2006-2007 Annual Report

The Department of Revenue is committed to providing learning and performance improvement activities that ensure knowledge transfer and deliver proven business results.

Knowledge-Based Leadership (KBL) training is an intensive five month program designed to teach fact-based problem solving and leadership skills to Revenue employees. As part of this training, participants are required to apply quality tools they learn in class to real world problems; this approach is commonly referred to as "action learning." A unique aspect of this training is that each participant has access to the instructors/mentors for assistance in between classes. Because of the interaction and individual attention given to each participant, class size is limited to 20, with one instructor/mentor for ten participants.

Since June of 2003, 108 key management employees have taken KBL classes. Approximately 225 management employees have served on problem-solving teams with the training participants. This means that 44 percent of our managers have been exposed to this problem-solving methodology. Approximately 500 nonmanagement employees have also served on the teams.

The projects have more than paid for themselves. The initial return on investment calculations for completed projects reveal that for every dollar invested in the training there is an average of $23 returned in increased revenue, savings, or productivity.

Additional benefits to Revenue include a workforce with advanced problem-solving abilities, and the identification of improvements that can be applied to other areas of the agency. The following are just two examples of teams that produced measurable improvements and results in 2006.

Reduction of Unemployment Tax Lien Cancellations Team

Deborah Maddren,
General Tax Administration

Over the past four years, there was a significant increase in the delay and workload for processing unemployment tax liens. There was a 30 percent increase in auto-filed liens, a 60 percent increase in the number of cancelled liens processed, a 235 percent increase in the associated employee time required to process the liens, and a 181 percent increase in the employee time required to process all recorded documents.

To reduce these delays and workload, a team determined the optimum lien filing threshold to recommend and obtained approval to implement this change into the unified tax system. This should bring the lien filing amount in line with what is being done in the other taxes and reduce the number of unemployment tax lien cancellations.

By improving the language on the notices, the team expects to reduce cancellations due to account inactivations (for example, businesses going out of business) by approximately 50 percent.

Based on the number of cancellations in 2005, the team expects a reduction of 7,761 cancellations. Since cancellations result in the recording of two documents for input (the filed lien and cancellation), an increased savings of over $170,000 is expected annually.

Orange County Non-Served Summons Team

David Gillen,
Child Support Enforcement

David Gillen became a Knowledge-Based Leadership "Keyholder" in March 2006, by presenting his second project. David’s team chose to examine non-service, which is an unsuccessful attempt by the process server (sheriff or private) to physically serve a noncustodial parent with an initial court summons. Non-service is usually caused by inaccurate location information, untimely processing, the transient nature of some noncustodial parents, and noncustodial parents who avoid service.

Define

The team defined the problem as follows: A noncustodial parent must be served with an initial summons to establish a child support order. In Orange County, 34 percent of judicially referred cases for paternity and/or support do not go forward for support due to non-service of the initial summons. Reducing the number of non-served cases should result in more orders for child support and more money for the children of Florida.

Validate

The problem was validated using data from monthly reports of cases without a support order and federal performance reports including: 1) total number of cases in a referred status compared to the number of cases in the nonserved caseload in the previous year; 2) site comparative review of the non-served codes in the judicially referred and non-served caseloads in the previous year; and 3) large service site comparative review for obligation rate performance.

Analyze

In this stage, the team flowcharted the summons service process and identified possible gaps in the process, brainstormed possible causes for non-service prior to review of the cases, and reviewed more than 1,400 Orange County cases that were in a non-served status. They developed a spreadsheet which captured relevant data.

Implement

After reviewing and analyzing the data and completing root-cause analysis, the team identified the required components of the action plan. The action plan consisted of ten improvement opportunities identified by the team.

Control

The changes made to improve the location information for processing referrals have been effective and have improved the process significantly. Changes include eliminating group interviews, improving location verification standards, and improving communication with process servers. We also have staff focused on encouraging the use of the Administrative Support Process, where service in many cases can be accomplished by certified mail. The number of non-service cases was reduced from 1,528 to 1,022 (a 33 percent reduction). This contributed to the Orlando obligation rate increasing by 6.8 percent, one step closer to getting more money to more children, more quickly.

Savings

• Two full-time positions, one in the Location Process and one in the Order Generation Process. Both individuals were moved to the Intake Process to assist with initial case processing.
• Changing to a central reviewer for outgoing judicial referrals saved all three Establishment managers an average of one hour per day in case review time. An estimated $11,392 is saved annually by reducing the time the managers spend reviewing cases. The grand total in annual cost savings for this project is $63 ,392.

Knowledge-Based Leadership is divided into seven stages:

• Introduction to quality leadership skills
• Define: Identify core issues
• Validate: Understand core issues
• Analyze: Recognize and analyze key causes
• Improve: Implement recommended solutions
• Control: Measure and sustain improvements
• Project presentations to senior leaders

Each participant is required to:

• Select a project that is linked to a strategic challenge or business process problem deemed important to the agency.
• Select subject matter experts and work with them as a team to follow the quality methodology taught and modeled in class.
• Justify the project in terms of dollars saved, additional money collected, increased productivity, reduced cycle time.