Amy Tong: Efficiency Is an Opportunity for Industry

SACRAMENTO — Speaking in front of a room of technology industry representatives across from the California state Capitol on Monday, Amy Tong, former state CIO and current senior counselor to the governor, began with some bluntness: “We’re broke, absolutely broke.”

Indeed — the state budget faced a $12 billion deficit this year, fresh off a $47 billion deficit the year before. And next year’s not shaping up any better.

But for industry, Tong said, there’s opportunity in this. This year, the governor and the state as a whole have taken up the banner of efficiency, and vendors can help California achieve it.

Toward that end, Tong urged those present to look at their existing customers in state government and ask what more they could be doing for them. After all, agencies can save money by consolidating services to fewer vendors.

“I think this is actually really an opportunity, because you’ve got willing ears to hear what is the maximization of the current tool that you can have,” she said. “So please have your conversations with all those entities that you’re interacting with. If they have your suites, but [are] using 10 percent of it, please show them how to stretch it another 10 percent more.”

“Efficiency” is actually only one of three pillars of the governor’s plan for government as he works toward the end of his final term in office. The other two are “engaged” and “effective.” Here, Tong highlighted a distinction from federal efficiency efforts — California’s strategy isn’t just to slash budgets, it’s to improve government. If an effort results in more effective service delivery, that’s a win.

And engagement is an enabler of efficiency and effectiveness. Tong highlighted the Engaged California effort, which has opened an avenue for the state’s hundreds of thousands of employees to share feedback and offer ideas for how to improve on their work. The project entered its second round in August. The program is tied into the new Governor’s Innovation Fellows initiative, which brought in 21 state employees to implement ideas aimed toward efficiency and improvement in California government.

Of course, not all efforts will involve technology. Process simplification and improvement can fix problems before any technological intervention is needed.

However, Tong noted, financial savings achieved through such work won’t necessarily mean reduced department budgets — instead, departments should reinvest what they save.

“The idea here is you’ve got to have some incentive for the departments to truly look for those savings through process improvement,” she said.