Director's Office

At $1.6 billion, it is the most expensive in the state's budget, but the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services is about to embark on a new course aimed at delivering a better product more efficiently and at less cost.

"It's the most comprehensive restructuring in the history of the department and it might even be one of the largest restructurings in the history of the state government," said Joel Gilbertson, commissioner of Health and Social Services in Gov. Frank Murkow-ski's administration.

WASILLA -- Bearing one of the largest budgets in state government during a budget crunch is no easy task, but Department of Health and Social Services Commissioner Joel Gilbertson appears to be taking his duties in stride.

This weeks DPA Stars remind me of a certain pair of action super heroes. We now have our own Dynamic Duo right here at DPA!

Our Star's this month are teammates that could be called the "Dynamic Duo". According to their co-workers they are definitely the glue that holds their team together. They are both described as having genuinely big hearts, keen wits, are fun to work with, and do an awesome job!

Gov. Frank Murkowski has signed legislation that could keep about 1,300 children and pregnant women from receiving free health care over the next year, at a savings to the state of about $1.75 million.

The bill changes the income level at which families qualify for Denali KidCare, which provides health care for children and pregnant women in families that make too much money to receive traditional welfare but generally don't have health insurance through their jobs. It's paid for with federal and state funding.

There are a variety of DPA flyers, forms, notices and presentations available in PDF format in Russian, Lao, and Spanish.

Click "read more" for a list of the materials available:

Greetings everyone,
The Alaska Legislature has gone home for another year and DPA received relatively little budgetary impact from lawmakers. Because most of our programs are federally funded and those federal funds require a certain percentage of state dollars to match, the majority of lawmakers declined to tinker with our budget.

The bigger news today concerns our ongoing reorganization. Late last week, your executive managers met and finalized a new, expanded management group for DPA. The purpose of that group is to bring more leaders from more sections to the decisionmaking table. We hope that doing so will result in more creative ideas, better problem solving and better information flow from the frontline staff to the managers and vice versa.

The Department of Health and Social Services is terminating all current Alternate Workweek agreements and requiring new agreements if employees wish to continue working an alternate workweek. This is the official notification all employees currently on an alternate workweek agreement that their agreement will end on June 29, 2003.

Here is an updated version of the DPA management reorganization chart.

View the chart.

Greetings to all DPA staff.

I am happy to note that we have made real progress on the integration of childcare services, formerly with the Department of Education and Early Development, into DPA. The need to organize this large working unit, with it's policy staff,contracts administrators, budget staff and licensing personnel into our structure was a big task.

To do a good job, we found that this task required re-evaluation of the existing DPA organizational structure. Your managers drew draft plans for efficient reorganization which were worked into the new organizational chart. In the process, we created some additional working units that did not exist previously. We expect that these units will be staffed with our current staff.

Our first star is highly respected and very dear to her co-workers. She is described as someone who has a uncanny knack for inspiring, supporting, and encouraging others. Professional, compassionate, friendly, easy-going, effective, up-beat, knowledgeable, positive, and diplomatic are just a few of the words her co-workers used to describe her. Known for her unusual taste in food - this star has a sweet tooth for such delicacies as frozen whip cream and any type of vegetable, especially green beans. She is originally from Iowa and enjoys running, ice fishing, cooking, making smoothies, and plants. Can you guess who this star is?