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Bureau/Division Director’s Meeting

June 29, 2005

Commissioner’s Conference Room

                                                                        

 

The following are points of interest that were discussed at the Bend the Curve portion of the Bureau/Division Director’s meeting on Wednesday, June 29, 2005.

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  • The Commissioner asked that the Directors make a list of measures to follow to ensure the Department is on target with the BTC Initiative.  The Department needs to be able to prove we are providing better service to the citizens of Maine with fewer resources.
  • Arthur Davis led a discussion on the subject and distributed a paper prepared by John Dorrer, entitled Communicating Performance for a Public Audience:  The Basic and Consistent Message from MDOL.
  • Charts were distributed on measuring the Input, Process and Output to help track how resources are measured, how providing better services are measured and how everything is tracked.
  • The consensus is to keep it all as simple as possible so legislators and the citizens of Maine will know what we’re talking about.
  • The six Measures agreed upon were:
    • Identify primary and secondary customers
    • Process –delivery
    • Public mission
    • Public money, state and federal
    • External boundaries -in the Mission Statement and Strategic Plan and Goals of BTC
    • Improvement – seeking input from customers to determine value.
  • The five goals of the BTC will be addressed again at the next meeting.
  • The Commissioner wants to have a monthly check-in on the measurements and goals and to make adjustments as necessary
  • The Budget and Comprehensive Planning VSM was presented to the Directors.
  • Members of the Team present were Kim Smith, Dale Sturtevant, Kathy Weymouth, Judy Williams, Mike Cunningham and Andy Drouin.
  • Technical systems and the culture have to change in order for their recommendations to be implemented.
  • Have identified a number of Kaizens with which the Senior Managers need to be involved:
    • Updated Strategic Plan
    • Common Budget System
    • Project Management
    • Budget Management (Financial Project Review)
  • A projected saving of $713,055 can be realized through decreased staff time associated with developing budgets.
  • A time-line for the future state will be set up and revenues will be put toward the future state and not wasted on the current state. 
  • A discussion followed the presentation.
  • Jill Duson, Dennis Corliss and Kim Smith will form a committee to determine what is doable now and what can wait until later.
  • Work must be done to standardize across Bureaus.
  • Bureau Directors need to make a commitment to make it happen.
  • Directors were requested to assign resources to department level work.
  • The VSM Team felt that their CI-P facilitator, Michele Grant, made a significant difference in getting the VSM accomplished.