Archive
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Document Name: States, Locals, & Other Partners (9 of 23)
Date: 09/01/94
Owner: National Performance Review
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Title: Standards for Our Customers: States, Locals, & Other Partners (9 of 23)
Author: Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review
Date: September, 1994
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CUSTOMER GROUP: States, Localities, and Other Partners
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Improving our service to state and local government offices is good
for us, good for you, and good for the public we both serve.
-- Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala
John Dryer of Boeing, charged with helping 19,000 laid-off workers
find new jobs, was apprehensive about working with the Employment and
Training Administration of the Department of Labor in Seattle,
Washington. He expected "a lot of bureau-cratic paperwork and red
tape." But his experience turned out to be quite different. "From our
first meeting with Region Ten, it was clear that things had changed,"
he said. "They demonstrated their first priority was customer
service. . . . It's just been fantastic to see the partnership that
has been established between the union, the company, the state
government, the federal government."
Partnership? Partners as customers? These are new and difficult ideas
in the federal government, but they are central to the customer
service revolution. In areas as diverse as Medicaid and highways, the
federal government provides dollars -- an estimated $217 billion in
grants to states and localities in the last 12 months. However, it is
non-federal and even non-governmental organizations that actually
deliver these services to the millions of individuals and families
who benefit. In other cases, as with Boeing's dislocated workers,
there are multiple sources of funding and resources for related
services.
The numbers of people receiving benefits through such partnerships
are enormous. Last year:
--- 34 million people received Medicaid benefits.
--- 27 million people received food stamps.
--- 25 million children were fed school lunches.
--- 14 million children and families received financial assistance.
--- 11 million students got college loans or grants.
--- 8 million workers received unemployment benefits.
--- 7.5 million elderly were given support through such programs as
Meals on Wheels.
--- 6 million children were fed school breakfasts.
The customer-driven approach to such programs paid off in Seattle.
The partners are delighted. They have worked together, broken down
barriers, solved problems, and established a pair of one-stop
reemployment service centers. The affected workers are even more
pleased. Karen Ayers, who had been laid off after 13 years with
Boeing, likened the services offered at the one-stop centers to a
shopping mall for unemploy-ment services: "It took the pain out of
being unemployed."
While progress is real in Seattle, most of the time state, local, and
tribal governments and other nongovernmental entities don't feel much
like partners of the federal government, much less customers. As one
state official observed, the intergovernmental system for delivering
services has "broken down in a tangle of good intentions. . . . [It]
stifles initiative and squanders resources without achieving
sufficient results." The National Performance Review concluded, "The
failure to see the intergovernmental system from the perspective of
the citizen-customer . . . perpetuates inefficiency and wastes time,
effort, and money."
Things Are Starting To Change
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Federal agencies are starting to rethink their relationships with
their partners. They are starting to listen to them. They are
starting to work together to set standards for their mutual
customers. And they are starting to cut through the red tape that can
be so frustrating and costly to their partners.
The Department of Health and Human Services relies on its partners --
state, local, and tribal governments, a range of grantees and
contractors, and many others -- to deliver services as diverse as
Head Start and Medicaid. Alan Rivlin, a member of the department's
customer service team, describes its approach to reinventing its
relationship with its partners: "First, we improve service to our
partners -- listening to their views, giving them timely accurate
information, and so on. Second, we work with our partners to get
input from the ultimate customers we serve jointly, so that together
we can deliver the quality service they deserve."
The same approach can work for other agencies. The Employment
Training Administration is building on its experience in Seattle and
elsewhere. It is developing customer service plans and standards for
dislocated workers with its state and local partners in 100 "pioneer
sites."
The Department of Education sees state and local government,
educational institutions, teachers, parents, and businesses as its
partners in a common mission: ensuring excellence in and access to
education for their customers -- learners of all ages. The department
is listening to its partners. Two messages come through loud and
clear: reduce overly burdensome paperwork and give partners more
timely responses. Change is coming: States can use a two-page
application for funding under the new Goals 2000: Educate America
Act, and they can expect written responses within 15 days of
applying.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development also works primarily
through partners -- in its case, states, local governments, public
housing authorities, and nonprofit organizations. The Office of
Community Planning and Development looks to its front-line employees
to work with communities to prepare community development plans. The
office encourages giving local partners all possible flexibility. It
also set a standard for timeliness that should please its partners
who submit plans for approval: "The plan will be deemed approved 60
days after the department receives the plan, unless before that date,
the department has notified the jurisdiction otherwise."
The Environmental Protection Agency is working with one of its
partners, the State of Massachusetts, to combine three different
federally mandated inspections into one. Instead of three inspectors
and three inspections -- one each for air, water and waste -- the new
flexible plan lets Massachusetts use a single inspector. This saves
time, paper-work, and money for the state and reduces aggravation for
the site owners.
Although these individual agencies are making important efforts,
partners and their customers often don't deal just with a single
federal agency or program. Taking the perspective of the customer in
these cases means involving several agencies to simplify the way the
customer interacts with the federal government overall.
Reducing Red Tape
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Cutting across bureaucratic lines to slash red tape and get the job
done is hard work. Nevertheless, this must happen to make customer
service a reality. There are some promising starts.
As in most big cities, many people in Atlanta, Georgia, are eligible
for several benefits, such as Medicaid, food stamps, and housing. To
apply for the various benefits, they had to travel around the city
from one agency to another, wait in long lines, and puzzle through a
different application form for each program.
But now, Atlanta's Common Access Project team has created a single,
all-purpose application covering six programs. The team, composed of
federal and state people from these programs, reduced 64 pages of
forms to eight; they're working to get it even shorter. They trained
counselors to help people fill out the forms. The counselors even go
out to the neighborhoods so that people can apply right in their
homes. The Common Access Project is just starting, but customers have
already been surprised and pleased to learn they only need to fill
out a single form to apply for several programs.
In South Dakota, an intergovernmental panel is working with the
Ogalala Sioux Tribe to try to reinvent service delivery. The Bureau
of Indian Affairs has asked all federal agencies to explore one-stop
shopping for the tribal governments that deal with them. Although it
is still early, the idea of one-stop shopping could lead to a single
application and funding package for more than 28 federal programs
that provide services to 2 million American Indian people through
their tribal governments.
Congress is also beginning to recognize the need to reduce the burden
that separate federal funding streams, with their separate reporting
and administrative requirements, can impose on states, local, and
tribal governments. The School to Work Opportunities Act is an
innovative effort to work with states to give kids the skills they
need to go on in school, get jobs, and start careers. The act lets
states combine funds from several federal programs in the Departments
of Education and Labor under some conditions. It also lets the
secretaries of those departments waive certain statutory and
regulatory requirements to achieve the purposes of the act.
Forming New Partnerships
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Some states are taking the initiative to make the state/federal
relationship work better. Indiana and West Virginia have made plans
to consolidate services to children and families. Indiana wants, for
example, to coordinate nearly 200 federal programs in six different
federal departments. Both states have sought and obtained endorsement
from President Clinton for their plans.
In Oregon, state, county, and local governments have been working as
partners for several years to agree on and work to achieve such
urgent statewide goals as child immunization, educational
achievement, and teenage pregnancy prevention. Now, Oregon has asked
federal agencies to be partners to achieve these goals. State, local,
and federal officials are looking for ways to cut through unnecessary
red tape, use existing resources more effectively, and improve the
performance of programs aimed at achieving these results.
These cases are only examples. However, they are examples to build
on, and as they succeed, extend to other partners. The key to their
success will lie in keeping the focus on the ultimate customers.
President Clinton said as much when he endorsed the Indiana and West
Virginia plans: "Govern-ments don't raise children; families do."
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Highlights from Customer Service Standards
Department of Defense
The Department of Defense has set standards that communities whose
bases are closed can count on. For example:
--- An expert from the Office of Economic Adjustment will contact
your community within 24 hours of the community's request for help.
--- If your community needs a planning grant, OEA will help them fill
out the application and then get them an answer within seven days.
--- Your correspondence is answered within two weeks, and all Base
Closure Status Report issues get resolved within one month.
Defense is continuing to refine its standards and to cover additional
areas, including property transfer and environmental cleanup. It will
gather information from all available sources to design a customer-
driven system that produces the fastest, fullest recovery possible.
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Working with Communities to Solve Problems
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Sometimes it is the need to face a common problem that links the
federal government with its partners.
The Conflict Prevention and Resolution Program of the Department of
Justice helps communities prevent and deal with racial, ethnic and
other tension, such as possible conflict associated with the influx
of immigrants or ethnic or racial tensions in schools. Time is of the
essence when tension is mounting or a community is already dealing
with a crisis. The program has set standards that promise communities
on-site services in major racial or ethnic crises within 24 hours of
notification, and at least a contact within three days in non-crisis
situations. (The section on "Law Enforcement" describes this program
more fully.)
Similarly, the Department of Defense is working with communities
affected by Defense downsizing. Military bases drive the economy of
nearby communities; they are often the biggest employers in the
entire state. When a base closes, the local community needs economic
recovery fast. Planned base closings could affect as many as 70
million Americans in communities across the country. The President
and the Defense Department have made economic recovery a top
priority. Their plan for revitalizing base closure communities
consists of five parts: job-centered property disposal, easy access
to transition and redevelopment help, fast-track environmental
cleanup, transition coordinators to cut red tape, and larger economic
development planning grants.
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Your Standards
These agencies and offices are publishing customer service standards
for intergovernmental and other partners. The standards appear in the
"States, Localities, and Other Partners" section of Appendix B.
Department of Defense
Economic Adjustment Assistance
Economic Security
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Department of Energy
Energy Resources
Department of Health and Human Services
Health Care Financing Administration
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Community Planning and Development
Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
Office of Housing/Federal Housing Authority
Department of the Interior
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Office of Territorial and International Affairs
Department of Labor
Employment and Training Administration
Mine Safety and Health Administration
Department of Transportation
National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration
Agency for International Development
Environmental Protection Agency
EPA Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Pollution Prevention and
Toxics
Solid Waste and Emergency Response
Water Grants Management (States and Tribes)
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