Carer’s Allowance Digital Service takes its ten thousandth claim Last week the new Carer’s Allowance Digital Service took its ten-thousandth new claim. Feedback from service users continues to provide pointers on how we can improve the experience and make the process more efficient. Our Google Analytics installation is generating great insight in the way the service is being used - most interestingly, around 30% of claims are being completed on mobile devices. Although this is consistent with broader trends in web access,  we initially thought that the audience for this benefit would be reluctant to use mobiles and tablets. We were wrong. However, the responsive design is paying dividends as there’s no need to make apps or alternative versions for smaller-screen devices. The ‘change of circumstances’ reporting feature has also gone into the live service - although usage is relatively low, there’s a great opportunity to get users to report changes in care arrangements, finances and contact information in a far more efficient way. We’ll keep you posted.

We’re a small group of DWP’s new trainee developers - we’re getting ‘hands-on’ DWP as an organisation is working to develop its digital capability and we’re a small group within the department that’s getting really hands-on to develop the skills and experience we’ll need to make the next generation of DWP’s digital services. ‘Make’ is the important word - we want to be able to build, run and iterate services that customers prefer over, say, paper forms or phone calls. This means coding, understanding and applying a true dev-ops approach and, most importantly, making sure we’re always fulfilling user needs. We’re the first group of trainee developers beginning this journey; left to right in the photo: Paul Bowman Ian Tidmarsh (Me) Nathalie Harrold Mike Morris Adrian Stone Donna Kirk. Paul Anderson We’ll be sharing regular updates on what we’re learning and making, and how we’re working with the Government Digital Service. If you have any questions, use the comments box and we’ll get back to you.

We can bring new ideas from user research and staff suggestions into the service quickly and frequently. Since we launched the new Carer’s Allowance digital claim service last October, we’ve made 12 full releases. Each of these has included one or more major improvements to make the service easier and quicker to use. Not all improvements need a full release and we’re constantly identifying minor improvements and fixes that can be completed without interrupting the service. This also means that we can quickly introduce smaller changes identified in our weekly user research sessions and suggestions from staff in the Carer’s Allowance Unit here in Preston. For example, some of the changes have made previously optional information mandatory in certain cases. By providing this information in the claim the department doesn’t have keep going back to the customer for additional details - this helps make the claim process quicker. We’ve also made the last page of the claim better to ensure customers understand what happens next and how long it should take. In common with all the 25 digital exemplar transactions, finding a good way for users to pick dates continues to be challenging. Our constant user research is helping get to the right answer. Our latest improvement is one that users won’t see at all, and that’s exactly the point. The technical term is zero downtime deployment; it just means that we can swap the current Carer’s Allowance digital claim service for a new version without interrupting claims in progress. It also means that the team don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to do releases - so this improvement has made them very happy too. And all this is helping us get it right. One customer recently emailed us to say: I went onto the site last night and filled the form in and sent it off, all done within 20 minutes. I couldn’t believe it, it just seemed so easy But we’re not complacent; making great digital services is about one thing. Improving. Continuously.

We have started a 4-week Discovery exercise for Carers Allowance Phase 2.  A core team of experts from key areas will be locked together in a room in Preston exploring options for transforming the Carers Allowance service by addressing such things as possible replacement of the back-end service. We will also be bringing in subject matter experts as we investigate a wide range of dependent areas before producing a Strategic Outline Business Case for approval. So far we have defined the vision for a transformed service and started a detailed analysis of the existing end-to-end process for claims and changes of circumstances.

In January we completed an introductory training course in programming. The trainees - Ian Tidmarsh, Nathalie Harrold, Mike Morris, Adrian Stone, Donna Kirk and Paul Anderson (all from IT Project Directory) - now have an understanding of the fundamentals and principals of programming in a basic language. DWP is working to develop in-house digital skills and we’re a small group within the department that’s getting ‘hands-on’    We are the first group of trainee developers at the beginning of this exciting and innovative journey to develop our digital in-house capability to be able to offer another I.T option to the business and are pleased to be the path finders for future teams. The trainees are getting really ‘hands on’ building the skills and experience they will need to become developers including taking part in a workshop with GDS which gave them an introduction to how GDS work and how GDS link into the different Government strands. The trainees are using Raspberry Pis (a low cost credit card sized single board computer device) to practise and consolidate their learning to date and to further develop their skills in programming techniques. The group are using Raspberry Pi computers to consolidate their learning and practice their skills. Their next steps will be to look at programming within various languages and then move into live environments working on small systems. They are also planning to expand the trainee programme. To find out more read their blog on Gov.uk which will be regularly updated.  

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon I was in Chicago this week.  As in many cities, I had the opportunity to take a few taxi rides. Also, as in many cities, there was a placard with useful information posted for you to read to help understand the fare structure. As usual, it included information such as the rate per mile, charges for additional passengers, and the add-on fee for trips to the airport. It also had a fee I had never seen listed before. The fee for cleaning up vomit in a Chicago taxicab is $50. That made me really curious about why that fee is called out. Is vomiting a common occurrence in Chicago cabs? Do the drivers drive recklessly to encourage that action? (Mine did not.) So, I did a little research and found that this was at the request of drivers, who could not previously force a fee on "hurling" passengers. Furthermore, the same ordinance allowing this fee has been enacted in Austin, TX and Savannah, GA. Naturally, my next thought was how does this placard entry relate to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence in the area of customer focus? The only relevant questions I could find were: How do you enable customers to seek information and support? How do you enable them to give feedback on your customer support? What are you key means of customer support, including your key communication mechanisms? How do you determine your customers’ key support requirements? So, what is my message to you? Much as I love Chicago, wouldn’t you rather come to Baltimore, enjoy some delicious Maryland hard shell crabs, and attend the 25th anniversary Quest for Excellence conference on April 7-10, 2013? And not have a "gut-wrenching" experience, but be intellectually stimulated? See you in Baltimore!

Posted by Christine Schaefer MESA is a fast-growing small business that will soon receive its second Baldrige Award crystal. How did this provider of pipeline corrosion-control services and materials become a national role model for performance excellence? MESA’s CEO Terry May answered this question recently in a video interview that will be presented at the Baldrige Program’s upcoming 25th Annual Quest for Excellence® Conference in Baltimore. In the following excerpts, May first describes his company’s strategic efforts to expand its service business, developing its workforce as a foundation for growth: Through our strategic planning process, we recognized an opportunity to get into the pipeline integrity area, and in analyzing that we were trying to decide if that’s really a direction we wanted to go because that move really was the first move in expanding our service offerings. . . . What [the expansion] required for us was a pretty significant investment in talent, in learning new skills, bringing on some additional people and developing a software tool. In the interview, May also described his company’s focus on customer and supplier relationships: First of all, when we talk about great relationships it’s not just our customers. We extend that relationship thing to our suppliers as well, and we believe that those relationships are what are going to make the difference between us and our competitors. . . . what creates a great relationship . . .  starts off for us with quality and service . . . beyond that we want to be friends with our customers and our suppliers. We want to have personal connections. Those relationships provide opportunities to grow. They also provide opportunities to recover from issues. May also detailed his company’s approaches in the areas of workforce environment and development: MESA has five strategic objectives of which [being] a great place to work is only one. Some of the others include great service, great relationships, world class performance, and we don’t believe we’re going to be able to achieve those if we don’t have a great place to work . . . our core principles, integrity, respect, community, and fun, . . . provide a foundation [for] the type of environment we have here. . . . a place to work that people enjoy coming to . . . they have a place to learn, they have a place to grow, it’s a place of opportunity, and it’s a place to contribute to something a little bit bigger. Most of the skills at MESA are learned after people come to work here, with some exceptions. . . . We’ve got a commitment to development and training that goes beyond just the current positions. We train for future positions as well, and when we evaluate talent we would much prefer to hire from within and move people up. So it’s a challenge for a small organization, but as we grow we’ve created additional opportunities that allow us to continue to move people around. May described the value of Baldrige this way: First of all, it’s a proven business management model with lots of examples and successes—role models that you can look at. From its beginnings directed at manufacturing, it has expanded to include all different sizes and types of organizations and . . . evolved and adapted over the 25 years to meet current organizational and other challenges that have been presented. [The Baldrige Criteria] present in a structured, documented fashion those requirements that, when consistently followed, will result in business or organizational success and performance. Hear May and leaders of the other three 2012 Baldrige Award-winning organizations share more about their best practices and journeys to excellence at the 25th Annual Quest for Excellence® conference. And view an online video featuring MESA here.

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey It’s no surprise to anyone that the economy has been bad. And in the education sector, where healthy budgets mean that teachers have the needed supplies and students have the adequate guidance to learn, a bad economy can be especially bad. The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has been interviewing past Baldrige Award recipients to ask if they are still using the Criteria for Performance Excellence and what the Criteria have done for them; we call these interviews "success stories." At Iredell-Statesville Schools (ISS) in North Carolina, a 2008 Baldrige Award winner, the economy’s impact on the budget has been bad, but with the help of the Criteria, senior leaders have put processes in place and tightened up those processes. This has helped the district to be more competitive for grants and embed its culture of continuous improvement. "Our district’s commitment to quality has served us well," says Brady Johnson, superintendent, Iredell-Statesville Schools. "This is particularly true in the wake of the recession. In spite of draconian budget cuts, and the loss of 11 percent of our workforce, our students’ performance continues to improve. I attribute this to our focus on the Baldrige Criteria and our commitment to continuous improvement." Read more about ISS’s story. (See right-hand column and scroll down to the story "A Vision to be Among the Best.") Participate in special topic sessions on how to use the Baldrige Criteria to survive and recover from the economic downturn at the 25th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference.  

Posted by Christine Schaefer The City of Irving, Texas is only the second U.S. city to date to have earned the prestigious Baldrige Award for performance excellence. How did the 68-square-mile city in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan area earn this national distinction? Irving’s city manager Tommy Gonzalez answered this question recently by first describing the importance of strong leadership, including providing good direction for employees, and maintaining a focus on customers, the workforce, and results: "[W]e have strong leadership here. We have great servant leaders throughout our executive team. They really are focused on how can we provide the best service [and] how can we listen to our employees and really focus on their efforts. . . . We owe our employees good direction. We owe them good management, good leadership . . .  . And the Baldrige Program,  . . . really speaks to all of that. It speaks to leadership. It speaks to the processes and good management principles. It speaks to results, the customer focus, the workforce focus. . . . [Using the Baldrige Criteria] gives you this direction, and it challenges you to greater heights. And you need to respond and do that." Gonzalez then compared his city’s achievement of the high performance needed to win the Baldrige Award to successfully climbing the world’s tallest mountain: "And so, the way you’re recognized is if you meet those heights, if you climb that mountain. You know, it’s Mt. Everest of the leadership management world." He also used the mountain-climbing analogy to describe the focus on continuous improvement and alignment between organizational processes and results that are part of using the Baldrige framework: "So what’s so great about the Malcolm Baldrige Program is that it [has you] talk about . . .  how hard it was to climb. Let’s talk about all of the mishaps you might have had along the way and all the should have, could haves, all the almosts . . . you know, that person could have fallen off the mountain. You can do the same thing, you know, running an organization. . . . Do you remember when we got better at that program? That’s why we got that result. That’s why we got to the top of the mountain." Next week, Gonzalez and other city leaders will tell more about their Baldrige journey to excellence and present their best practices at the Quest for Excellence® conference in Baltimore. At that event, the city and the other three 2012 Baldrige Award winners will officially be honored by the President or one of his direct reports. You can view a video featuring Irving here.

Posted by Christine Schaefer Is there any greater honor for Baldrige Award-winning organizations than to receive a tribute from the President of the United States? How about receiving more than one? Current and former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton each honored the performance excellence of Baldrige Award recipients early this week at the annual award ceremony and Baldrige 25th anniversary gala celebration, respectively. The Presidential remarks are highlights of the Quest for Excellence® Conference that began on April 7 in Baltimore. "I’m so pleased to help honor this year’s prestigious [Malcolm] Baldrige National Quality Award winners—four organizations that are relentless in their pursuit of a better, brighter future," said President Obama in his videotaped remarks at the award ceremony Monday morning. "I’ve always said that our free market is the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known," said the President. "And that engine is powered by our dreamers, our risk takers, and our innovators." Baldrige Award Ceremony, April 8, 2013; photo by Eddie Arrossi The President then recognized the role-model work of the four 2012 Baldrige Award recipients:  Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Grand Prairie, Texas (manufacturing) MESA Products Inc., Tulsa, Okla. (small business) North Mississippi Health Services, Tupelo, Miss. (health care) City of Irving, Irving, Texas (nonprofit) "These honorees exhibit the kind of job-creating innovation that’s always kept our economy growing and vibrant and prosperous," said the President. "So congratulations to this year’s award recipients and thanks to all of you for recognizing and promoting excellence and innovation." In a separate videotaped message presented at the Baldrige Program’s silver anniversary gala on Sunday, former President Clinton said, "I’m glad to join you in celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Malcolm Baldrige [National] Quality Award and to recognize this year’s honorees." "Since 1987 the Baldrige Award has helped invigorate our nation’s economy by advancing competitiveness and ensuring quality of performance in all sectors all across our country." In congratulating the four 2012 Baldrige Award winners, Clinton then said, "All of you represent the best of our industries and challenge us to build a stronger, more thriving economy." Former President George H.W. Bush and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum also sent letters in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program and Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Those and other congratulatory letters are posted on the Baldrige Program’s Web site at http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/25th/letters.cfm/.