New state government administrations in Virginia and New Jersey were elected into office this month. I put together a blog post called
Recommendations for New Jersey and Virginia State Governments and have attempted to post it anywhere I believe these transition teams might see it. If you know someone in these states, please send them this article to pass on.
In my own state . . . Indiana, miscalculations on forecasted numbers of what the revenue (what I call taxes) was for the State were way off. The Governor announced a shortfall this year of $300-400 million dollars. State employees have been given a wage freeze and medicaid doctors are having to take reduced payments to make up the short fall.
Better thinking around the provisioning of services would go a long way to reduce or eliminate this budget deficit.
I have approached the State on numerous occasions that the fiscal problems are directly related to their focus on reducing costs (instead of the causes of costs). I am a taxpayer in Indiana and observing the waste and sub-optimization without speaking out is NOT an option.
The Governor did the right thing by
cancelling the IBM contract for Indiana Welfare Eligibility. The problem is we are still left with the same State leaders that were involved with the first contract and unfortunately the same thinking . . . fixing this will be a stretch. Meanwhile, many needy folks in Indiana stand to suffer.
I attended a State Budget Committee meeting last month and listened to the FSSA Secretary outline some of their
new plan for Welfare Eligibility. They stand to do the wrong thing, righter.
Internal sources tell me that the State and its Vendors are studying hard some of my posts (verified by hits to my website). I haven't the heart to tell them that systems thinking is done by doing, not reading.
It is as W. Edwards Deming said, "There is a price for ignorance . . . we are paying through the nose."
