Abbott had built a strong team, but budget constraints were the reality for the foreseeable future and he felt change was needed to fully recognize the agency's mission to provide professional and effective services for the people of Texas. As such, he asked each of the divisions to brainstorm ways to work more efficiently.
With this mandate in mind, Casey Hoffman, deputy attorney general for families and children, began taking a hard look at his division's approach to contracting.
"Just as technology breakthroughs saved the day for us, time and time again, over the past 10 years, I thought we could make significant improvements and fulfill our mission using the resources from contracts with strategic partners," Hoffman said. "While technology will continue to support our efforts on behalf of families, we believed the next big opportunity to leverage our limited resources was the creation of more win/win contracts with strategic partners."
Expanding the number of strategic partners while redesigning interaction with them was a daunting, but important, task. In fact, the Child Support Division (CSD) currently manages more than 300 contracts that result in expenditures of $80 million, or 36 percent of the division's annual revenue.
Hoffman knew he would need to consolidate all of the expertise involved in the contracting process into a new contracting section, but also he had to organize the overall approach to contracting, and assess and address the competencies of each of the individuals involved.
"We understood our challenges, but needed a partner to help us work through them," explained Hoffman. "We didn't want to hire a vendor, but rather to develop a relationship with a partner that could help guide us. We found that relationship with ESI International."
Working with ESI, Hoffman and his team developed the framework for the CSD's Contracting Office. They built the team around the typical contract lifecycle, creating individual business units for each stage of the contracting process.
The first unit is an innovative sourcing solutions group that works with private sector vendors to identify the best technologies for particular projects. Individuals on this team constantly research capabilities in the marketplace, through vendor forums and other outreach, to ensure that they have a solid understanding of what's available and what's effective.
Next, the team has a specific unit focused on contract development. This unit reviews vendor-neutral reports from the sourcing solutions group and then develops requirements based on agency need. This group also shepherds the contract through to the award stage.
Once a contract is awarded, it is turned over to the contract management team, which is comprised of technology and other experts from a variety of disciplines. Individuals are assigned to the contracts based on their area of expertise, ensuring that they have a solid understanding, not only of the process, but also of the specific technology in procurement.
Finally, the contracting office has a contract monitoring team that supervises contract fulfillment and a team of experienced contract attorneys who participate at all stages of the process.
The team had identified the organization of the contracting office and had a good idea of the kind of skills needed for the jobs, but it still needed to match people with those roles.
"We were searching for companies that would provide training that would help us get to where we wanted to be and ESI immediately came to the top of our list," said Hershel Becker, Director of Contract Operations. "ESI gave us a quality team of experienced professionals -- they really had a global perspective that helped validate the plan we'd developed for the office."
Becker and his team found ESI by participating in a webinar ESI conducted on sourcing. "We realized that their training fell nicely into our template because of the way they talked about the different stages of contracting. They knew what was important to us."
The two groups sat down and began to work on a plan for matching existing skills with organizational roles and aspirations. They created a matrix of the different skills already existing within the organization and the skills that still needed to be developed. As a result, ESI developed a training program that was tailored to meet the team's needs and continues to work with the organization today.
"The challenge facing this office was similar to challenges faced by many other state and local agencies," said Jim Foreman, Vice President of Client Solutions at ESI. "In order to implement an organizational change, you have to fully understand your current situation, then implement effective contract and project management through a documented process, the right tools and training. It's a systemic challenge and everyone in the organization has to participate to make it work. The Texas Attorney General's Office was unique in that it had an incredible amount of executive support and a talented team that is dedicated to making the initiative successful."
Although the contracting office has been in existence for the past year and is maturing , the team has already had impressive ---- and innovative -- results. Specifically, it allowed the agency to develop a better understanding of all potential vendors and encouraged better long-term vendor relationships, both of which contributed to the organization's overall mission to serve families and children.
Through its research and forums, the sourcing solutions team has considerably broadened the agency's grasp of available technologies, introducing the agency to new and different vendors from all parts of the country.
Also, the contracting process allows relationship-building to occur with all vendors, not just those with whom the agency signs contracts. For example, after a contract is awarded, the contracting team meets with each of the unsuccessful bidders to give and receive feedback on the contract, the process and the agency's performance. Not only does this allow for insightful observations that may improve agency performance, but also it helps establish an amiable relationship with all vendors, encouraging them all to bid on future contracts.
With years of experience in both the public and private sector, Hershel Becker and Casey Hoffman knew that communication would also be a challenge for the new office. Both appreciated that training is required to have an in-depth understanding of partners. So the team worked with ESI Business Development Manager Patricia Lawson to create a program to train its project fulfillment specialists. As a result, those managing projects understood not only the contract process, but also the technologies being acquired.
"We see a lot of value in these results because we benefit from having more bidders on our contracts and precise communication around expectations. We're trying to save taxpayers money and get a quality product and we think the way to do that is through communication throughout the process -- from award through to fulfillment," Hoffman said.
In addition, by having more clear and concise contracts that are not left open to interpretation, the Contract Operations group has helped bolster overall collections by the Attorney General's Office from $1.68 billion in 2004 to $1.86 billion dollars in 2005 -- collections that benefited more than 600,000 families.
The agency is working to spread the word of its success. Hoffman and his team set up a meeting at a conference for all vendors who do business with child support state agencies to introduce them to this innovative way of managing contracts. During the conference, the team solicited feedback from all vendors, seeking to better understand potential pitfalls of their current model as well as how it might be honed and tailored for other states or a national level.
"We have to keep learning as we grow," Hoffman said. "This was a way for us to share our experiences and also learn from other people."
