deliver customized information to the point of decision making, based on scientific evidence. That’s our goal, and we are very excited about it.” 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million patients suffer from a healthcare-associated infection in U.S. hospitals each year, resulting in 99,000 deaths and annually incurring an estimated $28-$33 million in excess healthcare costs. AHRQ funds research that aims to identify risks and hazards that result in medical errors, while seeking to find ways to prevent patient injury associated with delivery of care. “This is a growing problem,” admits Clancy, “We’ve seen people suffering serious consequences because of these infections, which are largely avoidable.” Clancy describes the Michigan Keystone ICU Project as a successful example of how to foster a culture of patient safety. It is a joint partnership between Johns Hopkins University and the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, funded by an AHRQ grant. “We supported a team from Johns Hopkins,” notes Clancy, “They focused on reducing serious bloodstream infections, using some relatively straightforward steps that can actually reduce the infection rate dramatically.” 

 ARHQ-funded research means little until its findings and lessons learned are disseminated. Dr. Clancy declares that the ultimate goal is to translate AHRQ’s research findings into clinical practice—hopefully resulting in healthier, more productive individuals and an enhanced return on our nation’s substantial investment. “We work extensively to communicate what we’re doing and to disseminate it in practical ways.”

Listen to:  The Business of Government Hour Interview with Dr. Clancy

Finding Bright Spots

The latest issue of FastCompany magazine has a terrific piece by Chip and Dan Heath, “Find a Bright Spot and Clone It.”  While it uses private sector examples, their insights apply equally to government.

“Our focus, in times of change, goes instinctively to the problems at hand.  What’s broken and how do we fix it?  This troubleshooting mind-set serves us well – most of the time. . . if your child brings home a report card with five As and one F, it make sense to freak out about the F.

“ But in times of change, this mind-set will backfire.  If we need to make major changes. . . A lot of things are probably wrong. . . So ask yourself, What’s broken and how do I fix it?, you’ll simply spin your wheels.”

“When it’s time to change, we must look for bright spots – the first signs that things are working, the first precious As and Bs on our report card.  We need to ask ourselves a question that sounds simple but is, in fact, deeply unnatural:  What’s working and how can we do more of it?”

For those who have been in the federal government the past 15 years, you’ve seen both approaches.  The Gore Hammer Award was an example of finding bright spots and showering attention on them, and the Bush President’s Management Agenda Scorecard highlighted what was wrong and needed attention.  Maybe next week we’ll see what the Obama administration’s emphasis will be when it releases its budget (and management priorities) on February 1^st.

Managing the world’s largest nuclear waste cleanup

Profile of  Inés R. Triay, Assistant Secretary, Environmental Management at the U.S. Department of Energy

During the Cold War, the U.S. nuclear stockpile reached more than 30,000 nuclear weapons. Research and production of these weapons resulted in large volumes of nuclear waste—some of the most dangerous materials known to mankind—posing significant environmental risks and challenges. “The U.S. Department of Energy has under its purview the Environmental Management program, which is responsible for cleaning up the legacy of the Cold War,” says Dr. Inés Triay, assistant secretary, Environmental Management within the U.S. Department of Energy. She leads an office  charged with the safe and complete cleanup of the environmental legacy brought about from five decades of nuclear weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. “We manage the largest environmental cleanup effort in the world. Originally, we had two million acres at 108 sites in 35 states. We work in very challenging environments with hazardous and dangerous material, solving some of the most complex technical problems in the environmental field today,” says Triay. She notes that her job is “to make sure that the cleanup is conducted in a safe, secure, and compliant manner. It is to make sure that we continue to be vigilant about the life cycle cost of this cleanup. This cleanup extends decades; it is my job to come up with strategic options to shorten that time frame that we’re going to need in order to ensure the effective cleanup.”

The cleanup encompasses radioactive wastes, spent nuclear fuel, excess plutonium and uranium, thousands of contaminated facilities, and contaminated soil and groundwater. EM has identified radioactive tank waste processing as one of its key priorities. This involves constructing and operating facilities that stabilize radioactive liquid tank waste and treat it into a safe, stable form for disposition. This is such a challenging problem,” explains Dr. Triay. “We have 88 million gallons of highly radioactive waste. This waste is in underground tanks, some containing on the order of a million gallons….We have these underground tanks in three main places: Savannah River site in South Carolina, our Hanford site in Washington state, and our Idaho site.” According to Triay, EM continues to move forward and clear hurdles in finalizing the design, construction, and operation of three unique and complex tank waste processing plants. “The bottom line is: these facilities combine for a total project cost of over $14 billion. It is imperative that we stick to the total project cost and duration for these projects, delivering on time and within costs, as based on the current scope and scale. This particular waste is the highest risk of our program; it is imperative that we do this job right,” underscores Triay.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) provided the EM program with $6 billion above its normal appropriation. Seventeen sites in 12 states are receiving Recovery Act funding. The department selected areas where the projects were “shovel-ready”—projects with scope, cost, and duration already established. “The second thing that we did,” explains Triay, “was to choose projects that have an established regulatory framework. We also identified projects with proven technologies, existing contract vehicles, and proven performance and success.” Those projects focus on accelerating cleanup of soil and groundwater, transportation and disposal of waste, and cleaning and demolishing of nuclear weapons facilities. “We endeavor to keep that life cycle cost managed and validated. We want to ensure that we can demonstrate to Congress and the taxpayers that this investment [Recovery Act funds] actually reduces the life cycle cost. We want to demonstrate that the return on investment of having the work done earlier is a significant benefit,” says Triay. “With the Recovery Act funds, we envisioned a portfolio that is going to reduce the footprint by about 40 to 50 percent by 2011.”

In order to achieve this ambitious goal, Triay believes that the most important thing is to have a committed, focused, and technically capable staff. “It is all about the people,” declares Triay, “They are the most prized resource of an organization like ours, and for that reason, it is always a challenge to recruit and retain the very best. I think that, for those who want to work in science and public service, the Department of Energy, under the leadership of Secretary Chu, is a perfect place to explore those two passions.”

Veterans Affairs: “Transformation 21″ and Beyond

The Department of Veterans Affairs, like HUD, is undertaking significant transformation efforts with congressional support.  Its initial “Transformation 21” plan was framed around its fiscal year 2010 budget.  Subsequently, more is on the way, but it has not yet been fully released.

Transformation 21. VA secretary Eric Shinseki released his Transformation 21 initiative in early 2009.  These early efforts focused on a series of focused initiatives:

• Creating a “virtual lifetime electronic record” to ensure uniform registration of all military service members, in conjunction with the Defense Department
• Accelerating a “telehealth” and home care initiative, primarily for older, chronically ill veterans in order to keep them out of hospitals
• Eliminating homelessness among veterans
• Self-service devices so veterans can improve interactions with VA staff, and an integrated “veterans relationship management” system
• Developing a human capital plan for strategically managing VA’s staff of nearly 300,000

He has had some success, according to an early assessment.

In addition, his is one of the very few agencies that has obtained congressional authority to forward fund at least part of its budget.  Congress gave VA the authority to forward fund its medical services in advance by one year.  This responds to the concerns of veteran advocates, who complained that, because of congressional delays, VA received its budget late in 19 of the last 22 years.  This has disrupted the delivery of health services.

Subsequent Transformation Initiatives. The Transformation 21 effort was only the beginning.  With its feet now on the ground, the new VA leadership team is putting together a farther reaching plan, framed around 13 major initiatives.

VA seems to be mirroring some of the transformation efforts that the Defense Department undertook almost a decade ago (which makes some sense, given that some of the Defense reform executives are now at VA and leading the working groups).  The Defense effort, now called the Business Transformation Agency, started with an inventory of over 5,000 business systems and then led to the integration of a number of major systems – such as acquisition and human resources – across the department.

VA started this approach several years ago with the integration of its technology staff.  It took congressional action to move about 5,000 IT staff from reporting to hospital administrators to reporting to a central IT office and giving the departmental chief information officer decision authority over major IT project spending.   But even with the major restructuring nearly completed, VA has begun re-thinking its IT investment approach.  After the White House IT Scorecard rated a number of VA projects as failing, the CIO created a rigorous process to track all of its ongoing IT projects.  It also is transitioning from a series of disconnected projects to a set of portfolios around major initiatives.  For example, one portfolio is being created around a veteran-centric benefit system, where there will be a “single face” to the veterans.

VA is also undertaking a major overhaul of its procurement system, which has been widely seen as broken.  VA reached out to 210 vendors, asking them how it could do its business better.  It has committed to train all of its 4,900 acquisition personnel in the Federal Acquisition Regulations, in project management, and in leadership skills.  VA is also overhauling its contract vehicles.  For example, it is creating a new contract vehicle for IT solutions, one for purchasing commodities, and another for buying software licenses.  Together, these could save the department millions that could be better spent on services to veterans.

Similar transformation efforts are underway in VA’s personnel office and its financial management system.  However, the greatest emphasis is on mission delivery functions that focus on VA’s recently identified four strategic goals:

• Improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare, benefits, and memorial services while optimizing value.
• Increase Veteran client satisfaction with health, education, training, counseling, financial, and burial benefits and services.
• Raise readiness to provide services and protect people and assets continuously and in time of crisis.
• Improve internal customer satisfaction with management systems and support services to make VA an employer of choice by investing in human capital.

These were then broken down into a series of 13 “greatest challenges,” such as eliminating homelessness among veterans and eliminating the backlog of pending benefit claims.

The VA leadership is planning on using operational management reviews, dashboards and “temperature checks” along the way to emphasize execution, not just planning.  How is this playing out with Congress?  In fiscal year 2010, VA received a record budget increase.

Calling on Corporate Leaders: Now vs. Then

The White House sponsored a forum last week of about 50 corporate executives to seek  insights about how to successfully transform large organizations.  These included the leaders of Facebook, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and Whirlpool. Listening to the videos, it was quite reminiscent of a similar forum, sponsored by Vice President Gore’s reinventing government initiative almost 17 years ago.  While the participants were different, much of the challenges, and the advice, are still the same!

 

White House Forum on Modernizing Government (January 14, 2010).  The forum, held at the White House, was organized around three themes: streamlining operations, transforming customer service, and maximizing the return-on-investment from technology.    The forum broke into five work groups to ensure an interactive dialogue.  Each of the work groups was chaired by a deputy secretary.  At the end, each group came back to the main room with a summary of key points.

Here are video links to each of the five breakout groups:

• Breakout Session: Transforming Customer Service 1
• Breakout Session: Transforming Customer Service 2
• Breakout Session: Transforming Streamling Operations 1
• Breakout Session: Streamling Operations 2
• Breakout Session: Maximizing Technology Return on Investment

The final summary session, lasting 30 minutes, was concluded by chief performance officer Jeff Zients, who said there would be four “next steps:”

• The best ideas from the forum would be posted on the White House site and anyone could comment or expand on them.
• OMB would issue a report summarizing key findings and develop an implementation plan by February 15, with a timeline, milestones, key challenges and ownership of initiatives
• OMB would provide implementation assistance, including informal networks with the forum participants
• Each of the 50 or so forum participants would be called for individual de-briefs on their advice and insights.

White House blogger Jesse Lee did a good job of summarizing the 22 key points.  One that sounded like a direct lift from reinvention was: “Engage managers in customer service.  Require executives to put themselves in customer shoes by calling into call centers as customers, taking customer service calls directly, and consistently signaling that they pay attention to customer feedback.”

Summit on Reinventing Government (June 25, 1993).  Vice President Al Gore led a day-long summit at Congress Hall, in Philadelphia, PA, on “Creating a Government That Works” to examine ways to make government work better and cost less.  Its purpose was to examine how the federal government could learn from cutting-edge businesses and state and local governments that have incorporated innovative ways of improving their operations.  These included leaders of General Electric, Motorola, and Harley-Davidson.  Afterwards, Gore identified several key approaches to transformation and six take-away lessons:

How do we change culture? Part of it lies in liberating agencies from the cumbersome burden of over-regulation and central control. Part of it hinges on creating new incentives to accomplish more through competition and customer choice. And part of it depends on shifting the focus of control: empowering employees to use their judgment; supporting them with the tools and training they need; and holding them accountable for producing results.

 

Following are six steps, identified by participants in the Philadelphia Summit:

 

• First, we must give decisionmaking power to those who do the work, pruning layer upon layer of managerial overgrowth.
• Second, we must hold every organization and individual accountable for clearly understood, feasible outcomes. Accountability for results will replace “command and control” as the way we manage government.
• Third, we must give federal employees better tools for the job–the training to handle their own work and to make decisions cooperatively, good information, and the skills to take advantage of modern computer and telecommunications technologies.
• Fourth, we must make federal offices a better place to work. Flexibility must extend not only to the definition of job tasks but also to those workplace rules and conditions that still convey the message that workers aren’t trusted.
• Fifth, labor and management must forge a new partnership. Government must learn a lesson from business: Change will never happen unless unions and employers work together.
• Sixth, we must offer top-down support for bottom-up decisionmaking. Large private corporations that have answered the call for quality have succeeded only with the full backing of top management.