Quality Standards for Highly Effective Government

Second Edition

Richard Mallory, Richard E. Mallory

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138482395
• eBook ISBN: 9781351057974
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

A seminal work for the public sector, Quality Standards for Highly Effective Government (Second Edition) redefines what is expected and what is required for excellence in management. The practices presented here also benefit non-profit organizations, and indeed any organization in which services are not directly rewarded by a purchase transaction.

The book introduces three new performance standards that frame the value add of management, for processes, systems, and aligned leadership objectives. Along with defining known best practices, these standards create an imperative for the use of Lean and continuous quality improvement as a foundation for good management, built onto that defined structure. These standards also create a means to recognize and reward those managers who build and regularly use this framework.

Measurable quality standards are necessary for government, because there is no free market incentivizing government managers for efficiency, and there is no direct penalty for offices that provide poor service. The oversight of government is left to elected officials, who often only get generalized and high level feedback and then only on failure. Where there is failure, the usual response of leadership is to change leadership or to restructure offices. But these actions never get to the level of the workers on the ground, and cannot change whether they have or are currently using best practice modeling. Richard Mallory both defines and shows the logic behind the process management standard, the system management standard, and the aligned leadership objectives standard, and how these apply to front line managers, program and executive managers, and even to elected leaders. Because these standards are measurable and auditable, they can form the basis of an integrated scorecard for every government agency in the world, and a roadmap on how to obtain maximum value from each of them. The credibility of these standards is underwritten and proven through their adoption by the Government Division of the American Society for Quality, and international best practice standards for governments worldwide.

1The Problem and the Promise

Government is unique in that the economic reality that confronts almost every other kind of economic entity does not confront government—it will never go out of business because of a lack of delivered quality1 or competition. The problem is that there is no “invisible hand” that guides government services naturally to meet the demands of its customers. Only elected representatives are available to shutter those that do not work, and the record of such shut-downs is almost non-existent. Something new is required, and the Auditable Standards for Highly Effective Government are that solution.

Municipal bankruptcy notwithstanding, there is not one poorly operated city (or more specifically a municipal corporation) that will be closed and cease to exist. When cities are so badly managed that they cannot pay all their bills, a court may appoint a receiver to remove the discretionary powers of the city council or to restructure its operations, but the city structure will remain in some form, as if it has eternal life. The taxpayers will be required to continue to pay for its operations through taxes. Government must provide essential public services and it must ensure that public obligations are met.

Even though government must continue to operate, its efficiency is always in question because its revenue stream, through taxes, is automatically collected each year on a formula basis. It does not depend on individual taxpayers agreeing to “buy” a set of government services for the year, and those taxpayers do not have a choice of providers. It is structured as a monopoly to a captive consumer base. It is the pre-eminent bundled package of services.

Part of the difficulty of effectively managing government comes from the fact that there is no direct line from someone who wants a specific type of products and services, to the agency or office that provides that type of products and services, and with a series of individual transactions2 showing that the services were or were not effectively and efficiently provided to the persons or entities who wanted those services to begin with. Government is missing the most important input for the practice of “quality science”—it is missing the Voice of the Customer. There is no one direct “customer” of government services that determines the value of what is received—nor could there be.

In the first place, the concept of equity in government means that fairness and other attributes of public purpose enter into each transaction. So, for example, in matters of justice, or giving various kinds of monetary support, corollary issues serving other purposes are as important as the transaction initially desired by a distinct individual. In addition, even individual agencies perform multiple services, so a description of what each agency does, for whom, and to what effect or outcome, is arguable.

Unlike private business, citizens and taxpayers cannot input a marketplace decision about the individual services they want or receive—taxes are “automatically” levied on behalf of the group of departments and offices that are included within the jurisdiction. In addition, the division of taxes between the various agencies that spend the money is also by formula—through legislative and budgeting action—and none of the individual agencies depend on a positive marketplace decision—they each get a legislatively determined “piece of the pie.” There is no self-correcting economic motivation as there would be for the divisions of a single company that would show the products and services of one division were very widely accepted by consumers while those of another were suffering. Government is a package deal, with funding provided through an annual budget, and there is no “invisible hand” that encourages agencies to grow and improve in the areas of customer satisfaction, or efficiency. It sounds like a hopeless mess, that will never sort itself out, but it does not have to be.

Some may argue that those who hold political office must serve in the place of customers, as primary stakeholders, and that through their collective political actions they must provide the correct economic motivation and leadership direction for quality to result. However, while having legislators as surrogate customers might work in theory, the actual experience has been different. Our elected leaders are not at all like corporate directors in that they do not have a vested interest in the overall positive performance of the governments for whom they are supposedly “accountable.” Their most direct line of responsibility is to the small group of special interests on which they depend for the preponderance of their campaign re-election funding, and secondarily to the members of the majority political party within the geographic area in which they are elected—which could be as little as one-third to one-fourth of the total adult population in that district. Within some reasonable bounds of behavior, a long tenure in office can often be achieved by any politician who can deliver only those votes that are viewed favorably by his or her special interest supporters, through obtaining “key” partisan votes and through obtaining a generous amount of funding for local projects.

A further problem is that elected officials do not get good information to know where to cut even if they have the highest and most noble public interests. For example, how can your Congressman determine whether the Federal Department of Education is doing as good a job as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or if either or both are unnecessary or in need of improvement? Or how would Congress get early warning that three of the major programs within the Departments are very poorly run, while the remainder are doing exemplary work?3

Lately it has been observed that the major political parties fail to assume responsibility for reaching consensus decisions and even restrain their members from discussing consensus solutions unless they are shared in by party leadership. This has resulted in leaving government in the chaos of “no decision,” due to the inability to reach agreement.4 This latest phenomenon is also quite dissimilar from the management of private business, where corporate directors would be dismissed or sued if they did not make necessary decisions to ensure the appropriate functioning of their organization.

Corporate directors realize that they cannot always “get their way” and refuse to agree to any other approach to make a necessary decision. They cannot allow the corporation for which they are responsible perish for lack of direction. Congressmen, however, in our present partisan democracy, are not held to this standard.

It is also impossible to rely solely on the hired civil servants and their management teams to independently implement an efficient and effective government structure. Government workers and managers are constrained because of their understandable desire for a stable and secure job with an opportunity to advance and grow their career in the future. Government managers who point out that their programs (or even singular components of programs) are not good value can often draw strong attack from the special interests who put the programs there in the first place, and who can influence their key legislative supporters to trade votes with colleagues to keep them in place. At the same time, such managers can lose support of their own workforce, who see their own jobs being threatened and who now see their senior managers as “dis-loyal” to the organization. Lastly, managers who take action to reduce the size of their organization can activate fear among their own managers and supervisors, who can see that if the size of their workforce is diminished, or the number of program offices reduced, that the “complexity” and “scope” of their own civil service job classifications could be reduced, and their positions could be downgraded or eliminated.5 This would be the equivalent of willingly working for your own demotion or termination.

This previous discussion is the root cause of the continuing failure to find a way to cut waste from government without resorting to across-the-board cuts. Even though it is widely agreed that when there is “fat in government” it should be removed precisely within the pockets and veins where it exists, and without resort to a “meat axe,” that almost never happens. It almost never happens because those who know where fat exists have absolutely no incentive to report it. They also have a great deal of fear about coming forward with that information. The recommendations in this book will change that!

At the same time, the voting public only sees the end result of their mismanaged government, a series of sub-optimized systems that seem perennially unable to achieve efficiency, effectiveness, and common sense. There is no way to insist on quality management in government, or to remove elected officials who do not achieve quality, when its presence is invisible.

The primary purpose of these Auditable Standards for Government is to make the presence of quality in government measurable and auditable, so the existence of competent management in government branches, programs, bureaus, and departments is completely transparent. These guidelines make this possible through an objective, defined, and auditable process certification guideline, as its base.

Because key processes are fundamental to every office and bureau, no matter how small, this auditable process management standard makes it possible for each manager and supervisor to develop a report card on their management practice. Uniform audits using the standard can be performed across all types of government, and at all levels.

A classic management book of the past identified a fundamental problem of meetings called to discuss public sector issues that it called “the multi-headed animal syndrome.”6 It was described as a tendency of groups gathered for discussion of a single issue to “go off in all directions at once,” so that the participants even forget why they first gathered. A political discourse suffering from the multi-headed animal syndrome can easily proceed from a single initial issue—such as whether to establish a cross walk at a particular location—to a variety of surrounding matters, such as speed limits, whether police adequately patrol the area, whether the city can afford it, and who might be hired to do the work. Without an agreed-upon purpose for a meeting, any solution will do, and the debate can go in circles for hours without anything being done.

This explains why the past discussions of cutting waste in government go in circles. It is because there is no shared agenda on which to base discussion, and there is no objective standard supporting a review. Implementation of an auditable standard will provide a beginning point for change because it will (ultimately) provide an agreed-upon list of priorities for that government jurisdiction, a scorecard to show how well each priority is addressed, and an efficiency and effectiveness score for each agency charged with accomplishment of that scorecard. With this information, the areas for action will be clear. It will then allow hired public-sector managers to apply proven methods of quality science and process management to deliver value and achieve the intended purpose of government.7

The book is intended to provide a means for government at all levels to focus on what is most important, and to provide value, efficiency and effectiveness in what our government agrees to provide. Society is currently witness to a clash of parties and institutions on a broad scale, that has spawned a chaotic mélange of criticism, litigation, and advocacy that trumps leadership and spurns good management in many ways—the multi-headed animal syndrome. It threatens the core of the good that is at the heart of our democracy. It is the Christmas present and Christmas future of our nation unless something is done about it, and this book will map the “something” that is needed.

It must be recognized that many political advocates see the solution to our current problem as the elimination of government. And while there are valid reasons to limit the overall spending on the public sector, it is acknowledged that government brings a unique value to society that no other entity can provide. For example, we would all suffocate in pollution but for the agency of government.

However, the focus on unleashing the potential value of our government is being lost. It would seem that the debate over limiting government has been much more successful at diverting the public attention away from obtaining best value from government, and much more successful on attacking its apparent cost, and some specific programs. In many circles people are only interested in discussing what government should not do, rather than what it can do or what it is there to accomplish.

The necessity of government was perhaps best described by Abraham Lincoln when he said that government exists to do those essential works that no one man can do, or will do, for himself. While those who attack government generally favor what they might call “natural rights,” it is in fact government that defines and protects those natural rights within groups of people that might not be inclined to do so. Government protects our right to property, both through maintaining property titles, and defending claims against those who would prevent or impair our use of property through the courts, and through the enforcement of court orders by the local police department! Clearly, government is an enabler and a partner to our private sector, and not a competitor for its resources.

With that said, those who can only complain about the high tax rates we pay should instead ask themselves if they would rather live and operate a business in the Congo or Somalia,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Transforming Government
• About the Author
• Chapter 1 The Problem and the Promise
• Chapter 2 Quality as a Backbone
• Chapter 3 The Process Management Standard and the Unifying Theory of Work
• Chapter 4 Using the Process Management Standard
• Chapter 5 Structured System Management
• Chapter 6 Using the Structured System Management Standard
• Chapter 7 Aligned Leadership Objectives
• Chapter 8 Auditable Standards as a Catalyst for the Future
• Chapter 9 Four Necessary Strategies
• Chapter 10 Supportive Culture and Values
• Appendix A: System Management Standard
• Index