This week, Debra Cammer Hines, our Vice President of Public Sector Consulting, shared her perspective on detailed approaches that will drive cost savings across the Federal government.  She outlined the potential savings realized if we:

• Streamline supply chains
• Apply advanced analytics to eliminate improper payments and vastly improve the return on deployed assets -- to name just a few applications of advance analytics
• Improve key operations -- consolidate field operations and IT services, cut energy expenses, streamline back office operations, and make businesses that should pay for themselves actually pay for themselves

Dan Prieto, our Public Sector Strategy Consulting Leader, shared his views on the kind of leadership steps and accountability measures that would be needed to ensure that the cost savings are realized quickly and in a manner that is transparent to citizens.  Specifically, Dan recommended that a leadership body be created to oversee performance improvement and cost reduction measures and to support cross Department sharing of savings, operations, and lessons learned.

As our team continues to share tangible, proven, implementable recommendations – the very “how” that Federal leaders can identify actionable performance improvements in their organizations – I continue to return to our initial premise: real value will only be created by enhancing mission effectiveness and improving the performance of government. 

It is these types of structural changes in government that will drive value by improving the performance of government while reducing costs.  If in five years deficits are reduced but the core missions of government are less effective, we will have failed as a government and our global competitiveness will be significantly diminished.  The budget challenges of the coming years provide an impetus to adopt practices that will dive down cost while improving performance.  It is this very premise that has fueled enormous performance improvement in corporations and enlightened governments globally over the last two decades.

In the coming weeks we will focus on the seven performance improvement initiatives identified in Debra Cammer’s post.  We will describe proven capabilities that could comprise these initiatives, their applicability to government and examples of how corporations and governments have applied these capabilities to dramatically improve performance, reducing cost and, most importantly, enhance mission effeteness.  

Certainly, changes in supply chains and technology will have a dramatic impact on outcomes and mission – Steve Kelman’s article this week shares some solid perspective about the impact of agile procurement on users and technology organizations.  I know that others have presented various proposals to reduce the deficit, including an article by Ed O’Keefe at the Washington Post that outlines the opportunity for savings as identified by agencies themselves.

As always, I look for your feedback.  Please join the discussion here, follow us on Twitter #fedcostcut, or join us at Linked In.

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