Guess Who Else is Innovating in COVID Times?
(Hint: It’s your local government workforce)
Case Study — Kansas City, Missouri
“For local government leaders around the world, the first half of 2020 was both a time of devastating upheaval and one of rapid innovation…It’s time for civic innovators to catch their breath and take stock of what they’ve achieved and how it’s moved their cities forward” — Bloomberg Cities
Like many cities around the United States, the City of Kansas City, Missouri has confronted devastating health, economic, social and fiscal emergencies throughout 2020. In August, the City Council authorized a hiring freeze, employee furloughs and 4.5% budget cuts to most city departments (2.25% to public safety departments). More budget reductions loom in the upcoming fiscal year due to a sharp drop in revenues as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The City’s operations and service delivery have been uniquely challenged unlike any time in its 170-year history.
In response, KCMO’s 4,400-person workforce has stepped up to continue serving and engaging residents in extraordinary and innovative ways.
Examples of new City services and programs that have emerged to serve KCMO residents in a safer and more convenient way include: remote City Council meetings and virtual town halls, repurposing City streets to create more space for social distancing and exercise, COVID-19 pop-up testing events, virtual court hearings, expanding opportunities for digital permitting and contracts, online vehicle auctions, transitioning the 311 Call Center to remote operations, and many more critical efforts across all of the City’s departments.
Measuring Employee Innovation
Earlier this summer, DataKC, the City Manager’s Office, and the General Services Department collaborated to survey City employees about the new tools, workarounds and processes they’ve been adopting during this crisis. Our goal was to identify these new tools and share them with KCMO staff and the City’s leaders who may not have been aware of them.
Over 140 employees shared their stories of how they’ve innovated to improve efficiency, safety and outcomes in their workplaces and for KCMO residents.
Most survey respondents (79%) typically worked in the office, 13% worked between the field and the office, and 8% worked primarily in field operations.
Here are the key takeaways from the Employee Workplace Innovation Survey.
New Workplace Improvements and Innovations
Employees highlighted workplace innovations that generally fell into one of seven categories: video conferencing, digital signatures/forms, teleworking, process improvements, hardware/software tools, new safety measures and other recommendations.
Employees were then asked about the type of efficiencies and/or improvements gained by their new solutions.
“New opportunities to use services remotely” and “adopting a new technology for the workplace” were the top two efficiencies and improvements gained by using new tools. Other top improvements included: simplifying a task, improving communication with customers and improving collaboration with colleagues.
The top response for why employees utilized a new solution was so they could continue performing regular job functions while working from their homes, followed by the ability to more effectively meet customer needs.
For example, one of the City’s financial managers worked independently during the Mayor’s Stay-at-Home order in March and April to design a new electronic legal opinion database. The new database eliminated the need of maintaining large paper binders of over 189 legal opinions on tax audits that had accumulated over the years. The paper binders were time-consuming for employees to access and update, as well as costly to print.
Top tools and employee testimonials
#1 Top New Tool: Video Conferencing
Video conferencing was the most reported type of innovation by employees.
Video conferencing solutions quickly emerged as an invaluable tool to the workforce immediately after the Mayor’s Stay-at-Home orders were issued in late March.
Over 30% of KCMO’s employees were registered to telework within the first month of the order. City facilities closed and many departments were forced to quickly transform their service delivery to online offerings. Video conferencing platforms played a major role in supporting the continuity of operations and service delivery for every department in the City.
KCMO employees overwhelmingly felt that the widespread adoption of video conferencing led to long-term, sustainable improvements in their ability to remotely engage with residents and customers, as well as to enhancements in workplace meetings and collaborations.
Video conferencing impacts that employees frequently referenced included: better communications internally and externally, increased productivity, increases in morale, improvement in customer satisfaction, time-savings (e.g., travel/commute time), cost-savings, energy savings and the ability to sustain operations during a shutdown.
KCMO employee testimonials about video conferencing
“All of our vehicle auctions are now online. We have doubled/tripled the number of bidders each auction. Average sale price per vehicle has gone up by $275.00” — Neighborhoods and Housing Services
“Since March 2020, the KC Municipal Drug Court program has implemented Zoom groups and meetings with the Drug Court Participants. There have been 15+ participants actively engaged, twice per week, for a 1 hour group session” — Municipal Court
“Providing videoconferencing to the public and city staff for meetings allows us to fit more meetings in our day. We don’t have to travel which lowers cost of using the city vehicles or personal vehicles.” — City Planning Department
“I am able to help users remotely. I can provide database administration remotely” — General Services Department
“…the ability to have ZOOM meetings from anywhere and everywhere, and to “share screen” — has contributed to hours and hours of added productivity time as so many employees are not having to drive or go to other locations” — Kansas City Fire Department
“I’m able to effectively use Microsoft Teams to provide end user training and demo functionality to groups of people. It’s been great to have users enter questions in the Chat function and it’s easy to record sessions for future reference.” — Human Resources Department
#2 Top New Tool: Digital Signatures and Forms
Many employees are ecstatic about new City solutions that offer digital signature and digital forms.
Much like video conferencing, City staff had access to various tools for digital signatures and forms prior to March, but it took the challenges of closed City offices and new remote workspaces to spark widespread usage. Now, employees don’t want to go back to paper forms.
Employees reported that the option to collect and digitally sign documents and forms has led to notable time-savings (e.g., travel time, wait time), cost-savings (e.g., printing costs), and making tasks easier to perform, as well as more effective and efficient record-keeping. Employees cited improvements in customer satisfaction and customer service to residents, contractors and City employees.
Employee testimonials about digital signatures and forms
“DocuSign has allowed me to sign off on invoices without having to drive to our administrative building to sign them in person” — Parks and Recreation
“It provides a secure way to eliminate manual tasks of printing, signing, mailing, and reduces paper costs” — General Services Department
“Digital time sheets have saved us a ton of paper and have made payroll duties so much easier when telecommuting. We are able to do timekeeping both in the office and working from home.” — Public Works
“Instead of delivering a checklist with backup documentation along a line of approvers, we now send it in an email. Adobe Signature allows all to initial and date checklist which signifies approval.” — Aviation Department
“We used DocuSign for employee reviews. We were able to get all three required signatures and send a copy to the HR liaison in a matter of minutes. This, along with Microsoft Teams, for discussing performance and goals worked perfectly.” — General Services Department
“While teleworking, I utilize the PDF editing functions more which reduces printing documents and scanning them.” — KC Water
“HR implemented the voucher invoice attachment requirement to move toward a more paperless friendly environment. It reduces the time spent on manual AP tasks, such as printing copies of invoices and manually routing paperwork with handwriting signature. It allows HR to maintain visibility and control throughout the invoice process virtually.” — Human Resources
Conclusion
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” — Rahm Emanuel
As local governments began to eventually move from emergency response to recovery, city leaders will be challenged to decide on the balance of sustaining their 2020 investments into new operating models, such as teleworking and remote service delivery, and reverting back to the models of pre-COVID operations.
It’s critical in order to find this balance that local governments continue to measure and examine the impact of these innovations on efficiency, cost-savings, productivity and morale in the government workplace, along with the service impacts to satisfaction, convenience, accessibility and inclusion for their residents.
For many City employees and residents, these new technological infrastructures, tools and approaches to work are undeniably here to stay.
-Bo McCall (DataKC)
