Government Technology - August 2007 - (Page 40)

Minimizing Culture Shock All state IT workers in Utah technically work for the DTS, but maintain the same relationships with their prior agencies by remaining in those agencies’ offices. Agencies found this approach made the transition less of a culture shock, said Gregory Gardner, deputy director of the Utah Department of Workforce Services. Some IT employees changed locations to become the DTS’s upper-management team. Gardner said he was initially skeptical of the power shift. “We had a really close relationship between IT and our business users — we had built some great applications — so we were concerned that a huge, monolithic organization would be built and we would lose those onthe-ground relationships,” Gardner recalled. “But when Steve [Fletcher] came on and handled the transition As part of the DTS’s transition, 91 percent process by visiting all of the agenof its employees were cies, understanding the needs of the converted from merit executive directors, keeping the IT career service to at-will employees located within the agenemployees to create cies and having a very incremental organizational ﬂexway to make changes, it proved that ibility, according to the the fears were unfounded.” Utah state Web site. Gardner said he supported the power shift after Fletcher demonstrated his commitment to substantively including agency input in the decision-making process. “One thing Steve did before he formed the new department, he conducted an extensive process with the executive directors, laying out all of their initial business requirements or business needs for the new department. He actually produced a report and used that as guidance to move forward.” Fletcher produced the state’s first set of written, formalized service-level metrics, which gave it a standard to measure itself against, Gardner said. “We did day-one service-level agreements, which were really a reflection of the existing service-level agreements, but they had never been written down. They were unstated.” Fletcher said this approach helped sharpen the DTS’s vision. “We are able to focus on the results the agencies want us to achieve, and it gives us a great scorecard,” he said. “It gives us our objectives, helps us eliminate anecdotal information and have better conversations with our agencies.” Gardner said the DTS can’t completely standardize the state’s desktop management process because several agencies use custom applications. The DTS will form a specialization team to manage a large portion of desktop maintenance throughout the state, but the IT workers residing in individual agencies will to continue maintaining custom applications, he said. Since the DTS controls all state IT employees, individual agencies can reach outside IT workers in addition to those already located in their offices to help develop new custom applications. The agency negotiates a billing rate with the DTS to pay for the extra help. “We’ve made a commitment not to disrupt services,” Gardner said. “If there is a change, it’s going to improve services, and it’s going to be more cost-effective. Steve has been careful to make change incrementally. We’re all fully apprised of the change. We have the opportunity to comment on it and shape it.” Fletcher recruited Gardner to help with the transition. “I was in kind of a unique situation,” Gardner recalled. “I worked half of the time for our department, and the other half for Steve on the transition team. I helped Steve visit agencies and write up the findings. We got to help define the management structure. I was in charge of the organizational work group that helped define his organization structure for day one. He was really inclusive.” Forfeiting the Safety Net Legislators sought to make Fletcher’s staff adjustment more flexible by eliminating the bureaucratic hurdles to firing employees. “If someone was hired 25 years ago,” Clark said, “that may not be the best person to be doing up-to-date technology today.” But merit status made unfit employees difficult to fire. If an employee had merit status, he or she could appeal a disciplinary action on five different levels before the state enacted it. AUG_07 But many think merit status is outdated, said Charles Woods, a managing director with SMART Business Advisory and Consulting, adding that it appeared in government roughly 70 years ago to produce stable government employment. Before that, each time a new governor took office, he or she typically brought his or her own army of employees. Many would lose their jobs with gubernatorial changes. “The merit system came about for people who weren’t involved in elections, who were competent, who wanted to be professional employees with state government when the administration changed,” Woods said. “That was the sole purpose of civil protection, decades ago.” Woods said that culture no longer existed for most state jobs. “There’s kind of a generational push to say, ‘We really don’t need civil service.’ It’s like unions. A lot of people feel, in the case of IT, it hinders recruitment, which is highly competitive.” Woods added that removing merit status also lets states hire people more quickly. Fletcher and the Legislature developed a strategy to remove that merit status without mass hostility from agencies. “We did not require everyone to forgo their merit status,” Clark said. “But we did offer incentives to those willing to do so. We wanted a carrot approach.” Each employee who gave up his or her merit status received a three-step pay increase. Gardner said it amounted to roughly 8 percent. “It hasn’t been used in a negative way,” Gardner said. “If there is someone needing new skills, Steve is committed to offering training resources to get the job done — not just throwing somebody out.” Fletcher said he needed IT technicians who were familiar with new programming languages, like Java or .NET. Many current Utah programmers use COBOL, which the state is eliminating. Fletcher said he preferred to train those COBOL programmers as Java or .NET programmers, rather than laying them off and hiring new people. He said training people new to working in government was more expensive than retraining seasoned employees because they already understand government culture. More than 90 percent of the employees chose to forfeit their merit status. “It has been a healthy thing because you’re more motivated to do a good job,” Gardner said. “You’re motivated to keep your skills current. Plus you get paid more, so it has been a win-win.” 40 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - August 2007

Contents Point of View The Big Picture The Last Mile Letter to the Editor GT Spectrum Up Close Vanishing Act Way Back Machine Fast Track to Nowhere Best of Both Worlds Texting 911? GIS to Go Neighborhood Watch Two Cents Products Signal: Noise Government Solutions

Government Technology - August 2007

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