The Local Government Efficiency Program (LGEP) offers communities financial assistance to implement projects that create more efficient and effective service delivery. Funding is available for political subdivisions to learn and use Lean Six Sigma to improve an identified process resulting in making services simpler, faster, better and less costly. Communities will be able to save money and provide more effective services to their constituents with assistance from this program.
Lean Six Sigma is a set of principles, a methodology and set of tools to improve business processes with the goal of providing better customer service and saving money. Originating in manufacturing, these methods and tools have been adapted and successfully applied by state government in Ohio, making significant improvements for citizens and taxpayers.
In partnership with the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) LeanOhio team who works with organizations around the state to improve their processes saving both time and money, the Local Government Efficiency Program has the following funds available:
- Process Improvement Grants: The program is designed to make government services simpler, faster, better, and less costly. Projects are to have a process-improvement focus, using the methods and tools of Lean Six Sigma to achieve significant measurable improvement. Examples of process-improvement projects include:
- Speeding up the payment of invoices;
- Improving the timeliness of inspections;
- Streamlining service delivery;
- Reducing errors in an application process; and
- Strengthening inventory control of equipment, parts, or materials
The following factors give a process-improvement project a greater likelihood of success:
- Alignment: The project should align with the agency's mission.
- Customer Focus: The project should address something that's very important to customers. The voice of the customer” should guide the project early on – it can be heard” through a customer survey, focus groups, and customer participation on the improvement team.
- Data-Based Improvement: The team is more likely to be successful if they have baseline data (or plans to gather baseline data). Data provides useful measures and can include process time, cycle times, backlog, work in progress, error rates, and so on. This will help the team measure improvements after new strategies are implemented.
- Ambitious Goals: Teams should strive to eliminate all inefficiencies in the process, such as steps that don't add value, loopbacks, unnecessary handoffs and decisions, wasteful motion and transportation, and so on. Teams should aim to reduce the start-to-finish process time by at least 50 percent. Good use of Lean and Six Sigma tools will make this possible.
- Process Improvement before IT: The best projects achieve process improvement first. Then they identify requirements. And then they move on to IT-powered automation.
- Commitment to Action: Senior leadership must commit to the notion that the action plans from the improvement project will be implemented – and not remain on the shelf as recommendations.
- Burning Platform: Priority should be given to issues that are causing significant customer complaints, taking an excessive amount time, costing large sums of money, and so forth.
- Thinking Beyond the Project: Completing a process-improvement project is just the beginning. The organization can set the stage for more improvements by training staff to learn and use Lean tools in the future.
The Scholarship Program has been suspended due to limited funds. The application will reopen if more funds become available.