Team Identifies Millions In Savings For Taxpayers

By Andrew Staub | PA Independent

It’s hard to believe that, in 2015, a $29 billion enterprise would use a paper system to manage construction projects costing millions, if not billions, of dollars each year.

Pennsylvania has done just that, says Gov. Tom Wolf. But unlike a private business, taxpayer money is at stake.

Wolf, a businessman before he was a politician, wants to change that through his Governor’s Office of Transformation, Innovation, Modernization and Efficiency. The name might sound a bit bureaucratic, but the mission of GO-TIME involves breaking down government silos, encouraging private-public partnerships and ultimately saving the public some cash.

One of GO-TIME’s first ideas? Replace that paper-based public-works management system with software that would save help save $3 million a year and alleviate the headaches that come with an outdated process.

GO-TIME has already found $109 million and expects to exceed Wolf’s goal of $150 million for the next budget, said Jeffrey Sheridan, the governor’s press secretary.

“There are millions of dollars to be saved simply by taking an enterprise approach and looking at our internal businesses processes in the same way that a large business owner would look at his own business operation,” Curt Topper, acting secretary of the state’s Department of General Services, told lawmakers last week.

That approach should be familiar to Wolf, who ran his family’s kitchen-cabinet company.

“As a business owner, I had to constantly look for both savings through efficiency and ways to be innovative to better serve my customers,” Wolf said in a statement when he announced GO-TIME’s mission last month.

Applying that mindset to state government could save hundreds of millions of dollars over time, Wolf said.

For now, most of GO-TIME’s focus has centered on improvements to the state’s procurement process. Wolf expects to save $100 million in that area. That’s not unreasonable, Topper said, considering Pennsylvania spends more than $3 billion on goods and services each year.

Part of the savings would come from re-introducing reverse online auctioning, which has been described as eBay in reverse. As opposed to closed bidding, it allows suppliers to compete to offer the lowest price, which, in turn, brings savings to taxpayers.

The system was used under former Govs. Tom Ridge and Ed Rendell, but that ended around 2008, Topper said. The state, the first to use reverse online auctioning to award a supply contract, still owns the technology, he said.

“The great news is that we only have a short distance to go before we’ll be able to implement reverse auctions,” Topper said.

In addition to procurement, another $5 million is projected from centralizing the state’s 28 mailrooms to avoid duplication of efforts and equipment. Those consolidations would not include decreasing the number of mailrooms but would focus on equipment and postage, Sheridan said.

“We do not believe that people will lose their jobs,” said Sheridan, explaining the intent of GO-TIME is to find efficiencies without making those kinds of cuts.

Another $1 million would come from consolidating human-resource services.

Wolf isn’t the first to propose running government more like a business. GO-TIME is actually a re-imagining of former Gov. Tom Corbett’s Office of Innovation, which is said to have saved more than $690 million, but — as Wolf has put it — gained a reputation for simply making cuts.

Wolf doesn’t want to repeat that approach and has proposed a budget that increases spending. That has drawn criticism from GOP lawmakers, but some have also applauded GO-TIME’s mission of ferreting out inefficiencies.

State Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, said savings found by the former Office of Innovation were “staggering” and has introduced legislation that would call for the state to train local governments in lean-management practices.

“This approach would help keep municipalities from entering financial distress and help those already experienc(ing) hardship rise above it,” Grove said in a statement announcing his legislation.

Wolf has not endorsed any specific legislation, but he believes all levels of government can operate more efficiently, Sheridan said.

While GO-TIME has already delivered good news for taxpayers, especially in the realm of procurement, Topper isn’t asking yet anyone to make him the patron saint of savings. Those savings, the DGS secretary pointed out, are projected at this point.

“I want to make clear that I am not a miracle worker, and I did not find and execute on it (to save) $100 million within two weeks,” Topper said. “That would be beyond, I think, anyone’s capability.”