The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Just how dependent are we becoming on government and was anyone aware that the city was providing 1512 city services?  State governments and the Federal government should be subject to an audit like this.  As government gets bigger, even the government itself loses track of how big and inefficient it is.

"An independent efficiency review of Tulsa’s government released Wednesday by Mayor Dewey Bartlett identifies hundreds of city services that could be eliminated, outsourced, consolidated or continued through public-private or inter-agency partnerships.

The 282-page final report by KPMG, a global auditing and management consulting firm, recognizes a total of 1,512 services that are provided by 20 city departments, excluding the City Council, the Tulsa Airport Authority and Gilcrease Museum...

...Eliminate: The KPMG report identifies 132 city services that the city could consider strategically eliminating since they are not legally mandated or aligned with core functions.

Those cited as top possibilities include the Public Works Department’s greenhouse for vegetation replacement, which costs the city $1.6 million annually; and the school crossing guard program, which has a $575,000 price tag.

Outsource: The report identifies 298 services that the city should explore whether it is more cost efficient to do in-house or offered up to bids.

Among them is the city’s equipment administration and maintenance area, which oversees and cares for the municipal fleet of vehicles with the help of 71 employees at a cost of $11.4 million.

Consolidate and automate: The report identifies 320 services that could be grouped together or modernized for efficiencies.

For example, code enforcement services are spread across five city departments when they could be consolidated so there is a central point of customer contact, the report suggests.

Partner: The report identifies 270 services that could be continued through public-private partnerships for cost savings.

KPMG cites examples of Tulsa’s success at doing this in recent years with the partnership between the city and the University of Tulsa at Gilcrease Museum.

This could continue with the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, the two city-owned cemeteries, the Public Works Department’s environmental operations including the water quality analysis and reporting, and many park community centers, recreation programs and Oxley Nature Center.

A revenue partnership option available to Tulsa is to lease out its water works system to a private water utility company so it takes responsibility for the management, infrastructure upkeep and profit in exchange for giving the city a cash payment"

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100908_11_0_hrbDoc339226&archive=yes

(http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/165/d/b/Make_it_so_by_Pigglesworth.jpg)

I dont particularly care to sub out the water department......

And I don't think it's a particularly great idea to get rid of crossing guards at schools...

Edited to add: I think this part is the one we can all agree needs change

For an example, let's take my favorite subject of street lights.
When I did a paper for then-mayor LaFortune, Public Works couldnt actually tell me how many street lights we were operating, despite the fact that the city was being billed for each and every one.

To make matters interesting, there is no ordinance requiring streetlights in the city.  None.
Since streetlighting is neither mandated nor aligned with core functions by ordinance, do we eliminate it?

I would say no, that there are quantifiable benefits to having streets illuminated at night, that range from better after-dark utilization of public places to overall greater perceptions of safety.  However, since the "rules" that "require" streetlighting come more from a franchise agreement between the city and AEP and not law, were not bound by ordinance to operate equipment that is inefficient, or poorly planned or installed.

What that should mean is that AEP cant tell us that we need to buy a minimum of 100 watts of electricity at every corner just to have street lighting, then aimlessly scatter it in every direction just to see how far it can "cover".

Just as it's not necessary to have Code Enforcement scattered among five separate departments, we could, by either enabling ordinances or execuitive order, set efficiency standards as part of the process that "warrants" where and what type of street lighting the taxpayers will pay for.

To get the ball rolling, I propose something were not really doing, by making the priority of the publicly-funded street lighting system that of 'improving our vision on streets and public areas', and replacing or eliminating the expense of those components that dont acomplish that goal.

Would eliminating the greenhouse mean that we would not replace dead vegetation in parks and roadways, or would we purchase on demand? Is it cheaper to buy it or grow and maintain it.

Not certain I agree with putting the parks under a contractor, but the cemetaries make sense to outsource.

5 Code enforcement agencies is too many.

I wonder what the report says about redundancies in development and permit agencies.

Reading further, this report is a clear indication that we, as a nation, seriously need to work on our schools. We also need to hire consultants who proofread for grammar. If I were the manager on this job and this is the report I was expected to approve, my subordinates would not be having a pleasant day. I expect professionals in the US to have a good command of the English language. I also have a low tolerance for fluff, which comprises much of the part of the report I've read so far.

Yes, but fluff makes the authors feel good about themselves  ;)

Edited to add the article associated with the first one:

"As city officials on Wednesday began digesting a voluminous efficiency review of Tulsa's government, some praised the opportunities it presents, while others expressed concerns.

City Auditor Preston Doerflinger will head up the evaluation and implementation of the KPMG report, which contains 1,100 recommendations, through the newly formed Management Review Office.

"What KPMG has done for us is paint the big picture, giving us the broad strokes," he said.

"We now have to go back in and verify the feasibility of some of these things, gather feedback, prioritize them and determine what we go after first." '

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100909_11_A1_Ascity881640

The one useful recurring theme that strikes me is a need for consolidation of administrative functions like finance, communications, compliance, and reporting, rather than having some departments having their own staff for those purposes.

Then our schools have done a good job.  One of the priorities of our schools is to teach good/high self esteem.   It doesn't matter if you can read, write, spell, do math, have any understanding of science......

At least that is what I have been led to believe.

I am still reading the 283 pages...

Many of the strategic eliminations are possible, but probably unwise. 

One example is in the communications department. The report says that .7 parts of an equivalant employee time is doing photography, web design, events/public meetings, marketing/public relations and social media combined. The report recommends eliminating these functions from the staff.

I think those functions are important and the fact that these were all being done by less than a full time job is impressive. In any other organization with 3,900 employees and a half a billion dollar budget, these would probably take up three or four positions.

Yes, these duties are not mandated or easily measurable and clearly are not part of the core function of government. But I would hate to see local government not do these things because some outsider thought they weren't important. 

Hah....Top-Shelf.....

Cutting the size and the demands on government won't be easy when it comes to deciding what is essential and what we can live without.  God only knows everyone else has been having to make those sorts of decisions over the last two years but sooner or later you figure out what the essentials are and get a lot less attached to the less essential areas. 

This is a good eye-opening experience for citizens to have to truly grasp the mutation of government.  We can get by with less.

What will make the review and implementation of this report, the whole thing or any part thereof, quite difficult, is the fact that we do not have a politician for Mayor.

Dewey has proven he can not take a difficult situation and negotiate a reasonable resolution.

This will play well for persons such as Charles Hardt, and others, that stand to loose  a substantial amount of their power by the City being able to adopt the recommendations of the report quickly.

Someone had mentioned the school "crossing guard program" and the report's suggestion that it be eliminated.

I believe Dewey has already made that revision. At least, the crossings I pass on a daily basis, have been unattended this school year.
I have seen several dangerous situations as a result. So, I would have to side with "nathanm" that this may not be the thing for the City to cut.

Having read through the whole report, it seemed to advocate two things. Consolidation and outsourcing. And more outsourcing. And more outsourcing. And more outsourcing.

They essentially recommended that the entire IT function be outsourced. Anyone familiar with large scale IT outsourcing projects knows that they almost always end in a bad way, at least when it's done by the usual suspects, who are generally the only ones considered large enough for a job the size of CoT.

Nathan, I'm no expert on IT so not really aware what the pitfalls are. An IT contractor is operating a business to make a profit so they must operate more efficiently by necessity with a capped cost contract.  I certainly can see potential to cut corners to achieve those objectives as well.

What are some of the pitfalls you are alluding to?

They rarely come in on budget, they usually use inexperienced people and rotate them often, thus ensuring that nobody becomes intimately familiar with the organization's particular infrastructure (and thus can fix it quickly), even when the contract calls for experienced personnel, and they have a bad tendency to attempt to sell expensive solutions only they can support. Those are the big ones. FWIW, in my experience it's pretty rare to have a fixed cost contract for an open ended scope of work like "maintain existing IT systems and support end users for one year". You might get that on a contract for installation of specific hardware and software or training a specific number of users, but even then the contractor rarely eats the entirety of any costs in excess of what was originally anticipated.

Even discounting deficiencies in the contractor themselves (good ones obviously exist, although usually on a smaller scale), it's hard for a contractor to get as good of a sense of the client's needs or as fast a response without having personnel on site equally as much, which ends up costing more than having in house employees. Of course, with the wrong employees, things go wrong anyway. Outsourcing the day to day IT functions of a large organization is as much of a fool's errand as trying to write custom software without an experienced project manager and an iron clad set of features and deliverables. It usually ends in failure.

Where they could use a consultant is in figuring out why their servers need so many people to keep running and help implement solutions that don't require so much intervention. Unless they have some unusual requirements, their head count seems excessive.

I feel a little bad saying that, because god knows my industry doesn't need any more unemployed, but it seems pretty ridiculous at a glance. I wish it took that much work..then I wouldn't be sitting on my hands (and posting here) as much as I end up doing, and I'd have more billable hours besides. Even five years ago it was a hell of a lot more work than it is today.

There are a lot of pitfalls but unfortunately the trend to "outsource" is circular and we are in an upswing.

The idea of "outsourcing" IT services is largely a myth. You can't turn everything over to another company because then that company holds all the cards in contract negotiations (because you LITERALLY can't let them go) Most every company outsources only certain functions, meaning the company then spends resources on training, security and support of the group and you lose a good part of the cost savings. Companies that outsource often times end up hiring the contractors as employees later.

The report says they should "competitive bid" the work which could just mean they are going to do a "commercial capable" model which means you treat IT as a separate organization and all work has to be billed directly instead of just counting IT as an overhead cost. It's a pain in the a$$ to implement, but it does help get a good grasp on what you're actually paying for.

Review Saves Tulsa Millions

http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/review-saves-tulsa-millions (http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/review-saves-tulsa-millions)

Nice update. Need to know who is to blame for this savings though.

Tulsa Community Foundation