Photo by Bob Wiatrolick, staff photographer for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Norma Van Valkenburg, word processing manager at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, facilitates a "quality action team" within the agency trying to find ways to improve its travel voucher process.

The Chicago Public Library as recently as two years ago had a bad reputation for taking six days, sometimes longer, to deliver a book from one of its 80 branches to a patron in another branch. Half of the library's trucks were in repair shops on any given day, and the accumulation of 60 years of bureaucratic procedures made customers grumble but probably assume that's just the way it will always be.

Not so. Major changes began to occur in 1992. Now a customer waits just 24 hours, and in some cases only one hour, for materials from another library. Common sense should have indicated all along that this was possible. But it wasn't until the library implemented quality management techniques that significant changes even seemed possible to library staff. These workers now feel more empowered to help solve problems, thanks to the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM).

Quality, it seems, is now on everyone's mind. "Quality service" is a cliche that rolls off the tongue as easily as apple pie, motherhood and no new taxes. But "quality" hardly seems to be the word that many people utter when reflecting on government services. Maybe, just maybe, that may begin to change as state and local governments grow more interested in customer satisfaction, candid internal reviews of procedures and formal quality training. Quality-based processes such as TQM, which developed first in the business world, have emerged in the public sector in recent years. (See sidebar for an explanation of TQM principles.) The Chicago library initiative was one of six pilot projects of local governments in 1992 that put a premium on quality. These six were part of the Models of Excellence program sponsored by the Government Assistance Project (GAP) of the Chicago Community Trust. Models of Excellence uses TQM principles to teach local government units how to be more customer-driven, service-oriented and quality conscious.

At the state level, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has taken the lead by adopting TQM as guiding principles of operation. "I decided it [TQM] was important for the agency," said director Mary E. Gade, who had positive experiences with TQM while working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Typically, many organizations say they do not have enough time, staff or money to fully carry out their missions. That is why the Chicago Community Trust allocated $150,000 last year for its GAP staff, under Joyce Hollingsworth's direction, to train a hand-picked quality team in each of the six pilot projects, including the Chicago Public Library. The other five pilot projects were in the Chicago Department of Health, the Chicago Department of Human Services, the Chicago Park District, the Cook County Office of the Purchasing Agent and the Chicago Depart-

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ment of Streets and Sanitation. Documenting progress in each case, GAP this year is training an additional 12 TQM teams in Chicago-area local government agencies. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has given $125,000 for this year's effort, with the participating agencies themselves allocating another $210,000.

"We believe people [in government] have the answers to their problems," said Hollingsworth, manager of the Models of Excellence initiative. "So much of government has to do with frontline people who know how to streamline to meet customers' needs if given the opportunity."

Complaints about lack of time, staff and money come out everywhere. "So the point is, what are you going to do about it?" Hollingsworth asks. "How do you go about creating an agenda? How can we make it work? It's often easier to make excuses than to deal with the hard questions. . . . Our whole model is empowering agencies to do this [quality training] themselves." The quality teams spend a lot of time discussing their mission and analyzing root problems. They gather data and draft flow charts of their procedures. "A complete picture emerges as to how things really happen," Hollingsworth said. "They learn from flow charting and problem analysis and immediately apply it and see the benefits. The tool works in every situation."

In times of fiscal constraints, government agencies must learn to satisfy more customers with no increase in budget or staff, according to Chris Kosmos at the Chicago Department of Health. In the early 1990s the health department was struggling unsuccessfully to treat a growing number of patients with sexually transmitted diseases (STD). In 1991 the department's STD clinics turned away 12,000 patients. Kosmos said she has no idea whether these 12,000 returned another day, got treatment elsewhere or received no treatment at all. So in 1992 the health department selected the STD clinics as a pilot project in the Models of Excellence program, and asked Kosmos to be the TQM team leader.

In on-the-job training with a Government Assistance Project facilitator, the health department quality team met once a week for 13 months. They learned the various "tools" of TQM — such as gathering data and flow charting — one at a time. After learning each tool, they went back and applied it to their situation. Seeking data on all of their procedures, the health department team discovered that physicians were spending as little as 10 percent of their time with patients, with the rest allocated to administrative and clerical duties such as lab work, charting and other tasks that could be done by others. Another startling statistic: Only 2 percent of licensed practical nurses' time was spent on patient care. After measuring every aspect of the patient management process, the TQM team redesigned its procedures, dramatically increased the time allotted for doctors with patients, and made it possible to treat everyone who walked through the door.

"I was shocked at the great results," Kosmos said. "At some point you've got to stop putting Band-aids on [procedural problems] and fix the system." Using the TQM model allows employees to get to the real cause of problems rather than apply patchwork solutions or fail to deal with complex problems, Kosmos said.

Saying she is not a "TQM evangelist," Kosmos acknowledged that the team's candid discussions naturally delve into who and what is to blame for problems. But the TQM process generally calls for amnesty for the sources of trouble, and it's the team leader's job, Kosmos added, to discern what is "a constructive hitching session, and what's destructive. . . . You eventually get to, 'What are going to do about this? What do you suggest?' "

Everybody working with TQM admits that implementing the process requires a major commitment of time. Hollingsworth said their pilot agencies had to agree to one day a week per year per team member. Kosmos said it was important to see the TQM training as an investment in what they were doing, and in the staff members themselves. Sometimes in dealing with problems, agencies implement a "solution" that is merely added on top of a system that isn't working. "TQM peels away the layers," Kosmos said. "Once you see the problem [by looking at the data], you fix

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it. This at least was productive."

Yet, nobody says TQM totally solves all problems. Hollingsworth said sometimes there is inadequate strategic planning. Another impediment to change is that overlapping interagency responsibilities cause systemic problems impossible for one agency to solve alone. So follow-through is sometimes inadequate, and systems break down.

Arriving at the IEPA in 1991, director Mary Gade said the agency had a good organization with a national reputation for making great strides in environmental regulation in its 20-year history. However, she also believes the agency had built up 20 years of adversarial relationships with its customers and had a reputation for operating in a "highhanded" way, as if "we came in and said do it our way, and if you don't do it, we'll nail you to the wall." She said that "one guy told us they used to have to draw straws in their office about who would call the agency" because it was rarely a pleasant experience.

Another IEPA customer has framed an incredible letter in which the agency states matter-of-factly it may need a whopping 18 months to respond fully to his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. That was the IEPA's standard response. That's how long it took — until recently, that is, and the agencywide implementation of TQM. Diana Gobelman, FOIA coordinator for the IEPA's bureau of land, proudly declares the agency now responds fully to nearly all FOIA requests within two to four weeks — a 95 percent reduction in the time required to satisfy a customer's request for information. Gobelman credits hard work, commitment of the team, months of planning, a slightly larger staff — and the TQM effort — for the success.

Now 18 months into what Gade believes will be a three-to five-year process, the agency has introduced TQM to all of its 1,100 employees and provided more extensive training for many managers. Much of it was done at no significant cost other than allocating time for the training. The U.S. EPA shared its manuals and training with the IEPA, and some people were able to go away for training at no cost, Gade said. The agency is now spending $7,000 to get its own "master trainers" in-house. An agency report summarized that the IEPA had initiated 69 "total quality" projects as of March, in categories from clerical to communications to billing to sample analysis. Some of these deal with customer relations while others concern internal procedures.

The TQM process has produced some doubters, lots of anxiety and questions about where it is headed, Gade said. But she hopes, with the help of high-profile awards ceremonies and daily reminders of TQM — such as a sign in the agency's main lobby in Springfield that declares IEPA is a TQM agency — that employees are feeling more empowered to use good judgment to effect improvements. Bill Child, director of the Bureau of Land, approached Gade during the process and pointed out that the agency's program for tracking hazardous waste was burdened by too much paperwork. He recommended a streamlined system that still keeps tabs on waste without the cumbersome records and reports. "And I blessed it [his idea] instantly,"

Gade said. An inferior solution, she adds, would have been for people simply to complain they needed more staff to complete all the forms.

The director also has brought senior managers from corporations such as Motorola and Abbott Laboratories to speak to IEPA staff about the benefits of TQM. Gade is pushing for more public-private partnerships. She wants agency managers to reach out to people they must regulate, to make friendly "TQM visits" to find out what's happening on the front lines, and where possible, to work on solutions together in negotiations. "No regulatory agency is ever going to be loved," the director said, but she believes in working more closely with customers to improve relationships. "Enforcement [of environmental laws] is not our goal," she explained. "Compliance is."

Al Scargall, plant manager at the GM Power Train Casting Operation in Danville, concurs the IEPA under Gade's direction has become more proactive, with a lot more communication and more personal contact between agency and factory. In the past, his plant, with various water and landfill issues, would strive "only to meet the requirements" of the law, he said. Now he says his plant and the IEPA are working harder to understand one another's business. "We actually ask them to look at what we're doing and ask for input [from IEPA staff]," Scargall said. "It's a more upfront approach. Everybody is part of the solution."

Nonetheless, even as Gade seeks to improve relationships with the community and environmentalists, she does not want the agency to back down on its responsibilities. Enforcement referrals have increased by 40 percent, she said, and collections for penalties have increased more in the past two years than in the previous 20 years.

Gade is convinced that TQM is not just another management fad. Whether TQM or similar processes will become commonplace in the public sector remains to be seen. The IEPA and the Chicago-area agencies in the Models of Excellence program are not the only government groups with an interest in quality initiatives, but they are among the most significant because of the momentum they have.

An IEPA customer who receives a full Freedom of Information Act response within two weeks may presume that the quick turnaround was simply routine, just as the Chicago Public Library patron who gets a book sent from a branch office within a few hours of the request will probably never know that hours of TQM analysis made the next-day pickup possible. That doesn't matter. What does matter is that service improves when quality becomes a highly visible priority. What is significant is that some government agencies are undertaking the challenging task of examining what it really means to be a quality operation. That means taking fresh looks at how they do everything, measuring customer satisfaction and always striving for "continuous improvement," an important TQM principle. What they're finding is that "the way it's always been done" is often not the most efficient way. And, to their credit, they are investing time in their staffs from bottom to top in order to carry out their missions more effectively. *

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