Fall 2003 Awards Ceremony
Fall 2003 Awards Ceremony
Process Used:
Judges:
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Governor's Award for Quality and Performance
Medical Cost Offset Project
DSHS, Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse
DSHS provides a safety net for the most disadvantaged of
Washington’s citizens. Two programs within DSHS serve people with long-term
handicaps who also struggle with alcohol or drug abuse by providing medical
insurance and addiction treatment. The combined costs of these clients are considerable.
The Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse relied on research that indicated
that early treatment for people with substance abuse would save money on their
medical costs. They created a pilot that transferred funds from the medical
assistance account to the program that provided substance abuse treatment, and
worked with the clinics who provide substance abuse treatment to identify the
clients most in need. The results exceded expectations, resulting in a savings
of over $250 per client per month, for a net savings to the state of $2.5 million
per year. They were able to treat 800 more clients than they would have without
the pilot. In addition, among the clients with recent criminal histories, those
who received treatment were 16% less likely to be re-arrested or convicted than
those who remained untreated. Treatment works – for the clients and for
society.
Team Members:
| Nancy Anderson |
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Governor's Award for Quality and Performance
Recovering BIG Unemployment Dollars
Employment Security Department
The Employment Security Department (ESD), Benefit Payment Control (BPC) mission is to recover unemployment insurance (UI) benefit overpayments paid to individuals to which they are not entitled. The annual dollar value of there overpayments has been rising over time. As a result, ESD needed to determine how to increase recoveries and decrease costs with the existing 19 full-time employees (FTE). The team analyzed the barriers to timely recovery and adopted multiple solutions to put a more proactive collection philosophy in place. The results:
Team Members:
| Bobbie Bates Leovy Cabrera Debbie Calcote Dave DuVall Debbie Ellis Dee Gabriel Robin Hedden Pat Kirk Nancy Noble |
Linda Marshall Morgan Moreno Renee O’Hara Rafael Perez Pam Sulenes Kathlyn Sweet Dan Syverson Lisa Zolman |
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Governor's Award Quality and Performance
INET Application
Department of Personnel
The Department of Personnel’s (DOP) new Internet Application (INET) revolutionizes the state employee recruitment and selection process by replacing the old labor-intensive, paper-laden method with a totally automated process. Before INET, it could take months for a manager to receive a list of eligible candidates for an open position. Using the INET, this entire process has been reduced to four hours. Job applicants can now apply on-line at any time; be tested on-line at the same time; and receive their application status and test results immediately. Those who pass the screening process are placed on the candidate eligibility list within four hours of submitting an application. Hiring managers have immediate access to a current list of qualified candidates at any time. Results include:
Team Members:
| David Amyakar Brad Bingham Sherrie Ilg Warren Kelly Jacqui Shrier Jerome Sweet Rob Yarbrough Dorothy Gerard Bob Hahn Jason Sterling Doug Tanabe |
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Governor's Award for Public Benefit and Value
Making School Buses Safer
Washington State Patrol, Superintendent of Public Instruction
We all know that Washington State Patrol does – or do we? Most people don’t know that WSP is also responsible for performing school bus safety inspections, as well as commercial vehicle inspections. However, budget and staffing cuts meant that WSP could not adequately address both responsibilities, which meant that fewer commercial vehicles were getting safety inspections. Something had to give.
There are 455,000 children that ride over 9,000 school buses daily. To ensure their safety, WSP redirected some funds from a third program that was not mission critical, and established a dedicated school bus inspection program made up of two-person teams strategically placed in seven regions across the state. The new approach to bus inspections allowed 40 Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Officers to return to their core field responsibilities of commercial vehicle enforcement.
School bus collisions are down 20% and school bus driver
at fault collisions are down 34% since the implementation of the program. Commercial
vehicles involved in fatality collisions are down for the fourth year in a row
with a 25% decrease in 2002 over 2001, while, commercial vehicle safety inspections
have increased 56% in 2002 over 2001. Washington’s fatality rate is 53%
lower than the national average of 2.4.
Team Members:
| Sue Carnahan |
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Governor's Award for Public Benefit and Value
MICC Family and Fatherhood Program
Department of Corrections
Research has demonstrated that children need responsible, active, and involved fathers – even if the fathers are incarcerated. Children without fathers in the home are 80% more likely to engage in criminal activities – which means that the children of incarcerated fathers are at very high risk of themselves being incarcerated! At McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC), a team developed an innovative Family and Fatherhood Program “break the cycle” of crime.
The team developed a “six-component” approach that helps the offenders learn how to be a father from a distance, and helps the families of offenders develop more functional family systems. With this new program, men (many of whom had no father figure themselves) are now given the opportunity to meet their responsibilities as a father and a co-parent even from behind bars.
The results of such programs are difficult to assess, as
the impact on the children cannot be known for many years. However, the indicators
are VERY strong, since the fathers in the program experienced a 70% reduction
in the number of times that they broke prison rules – clearly, their behavior
was changing as a result of the program. In addition, 4 times as many participating
fathers made child support payments in 2002 as in 2000.
Team Members:
| John Anderson Eugene Bal, Jr. Greg Benjamin Rick Bottoms Francis Brown David Coleman Fran Ferry Richard Foege Patty Jalbert Rick Jordan Rose Marie Lewis |
Roger Mayhew Helen McGovern Annette Mower Judy Nelson Alice Payne John Peterson Sylvia Peterson Tim Ryan Tom Suss Michele Thrush |
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Governor's Award for Customer Service
E-Licensing, A Streamlining Success
Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board
The Workforce Board licenses more than 250 private career schools and colleges each year. For the past 30 years, the licensing process has been tedious and time-consuming for both the schools and the agency. School owners and administrators complained that the many forms were cumbersome and repetitive. Staff spent far too much time photocopying existing data, attaching new forms to send to the schools, manually entering information into a database, calling schools for clarification, and filing incoming hardcopy materials.
With the support of the Washington Federation of Private
Career Schools and Colleges and the Private Vocational School Advisory Committee,
they designed a web-based licensing process, resulting in combined savings for
the schools and this small agency of approximately $31,000 per annum.
Team Members:
| Robert Hinsch Peggy Rudolph ‘cita Waller Lee Williams Walter Wong |
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Governor's Award for Internal Process Management
Telephone Customer Service
Department of Licensing
The Department of Licensing (DOL) touches nearly every citizen of the state through licensing drivers, vehicles, businesses and professionals. However, the volume of customer calls far exceeded DOL’s capacity, resulting in customers routinely receiving multiple busy signals. In January 2003, 24,000 callers to the Driver Services Unit received over 172,000 busy signals alone. From January to June 2003, the project team analyzed service center data, completed external benchmarks, shared best practices, and piloted solutions including new telephone messages, daily individual and group productivity reporting, revising high volume customer correspondence and expanding the number of lines available for customers to access our services. These efforts resulted in a 96% reduction in busy signals; a 34% group productivity increase, and phase II recommendations, which will entirely eliminate busy signals for all customers within the next 12 months.
Team Members:
| Christopher Cope Ursula Glasgow Patti Gwinn Virginia Haataia Tiffany Hooper Dee Scharf Linda Seymour Jaime Stephens Cathy Turner Alan Haight |
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Governor's Award for Organizational Learning and Growth
$11 Million Land Swap
Washington State Patrol, General Administration, Office
of the Attorney General
About six years ago, WSP determined that its property on Martin Way, housing a number of support functions as well as a field operations detachment, was in the wrong location for its purposes. The buildings were old and outmoded. The facility was constrained by surrounding inconsistent land uses and was being impacted by traffic congestion. WSP determined that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to re-develop the property to meet current and future operations.
The property was appraised at the time for $4.8 million.
However, WSP and other specialists thought the land was worth much more than
that amount to a retail developer given its location in an expanding retail
corridor. Based on this approach, WSP, with General Administration’s (GA)
assistance, sought and found a developer who was able to obtain interest in
future leases on the property in exchange for purchasing new property and constructing
a modern facility to house not only the existing units from the old property,
but also to accommodate consolidation of other units to this new site.
Thinking “outside the box,” the Washington State Patrol (WSP) turned
$4.8 million into $11 million. WSP was able to exchange property with old, outmoded
buildings for new property with new built-to-suit facilities, turning a $4.8
million asset into one now worth $11 million.
Team Members:
| Kirsten Arestad Bob Bippert Tim Casad Mary Ellen Combo Dennis Craig Grant Fedricks Jake Jacobson Mark Lahaie Moya McKeehan |
Tom Neff George Osborne Bill Phillips Richard Price Ed Roque Cathy Schilling Marjorie Smitch Paul Szumlanski |
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Governor's Award for Organizational Learning and Growth
Deschutes Parkway Reconstruction
General Administration, Department of Transportation
On February 28, 2001, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake destroyed Deschutes Parkway. Most of the 1.8-mile road, which runs along the western shore of Capitol Lake connecting Tumwater and Olympia, was immediately closed. As many of you know, the negative impacts were significant.
The Department of General Administration (GA), manager of the
Parkway, hired the state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to oversee repairs.
Prior to construction, the project team conducted several public meetings and
the community gave extensive input to the design. Innovative construction practices,
cooperation among many public agencies, and an aggressive work schedule by RCI
Construction Inc., the project contractor, contributed to an accelerated repair
schedule. The Parkway reopened to vehicle traffic on October 31, 2002, many
months earlier than first estimated and two months ahead of the contract schedule.
The completed project cost $698,000 (16%) less than the original engineer's
estimates. Taxpayers saved an additional $525,000 when a previously planned
utility upgrade was completed at the same time as the road repairs, instead
of later. This project changed the ways GA and WSDOT collaborate, which is already
saving money on other projects.
Team Members:
| Tony Allen Steve Anderson Mike Arneson Robert Bailey Gerald Barker Ricky Bhalla Karen Boone Ann Briggs Jim Brosio Ben Burke Neal Campbell Mary Ellen Combo Troy Cowan Jim Erskine Henry Gertje Doug Hitchcock Jesse Hornbuckle Gary Hughes Nathan Jacobs Laurel Jensen Kent Kalisch |
Bill Moore Brian Moorehead Lisa Nix Pat O’Hagan Eric Ostfeld Teresa Kelly Stacie Kelsey Larry Kessel Steve Kim Neil Knecht Andy Kramer Ron Landon Gary Larson Mark Lensegrav Carol Maher Dane Marbut Dan Mathis Jeff Merry Lenore Miller Brian Miller Cameron Minton |
Steve Palmen Glenn Pasley Pat Reis Jeff Sawyer Steve Saxton David Schilperoort David Scott Amy Sharar Marjorie Smitch Theresa Sprouffske Ken Stone Jack Taylor Tyler Tripp Neal Uhlmeyer Steve Valandra Sandy Van Mieghem Peter Waugh John Wynands |
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