I ran across a couple of documents I had not seen about what was going on before the failed Indiana Welfare Eligibility Modernization was into full swing. A couple of documents are very telling about the mindset of the administration. The first is from FSSA called Eligibility Modernization: The Need for Change and the second is an article that appeared in reason.org called Steering Not Rowing.
The FSSA document cited six reasons on why the welfare eligibility system needed to be changed. They were:
FSSA would be better off spending time finding the causes of costs associated with the design and management of work. They are in the system (structure, work design, measures, technology, management thinking, etc.) and end-to-end flow from a customer perspective. Something that typical government management can’t or won’t see.
The assumptions around technology, automation and "paper-less" systems is one I see killing government on a routine basis. Technology companies are making lots of money and nothing is getting better.
The problem is the work design and not the need for more technology. We perpetuate poor work designs by adding technology or automating them. For government management it is to lock in the costs of a bad design.
Front office/back office and functional designs aren’t questioned they are automated. For example, worker A passes documents to worker B and the decision is made to automate the process. Do we need the hand-off or the document? This goes unquestioned and if you think about it IT companies don’t want to get rid of a poor design. A poor design means lots of front office/back office and functional designs and the more of these we have the more revenue IT companies get to automate them or make them paperless.
The premise that efficiency leads to cost savings is unfounded. Government management needs to learn to be effective. A focus on costs and efficiency usually drives sub-optimization. This means that we drive costs down in one area, but total costs are driven up.
The public sector would be wise to see John Seddon’s "Law of Costs." This is where government costs increase in proportion to the variety of demand. The traditional design of government work is such that freedom must give way to efficiency . . . meaning the worker must be controlled. The management paradox is that freedom by the worker is what gains efficiencies as the worker is best able to absorb the variety of demand that comes to government work.
The ability to absorb variety by the worker requires less technology as only people can abosrb variety effectively. Something that technology companies don’t want governments to understand.
Public sector innovation is possible, but it requires a new line of thinking about the design and management of work. The State of Indiana and FSSA continues to miss opportunity as they are blinded by oversight thinking, an obsession with technology and cynical view of the role of the worker.
We help government entities innovate through our unique approach to the design and management of work. We can help you "see" the waste and sub-optimization of your systems and work with you to change management thinking and redesign. To learn more go to www.thesystemsthinkingreview.com or contact the North American office at info.newsystemsthinking.com or (317)849-8670.
The FSSA document cited six reasons on why the welfare eligibility system needed to be changed. They were:
- Worst record of welfare reform in the country
- High error rates
- Slow processes that fall short of federal guidelines and provide poor customer service
- Inconvenient access
- Lack of consistency
- Lack of tracking capabilities and proper accounting programs
- Lack of a central accounting system
- A paper-based system
- A general rule based on theory that if you can find someone in the private sector doing a service that mirrors what the government is doing, chances are the private company is doing at much higher quality and a much lower cost.
- Efficiency leads to costs savings.
FSSA would be better off spending time finding the causes of costs associated with the design and management of work. They are in the system (structure, work design, measures, technology, management thinking, etc.) and end-to-end flow from a customer perspective. Something that typical government management can’t or won’t see.
The assumptions around technology, automation and "paper-less" systems is one I see killing government on a routine basis. Technology companies are making lots of money and nothing is getting better.
The problem is the work design and not the need for more technology. We perpetuate poor work designs by adding technology or automating them. For government management it is to lock in the costs of a bad design.
Front office/back office and functional designs aren’t questioned they are automated. For example, worker A passes documents to worker B and the decision is made to automate the process. Do we need the hand-off or the document? This goes unquestioned and if you think about it IT companies don’t want to get rid of a poor design. A poor design means lots of front office/back office and functional designs and the more of these we have the more revenue IT companies get to automate them or make them paperless.
The premise that efficiency leads to cost savings is unfounded. Government management needs to learn to be effective. A focus on costs and efficiency usually drives sub-optimization. This means that we drive costs down in one area, but total costs are driven up.
The public sector would be wise to see John Seddon’s "Law of Costs." This is where government costs increase in proportion to the variety of demand. The traditional design of government work is such that freedom must give way to efficiency . . . meaning the worker must be controlled. The management paradox is that freedom by the worker is what gains efficiencies as the worker is best able to absorb the variety of demand that comes to government work.
The ability to absorb variety by the worker requires less technology as only people can abosrb variety effectively. Something that technology companies don’t want governments to understand.
Public sector innovation is possible, but it requires a new line of thinking about the design and management of work. The State of Indiana and FSSA continues to miss opportunity as they are blinded by oversight thinking, an obsession with technology and cynical view of the role of the worker.
We help government entities innovate through our unique approach to the design and management of work. We can help you "see" the waste and sub-optimization of your systems and work with you to change management thinking and redesign. To learn more go to www.thesystemsthinkingreview.com or contact the North American office at info.newsystemsthinking.com or (317)849-8670.
I was in Canada last week working with two auto dealerships, one in Yorkton, SK and the other in Winnipeg. These are not just any auto dealerships. They are run by an innovative and forward-thinking owner named Terry Ortynsky.
I have posted many times on this subject, yet as companies find ways to "save money" they turn to technology that increase costs, makes customers shake their heads and take actions that make companies more unprofitable and less competitive. Really, enough with the snake-oil and one of the worse technologies ever invented . . . the IVR.
I see this talked about everywhere I go. The call center representative (CSR) that needs to be coached. The "managers of people" one has been asked to become can drive you to coach people. When training someone new they can be coached, there’s an operational definition we can live with in a call center atmosphere. Most would call this training.
OK, I’ll come clean. It really isn’t "new" thinking. I got it from The New Economics written by W, Edwards Deming. In the United States, the dividend is the last thing cut (typically). We will lay off people before cutting the dividend. In Japan, the worker is the last to take the hit and rarely do they cut positions. Consider what Deming outlined in the steps Japanese companies take (from The New Economics):
I have been a part of many "discussions" this week. Most of them around my posts that challenge conventional wisdom on things such as best practices, targets and incentives. I usually find that people conclude that organizations just aren’t using it (technology, measures, rewards, etc.) right or people are to blame (stupid people). When I suggest it may have to do something with the way we think about the design and management of work . . . the response is some variation of "no, that isn’t it."
First of all, let’s not look at the cup as half empty for Zappos, because I believe it is two-thirds full. At the Economist Marketing Forum held in San Francisco this year Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) and two CMO’s from Del Monte and Frito Lay discussed the role of marketing in their organizations amongst other things (watch: Ties That Must Bind: Why CEOs Rely on CMOs More Than Ever). The poor guys in the traditional roles of CMOs (by function) had to listen to Tony say that they really didn’t have a marketing function at Zappos. They reinvested into customer service and the better service was the marketing for Zappos. I thought the others would spontaneously combust.
Some of my posts have caught the eye of several folks who have decided that my blogs are a personal affront. Most of these people, I don’t even know . . . but they write like they do. They are offended or even irked by my posts. I don’t believe I have attacked any one person ( I have mentioned a few) or any one company (ditto), but most of my writing has been about the thinking of those people or companies. I don’t blame them for thinking in a command and control manner, what I aim to do is point out that there are better ways of thinking . . . for me that is systems thinking as defined by the likes of W. Edwards Deming, Taiichi Ohno and John Seddon. An American, a Japanese and a Brit, I’m sure there is a joke in there somewhere.
Vanguard partners and you can witness the improvements yourself by going to www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk. This is a great resource for local, city, state and federal government. The debate wages on how big or small government should be, but whatever side you stand on, services still have to be provisioned. And it is in our best interest to provision them with the least amount of cost and improved service. I have established in previous posts that there is no trade off between good service and costs. If you improve service costs will go down . . . this is a government management paradox (read: 
Shared services fares no better, the idea is to achieve economies of scale and reduce transaction costs. The problem is that costs are reduced by economies of flow (not scale). We typically get the double-whammy of shared services and outsourcing where we are allowing our government to contract out our waste and add to it in many cases. Most of the waste in shared services is because government management has separated the work into front office-back office or skilled – simple (functional or transactional). A better way is to design against demand where the variety produced by service can be absorbed.
