The Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI) is a new Center-Right, non-partisan, 501c(3) think tank in Delaware. A week or so ago, it was in the news for posting a well-crafted, searchable database of all State spending and payroll. Today, they issued a release stating that they had made a Freedom of Information (FOIA) Request of the Governor’s Chief of Staff, Tom McGonigle, asking for an update on the performance audits being conducted by 6 loaned, private-sector, senior executives.
We know that in March at the Delware State Chamber of Commerce manufacturing celebration, DEDO Director, Alan Levin, stated that these audits were on-going and that “you wouldn’t believe the duplication in this government.” Well, it’s been 4 months since then (and 7 months since the audits started). We also know that the Governor’s tax increase proposals were much higher than what the General Assembly agreed to. Furthermore, we know that the Governor was forced to agree to guarantee that 500 State jobs would be vacated by attrition, but refused to consider Senator Bonini’s plan for a voluntary Employee Reduction Plan which could have eliminated 3,000 jobs. It would be good to know why he fought so hard against reducing State employment and for tax increases. What’s the status of these audits?
The CRI blog post can be found here. The full text is included below.
Where is the open government?
July 15, 2009 by garrettwozniak
Following the 2009 legislative session, the Caesar Rodney Institute submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to Governor Markell’s office requesting an update and any results of the Governor’s performance audits, which the Governor has cited in recent days and weeks. CRI delayed its request until after the last minute deal-making of the session had come to an end. The request was sent to Markell’s chief of staff Thomas McGonigle both in email and in hard copy form. Sadly, over ten days have gone by and Mr. McGonigle has not even acknowledged receipt of the FOIA. This week, CRI re-submitted the request, again with no response. Follow up phone messages to Mr. McGonigle also went un-returned.
The lack of response to these requests for an update on the progress/status of the performance audits are troubling at best. Since the end of the legislative session, Governor Markell has announced plans to eliminate the Department of Finance by merging its duties and employees into other government agencies. It is likely that this move was made because something indicated to the Governor and his team that such a move would help right-size state government in light of the ongoing economic dilemma and the expected worsening of the state’s fiscal troubles in coming years. Knowing where the performance audits stand and more importantly, implementing the recommendations are key to getting Delaware on the right track. Whats more, the sooner the findings are released to the public, the sooner Delawareans can provide input and feedback on any proposed changes.
The non-response from the Governor’s office may indicate that either the audits are not ongoing or that he is unwilling to share this information.
The audits are a much needed undertaking for the state and the Caesar Rodney Institute is very much interested in the Governor’s findings. We want to see where cost savings can be made beyond the elimination of the Department of Finance. The sooner the results of the audits are made public, the sooner the public can examine them and weigh in. We eagerly await the administration’s honoring of our FOIA request so that the public at large can continue to assist the Governor through this time of remarkable change.
Charlie,
I agree with you and the importance of the performance audit process and we should be extremely pleased with the fact that the Markell administration is moving forward with this effort…his predecessor had no clue and was incapable “counting” let alone measurement! Frankly, we’d all like it to be much further along, but the fact that it is being done and “ownership” of the process has been assigned, makes the opportunity for positive results that much better. As I understand it, they plan to use the Division of Corporations as the mode for the performance measurement criteria. With Rick Geisenberger leading the effort, there is no better example of performance-based metrics than the Division! This dates, in it’s earliest application, to the DuPont admin and the Kenton SOS era. It has only gotten better since then! I’m particularly pleased with the fact that this effort will be rolled out agency/state wide. Have you ever visited the basement of the Townsend Building and seen the incredible charts that display Division results? It should make every Republican happy…even better, it provides a true foundation for pay for performance. This is something I can support wholeheartedly!
Markell would be nuts to allow hostile critics to second-guess the audits before they are done. The auditors have the right to conduct their audits in a professional manner without political pressure and carping and whining. There will be plenty of time to review the reports when they are published.
I don’t know the fine points of FOIA, but assuming Markell has a legal leg to stand on in ignoring the requests for a work in progress – I say Well done, Jack.
noman, can you read?
CRI didn’t ask for a rough draft or a copy of the auditors notes. They asked for an update, a progress report. It’s been over six months, how far along are they, when will the report be published.
your knee jerk defense of every D is getting silly.
I’m more worried about your reading. The CRI press release asked for “an update and any results.”
Go ask Tom Wagner for an “update and results” on any of his audits in progress and tell me what he says.
As I understand FOIA, it is a request to produce documents… so if no document exists, then there’s nothing to turn over. FOIA does not oblige the government to create new documents.
I too am curious about the status of the audits. It would be nice to have a description of what kind of audits are being done along with a timeline. Maybe a more tactful approach would have produced some of that information.
More cynically, it is possible CRI knew there were no documents available and sent the inappropriate FOIA just to gin up some controversy.
It will absolutely kill you guys when the report comes out along with proposed solutions. You will do backflips trying to claim you forced Markell to do it.
noman:
The Administration didn’t respond, zilch, nada, zippo…. period. Not even a “We received your request, thanks.” They ignored even the fact that the request was made. So you did indeed have just a knee-jerk reaction.
By the way, after my post and the Caesar Rodney Institute’s publicity, CRI received the following:
Sunshine is indeed the best policy. Blind partisanship is not.
This was a setup by CRI from the get-go. At first I thought I was just being cynical. But the more I look at it, the more I am convinced this press release was a laughable act of demagoguery. Shame on you Charlie for buying into it.
The 10-day timeframe for acknowledging a FOIA request is standard, although in certain circumstances it may be longer.
CRI knew the 10-day window starting June 29 included the long holiday weekend, with lawyers and staffers out of town, and that the state would be unable to round up the info in that timeframe, or even to return phone calls.
Plus, the audits as you acknowledge are being done by loaned executives working according to their private-sector schedule, probably including their own vacations as well, so they would not necessarily all be available either to consult on the response.
Meanwhile CRI was hovering vulture-like, waiting for the 10 days to expire and drafting its gotcha letter. And 16 days later, on July 15, the gotcha letter was posted on the CRI blog.
Given the timeline, there is no reason at all to believe that the Governor’s July 16 response was in any way related to this post or the CRI blog post.
Pretending that the Governor’s office was stonewalling, and that CRI is holding his feet to the fire, is one of the most childish things we have seen in Delaware for a long time.
noman:
Also, you mention Tom Wagner. Once again, you are talking about things about which you seem to have total ignorance. Have you ever done a performance audit? How about an accounting audit? They are totally different things. I’ve done dozens of performance audits and been the recipient of dozens of accounting audits.
A trained consultant doing a performance audit can do a decent sized office (or workflow) in about 3 days. Call it a week with introductions, and closeout. There are 6 auditors. They’ve been doing this for ~30 weeks. Assume 2 people per audit team, and you’ve got ~90 audits. Starting with low-hanging fruit and the fact that this is government, call it 30 audits of some of the State’s most inefficient offices. By now, these should have been completed — and should have been implemented. Saving the taxpayer money and re-assigning inefficient employees to more efficient tasks. A win-win.
Yet…. nothing. You call this a set up? Vulture-like? The Administration brings in 6 loaned executives in January with great fanfare to reduce the size of government, and you blame a non-profit think tank with 2 employees for a set up? Quit whining. Geez…
Charlie – you don’t seem to know what you are talking about. It is pretty clear that there will be efficiencies to gain by consolidating functions. Which means that you have to finish ALL the performance audits and then look at the system as a whole.
Your theory about implementing solutions as one-offs in each existing office is an old-school theory that is completely ignorant of the modern practice of Business Process Reengineering.
Actually I do several kinds of audits including performance audits, and 3 days isn’t even enough time to order sandwiches. Seriously, the first thing you have to do is document the EXISTING process; which takes weeks to months, depending on the operation. Only then can you begin to recommend new systems and processes.
noman:
As one who has won an international award in process improvement within the printing industry within the last 14 months, I think that my credibility in this issue is not an issue. In addition, your theory that you need to identify all performance improvements before you can implement as “old-school” is also incorrect and foolish. You can document process and information flows within a two day period and implement on day 3. I recommend that you contact the Delaware Manufacturers Extension Partnership (DEMEP) and take their lean manufacturing 101 class.
“3 days isn’t even enough time to order sandwiches” — ahhh, you must work for government. We order sandwiches in just a few minutes. I can see where you must milk your clients and can see why you like to remain anonymous.
You can document process and information flows within a two day period and implement on day 3.
FAIL.
When the report comes out we can remind these loaned executives of your “three-day” comment and all share a good laugh. Hey, you probably know most of them.
a new Center-Right, non-partisan, 501c(3) think tank in Delaware. A week or so ago, it was in the news for posting a well-crafted, searchable database of all State spending and payroll. Today, they
they? Non Partisan? Center right? how is that possible?
who is they actually? (wink, wink)
[…] […]
Nice spelling at Delaware Liberal. Anyway, this above link does give me good reason to update that the Administration did release a report (as a result of the Caesar Rodney Institute’s efforts) to the news media a couple of weeks ago. The Administration received the report in May from the Audit team. I don’t know if the report was posted on the State’s website or not as I received an email PDF copy of the report. There were about $60 million worth of savings for 2010 and 2011. $35 million included in 2010 leaving $25 million in 2011.
The report does not actually discuss performance audits and re-engineering efforts in any detail. So the real cost savings by identifying redundant activities and out-of-date procedures is still missing. The cover page to the report states: “A second report detailing single-agency and cross-enterprise cost savings and new non-tax revenue opportunities for potential implementation in future budgets will be delivered to you in the weeks ahead.”
Note it says “weeks” not months. The report was issued to the Governor in May — 3 months ago. However, no word on the second report.
(BTW, the following link is to the DEMEP with additional links to the American Society for Quality — just in case you want more detail on process improvement and performance audits: http://www.demep.org/serv-leanent.html). We’ve been using these tools for over a decade, and they are a key reason why we are a global leader in our field.
The report does not actually discuss performance audits and re-engineering efforts in any detail. So the real cost savings by identifying redundant activities and out-of-date procedures is still missing.
It doesn’t discuss it because it isn’t supposed to.
The redundant/out-of-date analysis is NOT missing. It is scheduled to be delivered in the second phase of the project. That is clearly stated in the Governor’s report, in detail. This is a multi-year, multi-phase project, and the high level steps are spelled out.
The May report released by the Governor was Phase 1 and was a hurry-up effort to quickly identify savings that could be implemented in the FY2010 budget.
More information about the nature of the Governors’s performance review project is here:
omb.delaware.gov/information/performance_review.shtml
and the announcement of the release of the Phase 1 report is here:
governor.delaware.gov/news/2009/07july/20090717-gprreleased.shtml
Charlie, the Governor is way ahead of you. Please familarize yourself with the project at least as much as I have done. It only took me a little bit of reading.
I think you also need to recognize you are not the only one with project management experience and quality process training. Many of your readers including myself also have this kind of experience, some of which is much broader than your manufacturing-oriented exposure. So come off it and stop pretending you are the only one who knows anything.
October 15th — still waiting.