During the past two years DPA, along with Change and Innovation Agency (C!A), have worked to reduce and eliminate our backlog. As staffing levels and priorities change, so must the plan. Our goal is to not only provide clients their benefits in a timely manner but to also provide a structured and easily flexible work environment for all levels of field staff.

We developed a backlog plan with specific strategic steps and over the past several months we have had to enhance the plan due to staffing. This, along with our other strategies, will eliminate our backlog in 6 months. The Regional Managers met last week to fine tune the 5 pieces to this plan. The following changes started on Wednesday, September 26, 2018 and will be re-evaluated in 6 months, so these changes are temporary. (more)

In April 2017, the Coastal Regional Office in the Frontier Building in Anchorage permanently closed the lobby to customers so we could pilot the Virtual Contact Center with the Coastal Field Unit in the Frontier Building. (Unfortunately, the VCC product we were testing did not live up to expectations.)

Effective July 23th, 2018, our Coastal team officially joined forces with our Central Region team! Our Long-Term Care Unit continues to be located on the first floor in the Frontier Building and remains part of our Coastal Region team. When the Coastal lobby closed in 2017, we were able to press forward towards a plan to relocate the Coastal Field staff into Central Region (both Gambell and Muldoon offices). (more)

20 new Field Services positions and
8 Long-Term Nonpermanent Office Assistant (OA) Positions for Field support

When developing the budget for this fiscal year, we requested 41 positions so we could address the backlog and maintain same day service even with the increased caseloads. We were granted 20 positions with funding for 3 years. When we approach the end of the 3 year funding term, we will assess if the positions are still needed and request continued funding if warranted or determine which positions can remain vacant. (more)

Last week we continued the transition of offices to statewide non-lobby work! Southeast Region (Ketchikan, Juneau, Bethel and Sitka) has joined with our Northern and MatSu Regions (Wasilla, Kenai, Fairbanks and Nome offices = WKFN).

What this means:
Just like Northern Region did, Southeast Region began with a clean slate on July 23rd, began sharing non-lobby work, and processing all incoming work the same day. Yes, we are adding more to the backlog in a bundle--However, recent backlog is completed more timely by the unacted report clean up team and by following BPR principles, One and Done as staff are working everything associated with a client with minimal touches. (more)

The Backlog initiative is a quick – at a glance – document indicating the amount of incoming work and what our Field Staff were able to complete per region (please see attached).

FABULOUS JOB keeping the completion rate higher than 80%- WOW! This means that we are completing what we started 80% of the time and our customers are taken care of quickly. Additionally, the average transaction time 47 minutes- NICE! As a reminder to the Field Services Team and keeping with the BPR principles, just because the average transaction time is 47 minutes, we shouldn’t be setting an expectation to complete a specific number of actions per day. As we all know, every case is different and it depends upon what track staff are working in. For example, staff working in the Green track can’t be compared to those working in the Yellow track in terms of number of items completed. The daily numbers worked at the individual level will vary based upon the track they are working and if they have easy, difficult, or typical cases. The key here is to shorten what we have control over, our gap times, and take the steps to complete our cases so determinations are made for our customers. As Change and Innovation Agency has stated many times, we can’t complete our work faster without compromising our quality- and both are important, so we focus on what we can control by challenging our expectations of what we think we can complete in a day. Thank you for sticking with the process and assisting our customers!

Sincerely,
Tammie and Aimee

March 2018 DPA Backlog Initiative Data