Bureau/Division Director’s Meeting

May 11, 2005

Commissioner’s Conference Room

                                                                        

 

The following are points of interest that were discussed at the Bend the Curve portion of the Bureau/Division Director’s meeting on Wednesday, May 11, 2005.

 

• A BTC retreat will be held on June 13 and 14, 2005, at the Augusta Civic Center which will focus on Lean and Lean tools and working on relationships.
• The June 1 and June 8 BTC Agenda will devote time to preparing for the retreat.
• Continuous Improvement Practitioner training will be held June 27 through July 1.  A letter is being edited and will be sent to all employees with an attached job description soon.
• The length of time one must commit to being a Practitioner is a barrier for people volunteering and the issue is under discussion.
• There are 22 VSM Teams now working and the CI Practitioners will do the majority of the training. 
• Bureau Directors need flexibility to negotiate time with their employees. 
• Arthur will analyze the project and provide the minimum amount of time that can be spent and still maintain the service.
• The VSM BRS Service Delivery Team presented their findings to the Steering Committee.  Members present were: Bud Lewis, Louise Sidelinger, Sheryl Smith, Anna Marin, Karen White, Beth Coombs and Everson Stinson.
• The Team focused on the waiting list and how to reduce it and the time waiting. 
• The current waiting period is a little over a year and there are 2,300 people on the list. 
• The demand for services is larger than resources can support.
• The U.S. Government does not fund mandates.
• Most of the recommendations are low cost of no cost and will be implemented.
• They plan to do a pilot in Augusta and Lewiston before going statewide.
• Do an IEP (Individual Employments Plan) that is of greater quality.
• Goal is threefold:  Place client in a job quickly, better match of resources to the client and provide more choices for the client.
• Will have Capitol Computers set up an access database and hope to have volunteers input the data.
• The savings realized by this VSM are more in efficiencies and increased customer service rather than dollars.
• The WIN-202 VSM was also presented with members present being:  Chris Boudreau, Mike Burnett, Penny Henry, Judy Fearing, Eric Dibner and Art Henry.
• The Win-202 is a system used to process employment and wage information for a wide variety of purposes.  It was developed by the Maine Labor Market Information Services office in conjunction with the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and is used by 13 other states, with three more states interested in using it.
• It needs to be reengineered.
• The VSM Team has two goals: Streamlining the process to allow for accessibility for users with special needs, and converting to Progress Version 10, a new software operating system.
• VSM provides the tools to streamline the way projects are being managed and worked on so as to increase output without increasing operating costs.
• The future state will reduce the number of steps from 22 to 18 with staff time reduced from 198,000 minutes to 148,000 minutes per six-month development cycle.
• Objective is to reduce rework and improve first pass yield
• Visit the website at www.WIN-202.org.