The issues that are being analysed for improvement are as follows:
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Forms complicated to complete; The initial application and renewal process requires an applicant to fill-in a 12 page form that is either accessed online or could be collected from any Work and Income service centre.
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Verification process: Identity verification includes certified copies of proof of lawful residence in New Zealand e.g. passport, plus drivers licence, current power and phone bill. Additional documents such as marriage or civil union certificate, and full birth certificates for dependent children are required for families.
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Communication and postal costs: The documents are posted directly to the processing unit or submitted to any local Work and Income service centre where they are the forwarded by post to the processing unit and as a result takes up to 2 weeks to process the CSC.
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“welfare” stigma that some associate with the CSC.
All applicants are aware that the collected information will be shared and compared with Working for Families Tax Credits, Inland Revenue or other governments departments for administration purposes.
3.0 Analysis on managerial preference
French (2001) urges that public service managers in New Zealand tend to operate with the framework of Agency, which assumes that all workers have vested interests and are opportunistic. The idea of public servant goodwill and a desire to do a good job for people, and professional ethics as an underpinning assurance of quality, have been displaced by performance appraisals and measurable outcomes. This in theory is reflected on the CSC brochures and the recording of all telephone calls that are received by the card processing unit call centre. Given this it could be suggested that CSC employees like any other government department are entangled within the Agency Theory process, controlled by the techniques of management and market competition (French 2001) Further to this, it is also paramount to note that the continuance of bureaucratic and maintenance of the above mentioned barriers in the public sector could suggest that managers are apprehensive to apply strategic management in their work.
The current management practice seems to prefer pyramidal hierarchies and according to French (2001) this has been affecting productivity, morale and the general climate in an organisation as employees become interchangeable resources. At CSC processing unit, the emphasis of accountability, efficiency and effectiveness is intensified with tasks and closer monitoring of individual employees for their appraisal. In our view this hasn’t achieved much, but loss of autonomy to effectively execute their morale obligation to their clients. Therefore the culture of compliance becomes the focus of their work and compliance is not quality because consumers’ satisfaction maybe overlook due to tick a box approach whereas quality is the most important aspect for CSC. This approach does not only infringe the core objectives of the department, but it questions the true meaning of quality service. Quality service in the public sector is nothing but conformance to customer’s specifications on a consistent level. Goetsch (2001) urges that a quality focussed is where the provision of a service that addresses the clients' needs and requirements at a reasonable cost is foremost in the minds of all involved in the delivery of the service. This kind of approach will increase the satisfaction level of the customers thereby defining the effectiveness of the service.
4.0 Theoretical perspectives and Quality Management Analysis
Quality has been and will always be the focus of any business industry or public service and it’s been a subject of contention over the years. Total Quality Management was initially developed by Deming and Juran who are recognized as pioneers of the TQM approach. Deming and Juran believed that quality and productivity were issues that could be achieved and were not conflicting objectives and the basic proposition was that all production processes were vulnerable to quality problems caused by variations. The approach focuses on the minimisation of variation levels in order to improve output quality. According to Goetsch (2001) TQM process begins with the customer and ends with the customer as illustrated in the diagram below. The process takes specific inputs and thus customers’ wants, needs and expectations and transforms or processes the inputs within the organisation to produce goods or services that, in turn, satisfy the customer and that’s an output.
The above diagram also shows the initial basic purposes of TQM, which was to increase the quality and efficiency, therefore having less waste and achieve higher productivity in order to satisfy all the customers. This is supported by Atkinson (1990) who urged that TQM is an organisation-wide commitment to getting things right and should affect every level inside the organisation.
Quality should constitute the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears upon its ability to satisfy given needs (EOQ 2005). This applies to any public sector and it is disturbing and one would wonder whether CSC staff are trained and work according to the organisational processing policy especially when you call at different times and get different information on the requirements and processes. The contradictory information could be used to measure the organisational services and it could be assumed that there is lack of training or it could be competency issues or lack of standardisation with staff at CSC. While we don’t have empirical evidence to back up this assumption, our telephone calls to CSC processing unit on different intervals, speaking to different call centre agents asking for the same information, but getting different responses indicates a gap within the system. In retrospect, the overall service quality of the organization could be infringed significantly. This gap could be closed given the Deming proposal to combine relevant resources and skills of quality teams within each department to develop and design processes to improve quality. The literature shows that Quality Management have become proactive, making plans to bring about continuous quality improvement and to achieve a more desirable future. The aim is to get rid of poor quality from the product rather than get rid of poor quality product, therefore the gurus of Quality Management suggests that quality is progressed by establishing proactively rather than reactive management.
4.1 Application of the six-sigma and/or lean-sigma techniques and their deployment.
There are many quality tools that can be used in the CSC operational process and Six Sigma according to Basu and Wright (2003) has to be incontrovertibly applicable to service industry given its objectives that is to gain significant breakthroughs and improved results by doing things better, faster and cheaper. On the other hand Lean Six Sigma achieves quality without waste and focuses on using the minimum amount of resources (people, materials, and capital) to produce solutions and deliver them on time to customers. The process, however, does not have the discipline to deliver results predictably. The application of the two techniques in our view could enhance the CSC services since Lean Sigma is the application of lean techniques to increase speed and reduce waste, while Six Sigma improves quality and focuses on the voice of the Customer. The diagram below illustrates how and what savings and ease of implementation could be applied to CSC processes. However Basu and Wright (2003) urges that FIT ∑ is more than cost savings, but strengthens the organization’s knowledge base, stabilize processes and procedures and breaks down cross-functional barriers.
Diagram adopted from Basu and Wright (2003)
Using the selection process diagram above, we noted that some of the processing activities fall into top selected plot as they are easy to implement. The concept is based on Six Sigma as it is a strategic approach to organizational improvement by integrating strategic thinking with technology, tools and techniques and people. The selected elements are further discussed in the following discussion with a focus on efficiency and elimination of non value adding activities.
4.2 Efficiency and elimination wasteful activities utilising the lean sigma approach.
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Online application: There are significant costs associated with the application form and these costs include printing or photo coping. If the form is improved technologically, applicants could simply fill in their personal information online and automatically save in to the CSC data base. This will not only reduce costs on materials, but on human resources as we don’t need manpower to enter the information into the data base. The form is already available and it’s a matter of aligning their systems so that applications can be processed online. The option to manually process applications could be still be made available for those who cant use or access internet, but significant costs will be reduced while this is easily implemented.
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Verification process: The current process requires forms and all other identify documents to be posted to central unit processing center. This is a massive waste and unnecessary process because of supply chain logistic involved on postage, lead time, storage, security and hidden costs that are involved through to the issuing of the service card. This process can be simplified by decentralization of the verification process and this will allow local Work and Income office to receive and enter all certified identifications and required documents into the data base. The documents will be stored at that centre or designated area for archiving purposes. This will reduce costs, lead time, and reduced risk to document damages or loss while in transit, individual privacy details are also secure and the unit processing centre’s workload is reduced.
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Renewal of CSC. All current cardholders are required to re-apply following the same initial processes although procedurally they are suppose to be issued with a replacement prior to expiry. On the CSC brochure, it is indicated that a new card will be automatically generated, but this is not true. Based on few individuals’ experience in the last few months of this year 2009, all card holders were required to apply as if they were new applicants. When we called to ascertain these claims, it was gross abuse and fraud of CSC was cited as the reason for this. In our view, CSC has authority to access applicants’ information from other public service databases, but according to the CSC manager spoken to, this access is for verification purposes only. What value does this add to the processing of a service card and if it is to combat fraud why not access the information for processing purposes instead of verification. This shows lack of lean management and the costs of managing CSC will continue to burden the tax payers without any added value to the process.
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Correspondence: Correspondence is either done manually through traditional post or by telephone. However it is apparent that the CSC prefers traditional communication as compared to digital or telephone. Traditional correspondence is generally expensive as few elements are required to generate a letter. For example after typing the letter instead of sending it by email, they use an envelope plus a stamp and extra human resources to get the letter to the post. How much does it cost to deliver a message with a simple instruction or asking the customer to provide additional information for further consideration of their application? We think the use of email is equally authentic, fast, efficient, cost effective and thus our lean thinking.
From this discussion we can see the management philosophy of Six Sigma that focuses on eliminating defect through practices that emphasize understanding, measurement of process quality and improving process. While Six Sigma uses statistical concepts to measure those processes the goal is to link the internal processes and systems management to end-consumer requirements. While the CSC administrative aspect can be justified, redundancy of complex procedures is paramount because some of the unnecessary forms, signatures and documents do not add value either to the CSC or the end user.
To summarize on our rational on the analysis of the above selected elements, it is our opinion that the government employees are faced with major operational issues that requires a new management approach.
- It is difficult for government workers to access or share information that resides only on paper.
- Paper documents are easily misfiled or misplaced.
- Paper-based work processes are slow, expensive, and cumbersome.
- Compliance with the Privacy Information Act is difficult.
- To share paper-based information, workers must make a copy and manually mail, or fax the document.
- Constituent access to public records is frustrating for both taxpayers and government workers.
- Paper documents are expensive to store.
We are mindful that the rational behind generating and using paper is to provide evidence, but it is also our view that evidence can be stored electronically and is much safer and cost effective to use electronic data storage.
4.3 FIT SIGMA, A sustainable cost effective quality management technique
The world is increasingly changing, with technology breaking the geographical and economical boundaries. Public services such as Community Services Card are not spared from these changes and according to Basu and Wright (2003) businesses are continuously being disrupted by external factors such as e-commerce or e-business. Given these effects it is reasonable for the public services and government departments to embrace the concept of e-governance. By embracing this concept FIT SIGMA should also be considered as it is a new wave of Sigma that will according to Basu and Wright (2003) provides agility, efficiency and ensures sustainability. As illustrated in the diagram below, the process will enable the dramatic bottomline results of Six and Lean Sigma to be sustained (Basu and Wright 2003).
As discussed earlier, it is feasible for the CSC to implement Lean by reducing the complexity of application process and the waste will automatically be reduced. This is complimented by use of Six Sigma where the variables that do not add value are either reduced or avoided. All these activities will lead into LEAN SIGMA with unnecessary elements trimmed so as to channel all the resources to improving and sustaining performance of the organisation and thus FIT SIGMA.
This frame will enhance the services and reduce employee stress that is related with over workload and dealing with disgruntled customers. It is our view that the use of the frame will also enable the organisation to gain efficiencies, improve the ways in which the CSC is provided to the public thereby having satisfied consumers and happy employees. One of the major areas that require immediate quality check is the renewal of CSC as this is not only costly, but unnecessarily stresses for both CSC employees and consumers. It is sustainable to use inter-departmental data base for processing automatic eligible Community Cards and the same system applies to revoke eligibility as well. Further to this simplifying the forms and application process can provide the same types of quantifiable benefits which are sustainable as client services will automatically improve and the perceived benefits will include:
- Greater efficiencies
- Faster response
- Enhanced customer service
- Reduced costs
- Increased quality
5.0 Recommendations
- Use Technology to link together public agencies and thus facilitating the relations and administration between public services.
- Simplification of the application forms, verification, communication and process.
- Introduce shared data for automatic revoke or eligibility of the community card.
- Standardization of staff training and the processing procedures.
6.0 Conclusions
The primary, long-term benefits of TQM include better services, reduced costs and satisfied customers (even, if they won’t be there). Progressive improvement in the management systems and the quality of services offered result in increasingly satisfied customers. In addition a number of other benefits are observable including improved skills, morale and confidence among service staff and customers, enhanced relationships between governments and its constituents, increased management accountability and transparency and improved productivity and efficiency of the services.
7.0 References:
Basu, R. and Wright, J.N. (2003) Quality Beyond Six Sigma, Elsevier Science Ltd, Burlington
Crosby, P (2001) 4th Edition Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain, penguin books
Goetsch, D. (2001) Quality Management: Introduction to Total Quality Management for Production, Processing, and Services, Prentice Hall,
French, P. (2001) the Impact of New Public Management and External Quality Assurance Systems on Education: A Foucauldian Analysis, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, Lower Hutt.
European Organisation for Quality control, Journal of measurements techniques, Springer New York, 2005
Schargel, F., P. (2002) Transforming Education Through Total Quality Management: A Practitioner's Guide, McGraw Hill,
