Improving Productivity

It’s time to delineate productivity improvements for local governments and schools.

Productivity is certainly a hot topic nowadays. Unfortunately, economists like to describe it as doing more with less, making it sound as if it’s easy to achieve, and any organization can do it. I prefer a more straightforward description of productivity, described as a measure of work an employee performs. I also believe this description is much more appropriate for the public sector, particularly local governments and schools. It’s not perfect, but it allows us to get in the game and to talk about true measures of performance.

In our sector, it’s impossible to measure up like industry does. When their sales decline, they fire or lay off employees. But in the business of local governments, the demand for services doesn't decline when the economy tanks and consumers loose confidence. The kids are still going to show up for school; streets still need to be plowed.

So it’s time for the public sector to create its own description of productivity and performance metrics. And here, technology can be a huge enabler. For example, software technology can improve not only your procurement cycle, but also its quality.

• When you process more requisitions and purchase orders in the same amount of time by eliminating cumbersome or duplicate paperwork, that’s productivity;
• As technology accelerates the procurement cycle, service delivery improves and your customers are more satisfied;
• If you let the software automatically check for budget availability, you prevent over expenditures.

By now, you begin to realize that local governments can get into the game when it comes time to register productivity improvements. Achievements result not by doing more with less, but by doing more with the same-even more better. (The opportunity simply overwhelms my grammar!)

- Roger