Why is there no Quality Control in Local Government?

By: Joe J. Wallace

I have spent over 90% of my career in the private sector with companies that actually have to provide high quality goods and services to their customers to derive revenue. This week’s revelation that there are no formal quality control techniques being used by the City of Evansville to improve performance has just been surreal. First it was disclosed that some of the emergency kiosks on the Greenway are not functional and that this has been known about for some time. Going to an emergency kiosk to call for help and finding it to be broken is the equivalent to dialing 911 and hearing “this number has been disconnected” right before becoming the victim of a violent crime.

Recently it was revealed that the Parks and Recreation Department does not have any tracking system in place to deal with customer complaints. This is no way to run so much as a lemonade stand much less a municipal department with an annual budget of over $10 Million.

No private sector company that I have worked for, bought from, or consulted with, would survive without a quality control process in place. I am absolutely mystified by the “deer in the headlights” responses that have come from the City Administration. It is finally becoming clear to me how Evansville can spend over $1,800 per year on each resident and still have dilapidated public parks, a litter problem, and poorly maintained infrastructure. It seems as though our public employees may not be getting clear instructions on what they should be doing and it is now acknowledged by the department head that there is no feedback on performance with respect to public (customer) complaints.

It is a shame that our leaders do not know what to do or how to do it when it comes to quality control of the services that they are paid to deliver. Hopefully, this election year and the public scrutiny that has come from stepping on needles in parks, twisting ankles on ball fields, and the renewed recognition of our dirtiness problem will lead to a new administration that will focus on the quality of services that the people of Evansville are provided. In yet another area it seems as though the City of Evansville needs to start at the very beginning.

Quality Control is a concept that is taught in one’s freshman year in the study of business, engineering, operations, marketing, or management. Once on the job in any of these areas one’s employer will continually invest in infrastructure and training to assure that the entire staff understands the importance of feedback in the customer satisfaction process formally known as quality control.

If Toyota, Mead Johnson, or Berry Plastics had no quality control system in place they would be out of business quickly. Time proven systems for gathering feedback and synthesizing that feedback into the quality control process are the backbone of American industry. Actually an American named Edward Demings invented statistical process control (SPC) but Japanese industry adopted it first. Now it is universal with the exception of governments.

The fact that the City of Evansville does not even have a feedback system in place can only be attributed to ignorance, laziness, or a lethal combination of both. What is the price of this ignorance? It could be the $1,000 per year more that Evansville spends per person when compared to Henderson. It could be failing infrastructure and dilapidated parks. It could even be the billion dollar shabby houses problem that was exposed by Tom Barnett. You see, when the streets, the parks, and the pools look like no one cares for them, civic pride falls to the same lowest common denominator.

It has been established time and time again that professional quality control when implemented correctly typically improve efficiencies by over 50%. With city governments across the country grasping for revenue to continue services, why have procedures that are proven to enable businesses to do much more with the same resources not adopted? Can you imagine a local government that actually treated its citizens like customers instead of a mass source of revenue? The beauty of quality control is that it is highly probable that implementation can enable a city like Evansville to make very rapid improvements without increasing taxes.

Lean, TQM, 6-Sigma, etc. are all techniques that are already implemented in local businesses. When will the government of the City of Evansville wake up to this? I would venture to postulate that the Parks Department is not the only City of Evansville department that is running open loop. It is time to close the loop with a professional quality control system to assure customer satisfaction. The City of Evansville has been driving while looking through the rear view mirror long enough.

Definitions:

Open Loop Control: An open-loop controller does not use feedback to determine if its output has achieved the desired goal of the input. This means that the system does not observe the output of the processes that it is controlling. Consequently, a true open-loop system cannot correct any errors that it could make. It also may not compensate for disturbances in the system.

Closed Loop Control: In a closed-loop control system, a sensor monitors the system output and feeds the data to a controller which adjusts the control as necessary to maintain the desired system output.

Golf and Governance:

A perfect example of an open loop game is golf. In golf you take your best shot and hope it was done well. You have no opportunity to steer the ball after it leaves the club. That is an open loop process. In a closed loop game of golf with a skilled player 18 holes would take 18 shots. Why, because you could steer the ball into the hole as if it were a remote control little round plane. The only variable would be the time to get the ball into the hole.

There has never been nor will there ever be a golfer who can compete on strokes with a remotely controlled golf ball. Likewise with cities, there is no city government that is run open loop that can compete with a city that has a feedback loop to correct problems “on the fly”. It is time for Evansville to join the ranks of closed loop cities when it comes to quality control. We are only 55 years behind the 8-ball but we can catch up quickly if we choose to do so.

Joe Wallace is a business consultant that specializes in increasing the value of his clients businesses through identifying and leveraging innovation to streamline operations and expand product offerings. Mr. Wallace is also a speaker and author and frequently contributes editorial content locally and nationally. Mr. Wallace is a consultant to and acting editor for the City County Observer. He is a graduate of the Univ. of Evansville and Stanford University. He makes his home in Newburgh, IN.