Continuing our learning as public servants is a very important part of our work, it allows us to learn how to do our jobs better and more efficiently. At times, this means traveling from our Central New York home to another county or even another state. For the traveler, the task of submitting your travel request on time and complete now becomes a chore that in the past was something that most did not look forward to doing. We were using a process that was old and time-consuming for applicants and those that facilitate the process. You could never be sure if your form would make it to the budget office before it was returned to you for incorrect information or how long it might take your form to make it to the bureau of accounts at the end of the line. There was no way to track your submission or know where it was stuck unless you felt like doing some light detective work for the day. Sometimes the paper documents passed by hand got lost, either because they were misplaced by a department or disappeared in the process of moving from one place to the other. From beginning to end, submitting a travel request was both cumbersome and frustrating.
In 2018 our former Director of Innovation started a program over the summer aimed at changing the innovative culture in City Hall with the aspirations of identifying and executing a process improvement project that was meaningful and would impact a number of departments. The API office's ideation luncheon sparked the interest of many and we got a variety of ideas and suggestions. Employees were enticed with the prospect of having their least favorite process improved alongside some delicious food at lunchtime.
The one process that everyone was familiar with being rather painful was the travel request submissions. We set out on a 4-month journey meeting monthly for the first 3 months and then breaking off into several working groups for the last month before presenting our recommendations and plan to move forward to the Mayor and senior staff. Our goals with the group of 24 or so employees were to accomplish the following:
One, digitize the paper-based process to allow for faster approval times and transparency while the form is moving through the needed workflow.
Two, update the travel policy to accurately reflect the City’s requirements and needs for travel approvals.
Three, create a new digital form that would be easy to complete and would eliminate the applicant needing to re-fill out the same form.
Four, implement a travel p-card that would allow travelers to pay for accommodations and flights without having to come out of pocket first. The use of the p-card would also allow those traveling to book their flights and accommodations in a more timely manner and give them the ability to pay the quoted rate (or closer) given when they were first looking into their travel needs.
Did we do what we set out to do? What did we change? Did we actually improve the travel request submission process? The answers are yes, let me tell you more, and yes! It took closer to 3 years than 3 months, but with the help of many, we managed to change the process. The first impact our improvements have had on the process is transparency around where in the workflow the approval is. This was done by making the form digital, identifying a digital platform that could push the form through a workflow for approvals, and finding a portal that would take in the digital forms for submission.
Another advantage this work has produced is the timeliness of approvals. Before, a paper form had to make it from the department to the budget office to the Mayor’s Office and then to the bureau of accounts, and then finally back to the department. A lot of time was wasted in the form waiting to make it from point A to B. Think about departments that don’t live in City Hall. It could take a travel request submission a day or two to just make it to the first stop. Now that the form and workflow have gone digital it could take just minutes to potentially move from one approval to the next.
We also reduced the number of stops each submission must make on its journey to approval. With our paper form you needed at least 5 signatures and an initial from the budget analyst, these days there are only 4 approvers in the process before your submission is accepted. Cutting out some of the unnecessary approvers and accuracy checks has allowed the process to speed up while cutting out duplication of efforts for a number of City employees.
One of the last and very important changes that we made during this process improvement has been to update the Travel Policy for the City. We changed a number of items within the policy including when travel would need a request form to be submitted and approved, the requirement to request a city car if travel is local, the requirement to ask for government rates and we now use Federal per diem for both gas reimbursement for local travel and for meals when out of town.
Changing the travel submission process helped us accomplish some short-term goals, but it also highlighted the need to continue shaping a culture of innovation within the City of Syracuse. The best innovations don’t happen in a vacuum, they come from those that are doing the daily duties that need to be carried out in order to serve our constituents. You can then begin to see the impact of innovation when a person or a department continues to make small improvements, and this accumulation grows exponentially.
It was mentioned earlier that the travel request submission process improvement was born from the ideation luncheons that the API office hosted. Those luncheons were one of a few programs executed to begin that innovative culture change within City Hall. By asking folks from every department, from every job to come and learn the tools used for process improvement and to take part in the transformation was inspiring to see and to experience. Through the ideation luncheon program, 24 employees had the opportunity to step out of their traditional roles and responsibilities and were able to contribute to the greater effort that made the changes and improvements to the process. In October they were even able to present to the Mayor all of their great work and outline the changes that would be taking place.
The quick win for the ideation lunches was to improve a very old and tired process that needed changing. The real win was offering folks the opportunity to learn what process improvement is and what it could look like as well as offering the experience of being part of something bigger. This allowed for space where even just a handful of employees could be inspired to go back to their departments, offices, and coworkers and believe that they could do this. Encouraging all our employees to improve upon a process or the way they serve their customers even in the smallest way is a true accomplishment.