What Happened?
Hamilton County, Ohio, continues to sustain a long-term government cooperation and efficiency project aiming to optimize resource use, reduce costs with consolidated or shared services and increase cross-jurisdictional cooperation.
So What?
Hamilton County’s shared services efficiency project is one of many models being used nationwide to support local governments in lowering costs without cutting services, while improving the delivery of services to residents. The immediate goal of the program is to cut costs, while the long-term endpoint is to create government efficiencies that allow municipalities to compete with other communities worldwide while maintaining political autonomy.
How It Works
The efficiency program is funded by Hamilton County, the city of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Business Committee. Municipalities in Hamilton County can voluntarily participate in the program, teaming up with efficiency experts from Management Partners, Inc. The consultants guide local officials on how to form cost-efficient strategies and delivery models. The consultants specifically:
- Interview local officials to brainstorm ideas
- Support collaboration and shared services
- Discuss potential strategies with working groups
- Analyze cooperation efforts
- Create action plans for both short and long-term programs
- Draft cooperation agreements for partnering governments
Best Practices
The government cooperation and efficiency project underscores how important highly functional services are to communities, and that they must be protected while reducing costs. When services are shared or consolidated:
- Local control should be maintained
- Keep departments small
- Maintain quality of programs for residents
What Consultants Offer
Management Partners, Inc., and other similar efficiency expert organizations, work with local governments to reevaluate operations to improve performance and resource management through detailed processes and metrics:
- Operations improvement: apply best practices into unique communities, streamline processes to save money, improve customer service
- Strategic planning: define essential outcomes and performance expectations, rethink the definition of success in the community, match priorities with resources, clarify strategies to better achieve goals, instill confidence in the future of the organization
- Service sharing: identify opportunities, implementation planning, transition to a new delivery model
- Financial planning/budgeting: budget strategies, expenditure analysis, capital plans, organizational structure optimization, fee schedule review, alternative service delivery models
- Organization analysis: perform organizational reviews of departments and governments, address performance of different disciplines for a thorough review
- Organization development: create feedback instruments to improve service and play up strengths, collaborate with staff and officials to create a teamwork environment
- Performance management: use outcome-based measures to demonstrate organization performance, be accountable for how resources are used, implement communication and reporting mechanisms to share success stories with the community
- Process improvement: systematically examine business processes, identify areas of weakness, collaborate on possible solutions
- Facilitation and training: conflict management workshops, customer service training, employee feedback training, executive coaching, performance measurement training
- Interim management: expertise and stability when senior executives leave an organization, temporary leadership until replacement is hired and transitioned
- Executive recruitment: guide the search for highly-skilled executives that demonstrate high ethical standards through extensive reach of search and hiring support staff and resources
Other Consolidation Efforts
Gov1 has been following similar consolidation programs that cut costs and maintain services.