The Governor’s office released a self-congratulatory statement on Thursday with an annual report from the Government Transformation Office. The Government Transformation Office intended to improve, modernize and streamline Arizona state agencies.
The Governor established the Government Transformation Office in August 2012 as a division of the Arizona Department of Administration. The Office is charged with eliminating inefficiencies and redundancies by implementing private-sector innovations and practices into state operations, with the ultimate goal of saving money and improving the quality of services to Arizona taxpayers.
The division appears to be making progress despite Brewer’s insistence on expanding government.
Its annual report summarized accomplishments for its first full year of operation, including improved service, capacity and increased learning within the Arizona Department of Health Services; Arizona Department of Environmental Quality; Arizona State Land Department; Arizona Department of Real Estate; Arizona Department of Revenue; and Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Each of these agencies is working to train employees in the fundamentals of the “lean methodology,” employed by private industry organizations to dramatically improve service, cost and quality. These principles – coupled with additional ongoing efforts to reduce red tape and excessive bureaucracy – are paying dividends within these agencies.
Examples of agency improvements outlined in the Government Transformation Office annual report include:
- The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is implementing reforms to ensure a quicker employee recruitment process and reducing downtime in the agency due to unfilled positions. As a result, ADEQ will be able to fill open positions in 44 days instead of 95 days.
- The Arizona Department of Real Estate has reduced the processing time for 90% of licensing disclosures from 42 days to 2 days – a 95% improvement.
- The Arizona Department of Health Services has streamlined and standardized the screening and referral processes for its home visiting program. Now, child-health professionals, who visit homes of new parents, now also screen for chronic disease and lead paint dangers – effectively steering families into managing their own diseases while reducing money spent on health care.
Lead time (the total elapsed time from the beginning to the end of a process) within agencies has been reduced across-the-board by an average of 59%, enabling government’s customers to experience significant improvement in the amount of time it takes to receive key services.