What's Happenin'
C!A completed their site assessments and provided DPA with their report.
Read the report. (pdf)
Last week (January 11-15), 25 of your peers met in Mat-Su to begin the next phase of Business Process Redesign (BPR). This phase is called the Statewide Planning Process or the redesign process. My heartfelt thanks goes out to you for covering their work while they were off-site for the week. Please be assured, this fantastic group of ET's and OA's worked hard on your behalf. They brought passion and a willingness to improve our processes for the sake of every one of their peers statewide. They were upfront and honest about the variations and pathways associated with our current processes.
During this BPR, they were taught to look at the critical path. This is defined as the specific steps required in any process; each step adding value to the final product, eliminating unnecessary hand-offs or activities that do not benefit the final outcome.
We appreciate these staff for their willingness to put in long hours, to listen to their peers from across the state, and to remain open minded and really put thought into solutions! By Friday afternoon when the groups were reporting out their ideas for process redesign (see attached BPR talking points) the staff were saying: “I absolutely love it!”; “Wow, this opens up flexibility for staff”; “ Can I stand and applaud that?!”; and “I can be trusted to do my job with that suggestion”, plus many more positive comments!
The same 25 staff will meet again in Mat-Su during the week of January 25-29th. They will be focused on looking at where we can get the most bang for our buck by eliminating steps and where we can be processing in parallel especially for the areas where there is currently the most elapsed time. They will begin mapping these new pathways with your best interest in mind.
What's comin' next you ask?
1. Your Statewide planning team will be creating a backlog reduction strategy. This includes ways to pend less often and complete the work the first time it is touched. Really drilling down to the details.
2. In a couple of weeks, a smaller team will be developing consistency tools based upon our discussion for what we need, and in parallel, we will begin working with the first office to go live.
3. In the past, DPA rolled out the new processes in the offices without assistance from C!A. Trust me, we are reminded of the error of our ways every day. The current BPR contract will ensure we have the proper planning and preparation to roll-out (implement) our new processes. The offices where the site assessments took place will be prepped for readiness for transitioning to the new processes. The first office will begin implementation of the new processes in the beginning of March.
4. Also, this time around we will have a tool (PathOs) to assist us with real time data to know across the state how well offices are doing and to recognize areas of challenge more quickly. Our current process is to wait until our data is collected a month later, therefore, we are reacting to events that have already occurred.
5. Lastly, C!A will be assisting us with monitoring and observing the offices after roll-out. The expectation is that the leadership and management teams will be taught and therefore develop a deep understanding of how to properly use the consistency and PathOs tools to effectively manage the work and staff. The primary focus is managing the work and allowing the staff to do the work.
Looking ahead:
1. Managers, supervisors and leads will begin to be trained properly in the use of the new consistency tools and the PathOs system.
2. Discussions will take place for staff to learn all programs and both eligibility systems.
4. Exploration for an Electronic Document Management system (talks have recently begun for this project) and for a Call System or in combination with a Call Center (again, talks have just started on this project).
5. Identifying the order for Offices to go-live while taking into consideration extraneous factors.
Apologies for such a long update, but I hope you find the information helpful!
Aimee