More than 40 state agencies have become more efficient and easier for the public to deal with, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced Tuesday. That list even includes a sliver of that bogeyman of all bureaucracies, the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Yes, even the DMV as a whole can turn around and make that list, Malloy asserted.
He promised that new kiosks will help.
Malloy popped into Yale’s modern new School of Management building to discuss a report finding that the 40-plus agencies responded successfully to a 2013 directive he issued to take part in “LeanCT,” a program aimed at improving how they run and how they interact with the public while cutting costs. (Click here for background on that effort.)
State government has 1,000 fewer positions than when he took office in 2011, Malloy said. Meanwhile, working on “LeanCT” with his Office of Finance and Office of Policy and Management, departments have cut costs while improving performance.
For instance, the Departments of Labor and Social Services are on average serving veterans in a community reentry program 74 percent faster than before, according to the report. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) now takes 10 days on average to complete wastewater discharge inspection reports; it used to take 60.
Technology made a big difference in that latter case.
“We put handhelds to everybody who is out in the field … to immediately record their findings, as opposed to making written notes, going back to the agency, maybe once a week, twice a week writing those reports,” Malloy said. “It could take anywhere from one day to tens days to filing a report. And that’s the first step of the process.”
State of Connecticut
Click here to read the full final report, which was written by LeanCT Director Alison N. Fisher.
Fisher described “progress in various operational areas, including but not limited to, permitting, enforcement, compliance, human resources, finance, procurement, and licensing. Results were captured using data collection templates and a SharePoint database, developed for this purpose with the help of DAS‐BEST. Agencies with access to the database have been encouraged to use this tool not only to record their results for the annual report, but to monitor progress incrementally throughout the year and learn what successes other agencies may have had with similar process improvement initiatives. The SharePoint tool has been useful in helping agency staff to understand how to measure a project’s outcomes and which relevant data are important to collect. This is an essential component of Connecticut’s overarching effort to become even more data‐driven than before.”
The key, Fisher wrote and Malloy said Tuesday, is not just ordering new gizmos — but learning how to use the technology before putting it into use.
“[I]t is now commonplace for an agency to use process improvement techniques to streamline their workflow prior to requesting funding from the IT Investment Fund for a technological solution. While this may seem like an obvious course of action, it is a significant cultural shift in the way agencies are approaching the use of IT to improve business outcomes,” Fisher said.
That assessment doesn’t gibe with what people have seen at long DMV lines or discovered that their insurance was listed as suspended —even though it wasn’t.
Similar upgrades to the ones that helped DEEP enter the 21st century can make a difference at the beleaguered DMV, Malloy said.
One part of the DMV actually did become more efficient, according to the report.
The Stamford DMV branch reduced wait times by going to an appointment-only system, cutting wait times by 70.4 percent.
But overall the agency is a mess, the most recent mishaps related to failures in rolling out a new $25 million computer system. Malloy this week took steps to try to straighten out the mess by putting a new person, Dennis Murphy, in charge of the agency. (Read about that here.)
Malloy said it turns out that 40 percent of people at DMV offices came to conduct business they could have done at home on computer. In recent weeks the DMV has reduced the percentage to 36 percent, the governor reported. He said the administration now plans to install kiosks at all offices. That way people who learn they needn’t wait in line to conduct a transaction can take care of it right there at a kiosk, with staffers nearby to assist.
Malloy suggested that past governors waited too long to launch a massive upgrade of DMV technology.
“Taking a standing organization that is operating on a technology that’s 40 yard old,” Malloy said, “and trying to replace that with a new system is not an easy thing to day. And we warned everybody that it would not be easy to do.” Click on the video at the top of the story to watch his full response at Yale’s SOM about DMV criticism and plans for improvement.
Wow - quite an image of the gov.....looks like he's hearing 'voices' and trying to decide how to react.