Improving Government/Nonprofit Mission and Generic Processes

 

As shown in the above diagram, any government agency's functions or activities can be divided into three categories:

1. Strategic functions
2. Mission functions
3. Support functions

These functions can be determined from the titles and mission statements of each of the functional units. For example: Senior management is where most of the strategic functions exist, but general oversight covers all functions. Support functions includes plant maintenance, security, safety and health, environmental, legal, human resources, facilities, supply, communications, and information resources. Mission functions are unique for each agency and for each functional unit.

The Government Performance and Results Act requires all federal agencies to establish strategic plans, and measure the performance of their missions. These measurements will be used to provide the basis for future budget decisions as an incentive to management. As well as complying with the law, measuring performance is a proven best business practice. Process measurements can be used to a) identify and prioritize process improvements; b) benchmark across different units; c) identify best practices to be exported. An organization-wide business process improvement initiative can be an effective strategy leading to significant productivity increases in typical government organizations. This in turn will lead to increased mission effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and an improved agency image and reputation.

Mission Processes

The agency exists to accomplish a mission for its customers. Within each mission functional unit, there is a mission that is unique to that unit. This mission is accomplished by using specialized equipment, skills and processes designed for that unit. The unit's performance metrics must therefore be defined by the managers of the unit -- only they know enough to define the meaning of performance and quality in this context. These are mission performance metrics. Since they are unique, the mission performance metrics are not meaningful outside the mission unit. But if each unit's metrics are different, how can they be compared? And how can agency-level managers know if they are good or bad?

Improving Mission Processes

Process improvement efforts may still be undertaken, however. It is up to the managers in each unit to identify improvement initiatives for mission processes, in alignment with the agency's top-level strategies. Baseline data can be collected, and progress in improving mission operations can be normalized to the baseline data. Improvements reported as a percentage of the baseline will provide a way to benchmark or evaluate progress irrespective of the unique missions performed.

Generic Support Processes

But also within each mission functional unit (as well as in support units), there are likely to be many activities that are similar to those found in other units: generic office processes and practices that are a normal part of doing business, such as meetings, memo writing, report publishing, obtaining supplies, and so forth. These activities are so mundane and commonplace that they tend to be ignored by managers, who are primarily focused on mission activities. Also included in this category are desktop computer management activities, such as file organization, backups, upgrades, crash recovery, and the like -- activities which are so routine that they tend to be discounted in importance. However, Gartner Group estimates that across all companies, 43% of the total cost of ownership of a computer is devoted to the labor cost of these activites. These generic activities are pervasive in all office environments, whether they be mission functions, support functions, or even strategic functions. Most of these activities are non-value-added: they may be necessary, but they do not add value to the mission products given to the customer. They are simply a drain on efficiency. They are a net loss.

Improving Generic Processes

Since they are so pervasive, they probably add up to a lot of labor cost. Although a precise cost estimate is difficult to make, I believe it is likely that improvements focused on these processes will produce significant improvement in overall productivity and efficiency of the organization's missions. These processes should be a high priority candidate for BPI efforts. Since you can't improve what you can't measure, it will be necessary to collect baseline data on the 'as-is' or existing generic processes within the organization. Metrics for these processes will include such categories as cycle time, ease of use, training time, down time, etc. In some cases labor time can be translated into cost. (More details on this will be provided later.)

Benchmarking Generic Processes

A key advantage of measuring these generic processes is that the measurements are also generic: they can be easily compared across different business units, or even across different companies, for benchmarking. In this way, the best and worst unit's processes can quickly be identified. Then the processes used in the best unit can be exported to the other units.

This kind of benchmarking is a common practice among private companies, in spite of their proprietary concerns. How much more should benchmarking be a common practice in government, where the process data are in the public domain and can be readily shared. Government agencies have a significant advantage over private companies in terms of benchmarking; they should be doing it constantly. For instance, there are 50 state governments. They all have numerous generic functions and processes in common. Where are the benchmark data? If we could find, for example, the state with the best motor vehicle agency processes, then other states could emulate that process, without having to 'reinvent the wheel'. This value of benchmarking is a growing realization, and the practice is growing steadily among the states, as well as among county and city governments. Information technology facilitates process measurements, benchmarking and sharing of information. But the business improvements practices are not new. These ideas have been around for decades. What is new is the ease of management and communication of data as enabled by information technology. We are seeing increased use of "enterprise" management systems, and the companies that have developed them are highly profitable. We can expect this trend to continue, and to be extended into the government arena. The savings to the taxpayer will increase, and governments will become more efficient and effective, starting with the smaller governments and eventually embracing large Federal agencies. This will be a win-win situation for everyone in the country, as well as for other countries that have deployed an adequate information infrastructure.

©1998 Paul Arveson