The State’s Drive to Excellence
With a little common sense and a lot of organization, Minnesota Department of Administration Commissioner Dana Badgerow is using Lean techniques to save Minnesota millions of dollars
To stream line the process of government-wide services and buying in the face of ever-tightening state budget constraints, Gov. Tim Pawlenty persuaded Badgerow to return to her role as commissioner of the Department of Administration in October 2004. Badgerow, who served as commissioner under Gov. Arne Carlson from 1991 to 1993, was charged with improving customer service within the government and increasing services, all while reducing costs—no easy task in an organization with 25 independently run agencies each making its own buying decisions.
Over the past four years, Badgerow—who most recently worked as vice president of global operations and customer access at Honeywell—and a team of eight state commissioners have used lean concepts to eliminate wasteful spending in a program called “Drive to Excellence.” In early 2007, the Drive team recruited the help of Enterprise Minnesota to provide lean training and develop what Badgerow calls proof that lean enterprise techniques could be effective in government.
“The lean principles are, for the most part, common sense,” she says. “All you really have to do is know your own process. If you go through a methodical analysis of that process, you can eliminate waste.”
To date, the Drive team has already completed four of 13 initial projects, including consolidating building codes among all buildings in the state, streamlining the IT system across the agencies and creating a Web site dedicated to Minnesota’s disability programs (www. mndisability.gov).
A standardized process for purchasing laptop and desktop computers has already saved the state $110 million. By buying in bulk, Badgerow’s team negotiated discounts of as much as 44 percent over the prices previously paid by the state. State agencies saved upward of $50 million more through additional vendor negotiations. In fact, the Secretary of State’s office achieved $1 million in savings on the purchase of disability-enabled voting machines alone.
K-12 public school districts are also taking advantage of the state’s bulk-rate purchasing. Badgerow says the savings on computers and other school district purchases have been enough to retain teachers that might otherwise have been let go.
Badgerow says the state government’s success with lean training has been “absolutely incredible.” Thirteen agencies have embraced the lean culture, conducting Kaizen events—events or activities to improve a work process. Throughout the course of Drive, the Drive team has consulted with and received help from Target Corporation, General Mills, Ecolab, Hormel and HealthPartners. Drive has also been praised by Computerworld magazine for consolidating the state government’s IT services, and it is a nominee for both the State Governance Transformation Award and the 2008 CSG Innovations Award from the Council of State Governments in Lexington, Ky.