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As leaders in government feel increasing pressure to provide more and better services without raising taxes, there is growing interest in applying improvement techniques from the private sector that engage employees in efforts to cut costs and streamline services. Unfortunately, most governmental improvement initiatives have struggled or had relatively limited impact, which makes them vulnerable to elimination in the next budget review. We have been studying or working with continuous improvement (Cl) at all levels of government for a number of years in countries ranging from Singapore and Dubai to Sweden and the United States.1 While we found a number of individual agencies or departments doing bits and pieces of Cl well, examples of comprehensive approaches with sustained and significant government-wide impacts on costs and service levels were almost nonexistent.
In this article we examine a rare example of a highly successful broadbased Cl initiative in a government setting. The province of New Brunswick, Canada (NB) is generating tens of millions of dollars in new permanent savings each year while providing substantial improvements in service, and the impact of this relatively young initiative is still growing. It uses a well-structured approach to drive constant improvement at all levels, from major systems and processes to small front-line ideas. For example,
* A radical restructuring of the judicial process cut waiting times for typical trials almost in half while generating significant cost-savings;
* A streamlining of the inventory and purchasing process for spare parts at the Vehicle Management Agency saved more than C$2 million annually; and
* A front-line worker's idea to switch Internet-service providers at one of the provincial parks saved C$12,500 annually.
We believe NB's unique success is rooted in a number of critical actions its administrators took that other government initiatives usually overlook or execute poorly. This article will not discuss much about the processimprovement tools used, which are fairly common and are easy to learn about elsewhere. Instead, we focus on four significant aspects of NB's initiative that are central to its success.
New Brunswick, Canada
New Brunswick, which borders Maine on the Atlantic coast, is one of the four original provinces that formed the Dominion of Canada in 1867. Its population of just over 750,000 is aging, and its economy has...