VACostCutting

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Council on Virginia's Future

Yesterday, I had a great meeting with Dubby Wynne, vice-chairman of the Council on Virginia's Future, and Jane Kusiak, the director of the Council.

I came away very impressed with their committment to long-term structural transformation within the operations of the Commonwealth's government. I was equally impressed with the progress that the Council appears to have made on in getting prepared to implement these necessary reforms. As we discussed, the culture of change must be embraced by willing participants within the government.

We agreed on just about every issue 1) this must be done 2) the people deserve to know that their money is being spent wisely 3) this is not politically exciting and that other efforts like the Wilder Commission have been very ineffective in really changing anything 4) that millions will be saved in the out years and that, sadly, 5) those out years will be not be soon.

This is structural change management and Mr. Wynne has recruited some of Virginia's best companies to donate their top talent to train state managers so that they can implement strategies that will work.

Mr. Wynne and I both know, from our experiences in business (his much more extensive than mine), that this will not be an easy task. We also both agreed that Virginia government is a mess but that there was no one area or person to blame but that this occurred over a long period of time. We did not get here over night and that this will not be resolved over night.

We also admitted that we have great concern for the other 49 states if Virginia is the best managed state.

Later this year, the Council will brief the Cost Cutting Caucus about their progress and how we can help. We look forward to engaging this effort that was begun by one of members in 2003 - Michele McQuigg. Thanks again Michele! Performance based budgeting and operations is on the way.

5 Comments:

  • Chris, would it be possible to post all members of the CCC?

    By Blogger Megan, at 2/12/2006 12:06 PM  

  • Yes, I had intended to post last year's membership later this week.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2/12/2006 4:34 PM  

  • I'm more interested in THIS year's membership.

    Maybe you could point me to a website that has a list of all the CURRENT members?

    By Blogger Megan, at 2/12/2006 7:43 PM  

  • We will be making the offer to join the CCC after Crossover which is Wednesday.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2/13/2006 9:06 AM  

  • I've been looking over their documents on the site and I'm not really clear on the goal. Are they looking to train management in the agencies to budget and project manage differently? Creating something like a line-item budget? Or a true structural change where agencies are merged, split, etc.?

    By Blogger Lucy Jones, at 2/14/2006 12:32 PM  

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