In a normal year, local governments face many issues such as budget shortfalls, lack of essential employees, need for economic growth, controlling crime, preventative maintenance of essential services, and addressing citizen issues. During this unusual time of the current COVID-19 pandemic, many of these issues are exacerbated by other issues, two examples are high rates of unemployment and the effects of medical conditions of COVID-19 long haulers on the local health infrastructure.
To address these issues effectively, local governments must innovate solutions that meet at least 80% of their needs. The solutions do not need to be perfect but still have a great impact with the minimum about of investment in additional resources. This can be accomplished using a hybrid management consulting and design thinking system. I prefer to group these into the general idea of problem-solving.
The first step that can be taken by a local government is to identify the top issues facing the community. These issues could be:
- Need for a balanced budget.
- Need to reduce crime.
- First Responder expenditures.
- Need to increase local jobs and local investments.
- Need to address affordable housing and zoning issues.
- Need to increase revenue without increasing the citizen tax burden.
- Cost of road repairs.
From this point, the local government could either decide through data which issues have the most impact on the community, or they could also realize that many of these issues are related. And then group them into three new categories, which would be:
- Financial Health
- Economic Growth
- Crime Reduction
After grouping the issues, each issue would need to be handled differently. The category of Financial Health could be addressed using a Revenue and Cost Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) framework. The Economic Growth category could be addressed using a hybrid combination of Porter’s 5 Forces and design thinking. Lastly, the hybrid combination of MECE and design thinking would be recommended in the crime reduction category.
Financial Health
When the local government conducts its MECE analysis, they could find that compared to other localities, they charge much less for the services offered to their community. They could also find that their largest expenditures could be labor, utilities, and preventative maintenance activities such as road repair.
By having identified these issues, it allows them to find opportunities. For example, in terms of boosting revenue, the local government could nominally increase the service fees by a few percentages to get more revenue, which would not be a substantial burden on their citizens.
On the side of the cost or expenditures of the MECE analysis, the local government could implement labor-saving measures by streamlining regulations and processes or introducing labor-saving technology such as online payments and service requests. Moreover, they could also freeze hiring to allow natural attrition to reduce labor costs further.
In terms of the cost of utilities, they could introduce a policy of overhauling all properties to use energy-saving electronic devices and water-saving measures. However, an easier way would be to introduce these measures during scheduled preventative maintenance activities. This cost-saving could be enough to counteract the increased cost of first responder expenditures, thus preventing an interruption in such a critical service.
Economic Growth
Economic growth is vital to any community. Without it, the community quickly stagnates, leaving people to find opportunities elsewhere. Local governments could identify their challenges and opportunities to find innovative solutions and then use design thinking to address these issues.
Through the five forces, they could quickly identify if the community uses services provided by private industry or other localities as substitutes for the services offered. Or they could identify which suppliers are influential on their expenditures. Are they paying too much for IT? Could they reduce expenditures by moving to cloud solutions? Is the supplier of cleaning supplies providing low-quality products and thus requiring more of the product to complete the job? Could switching to a local but more expensive supplier help reduce cost and the use of supplies?
A force that would not necessarily be associated with civil service is the New Entry force. However, could a new development in a neighboring community affect local activities? Or the force of Buyers, how do the customers control the revenue? Do they dictate how much the local government can charge for a service? Will increasing fees dramatically affect the number of people seeking the service?
Lastly, the most critical force that could affect the local government long term is the force of Rivals. Can another community attract citizens to move to them due to their innovative or organizational benefits? Will the rival communities stifle the local government by preventing its citizens from participating in the local community?
Once the economic growth situation is addressed and the challenges and opportunities identified, the local government could develop a clear set of objects and clearly define the citizens’ “customer needs.” The needs could then be the starting point in developing and guiding how the local government makes laws and regulations. Before a law or a regulation is implemented, the ease of the process concerning applying for the service, monitoring the policy, and collecting revenue would be considered.
There is a possibility they find that reducing the number of documents needed to submit for a certain permit would reduce the filing burden by ten days for opening a new local business. Or simplifying zoning regulations to encourage more affordable housing and walkable business areas and increase community participation. By testing each change and improving, they could gain the experience needed to drastically change their community within three years instead of 20 years or never.
Crime Reduction
Crime reduction is a very politically charged subject but something that must be addressed if any community wants to thrive. However, cognitive bias can seep into the system and wreak havoc on the citizens and the community’s reputation. By taking a solution-neutral approach of just following the data with the aid of MECE and design thinking, great strides could be taken in achieving goals of increased public safety.
While conducting their MECE analysis and taking the solution-neutral approach, the local government might find that crime falls into two categories crimes committed by community members and those committed by outsiders. As they drill down into each major category, they might find that the “local” crimes are not based on race (believing so would be a cognitive bias!) but could be divided into graft, poverty-related, and crimes related to drug and alcohol addiction. As for the “foreign” crimes, after drilling down, they might find that drug trafficking, proximity to a major highway, or the presence of certain types of business could be fueling those crimes.
As they drill down even further, they might find in the “local” crimes that the graft could be fueled by difficulty complying with a complex set of laws and regulations. Or poverty-related crimes could be fueled by desperate citizens who have lost well-paying manufacturing jobs and have no means to upskill to find alternative employment. Or addiction-related crimes are fueled by the lack of activities to engage the youth.
Once these issues are clear, the community can start addressing them using design thinking, and they might simply find solutions during the ideation or brainstorming phase. For example, by simplifying the permit application and payment process and reviewing laws, the graft could be reduced to zero. Or by investing more in local businesses or upskilling, they find that it would cost less than comparison sending the same persons through the justice system. Even better, investing in local infrastructure that caters to the young could encourage local entrepreneurship, more qualified employees, and a low-wage labor force of the young willing to work hard and gain business experience.
From these simple changes, the local government could then concentrate more of its resources on addressing the “foreign” crime. Insight into how to reduce “foreign” crime could be developed by testing small changes to policy as what would happen during the test and prototype phase of design thinking. For example, they might find that locating certain businesses such as liquor stores closer to the major highway or relocating youth recreational services away from these areas reduces the impact of drug traffickers. Or increased police presence at the on and off ramps of the major highway could act as a deterrent.
It is important that local governments continuously invest in tools and methods that can help them serve their communities. This includes tools and methods that are not intuitively related to governance and civil service but could benefit their communities tremendously.