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Now more than ever, government must become leaner and more efficient. As a former business leader, I understand the importance of identifying ways to do more with less, and that’s one of the reasons I am pleased to write you about the productive work done by PA Treasury’s new Bureau of Change Management and Internal Audits.

Early in my Treasury administration, my staff and I noticed that Treasury was in need of lots of efficiency-enhancing change. For example, we needed to retool work flows and internal processes and vastly improve the ways information is shared between Commonwealth agencies. We knew that we couldn’t hire consultants to help us with all of these needs. We had no budget for that, and we were appropriately concerned about tailoring solutions precisely to Treasury’s complicated needs. With this in mind, we decided to create Treasury’s own internal consulting team. Under the leadership of Treasury’s Policy Director (and McKinsey & Company alum) James Williamson, this team began looking for ways to reduce costs and help Treasury employees work smarter.

The results? In one year, Treasury’s Change Management Team developed over $17 million worth of savings and benefits to Pennsylvanians. For example, the team dramatically reconfigured the lost property claims and payment process – a process that involves nearly $2 billion in unclaimed property! – to reduce the claim process from four steps to one, and the team helped reduce the average time taken to review a payment by 40 percent or 10 days. They also identified $15 million worth of scheduled payments to Commonwealth vendors who owed the Commonwealth taxes, and they helped Treasury increase the amount of property it collected (both of those achievements help reduce tax burdens generally).

I noted that Treasury’s Change Management team members brought something that outside consultants don’t – institutional knowledge and a passion about the place they were reforming. Not only do Team members analyze problems more efficiently, they are also sensitive to the less obvious impacts that changes can have.

When I watch the Change Management Team members interact with other Treasury departments, I see that everyone is learning, benefitting from each other’s expertise and experience. This team does not impose blunt, cookie cutter solutions. Instead, it prompts thoughtful improvements and creates real value to Treasury’s operations and for Pennsylvania’s taxpayers.

As a Treasurer who values innovation and efficiency, I am excited by the work of the Change Management Team. Unleashing this untapped expertise is one of the best things I have done at Treasury. It is also a model I would urge other government agencies to adopt. It is simple, it is cheap, it leverages valuable internal resources, and it empowers those closest to the problems to create and implement much-needed change.

Yours in pursuit of operational excellence,

Rob McCord
Pennsylvania Treasurer


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