Harrisburg, PA – The Wolf administration is being recognized for its efforts to make government more efficient and reduce costs by consolidating administrative functions.
Governor Wolf announced the shared services initiative in 2017 to centralize HR and IT staff, services and funding for 26 state agencies into the Office of Administration. Under the new operating model, IT and HR staff support groups of agencies with similar missions and programs. As a result of the restructuring, the administration has saved over $27 million.
The National Association of State Chief Administrators (NASCA) presented Pennsylvania with its 2018 Innovations in State Government Award in the category of personnel management for implementing a shared services model for human resources and information technology.
The NASCA awards recognize state programs and projects that exemplify best practices and innovation and create efficiency and effectiveness. This is the third award for Pennsylvania since 2015.
“Every dollar we save on back office functions is a dollar that can be used for programs and services that benefit Pennsylvanians,” said Secretary of Administration Sharon Minnich. “Over the past three years, the Office of Administration has saved nearly 400 million by finding better ways to streamline government operations and be more efficient.”
“HR and IT staff are finding new ways to work together and share resources that were not possible when they were siloed in individual agencies,” said Minnich. “Making this strategic shift in how we manage HR and IT allows us to do more with what we already have and to make future investments that will deliver more benefits to the public and state agencies.”
Recent examples include:
- OA is collaborating with agencies on recruitment activities to increase the quality and quantity of candidates applying to positions. Additionally, OA has implemented a single electronic hiring system to eliminate redundancy and provide better data to managers.
- The Departments of Environmental Protection (DEP), Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and Agriculture are now sending one recruiter to job fairs to represent all of them, rather than each agency sending its own representatives to events.
- DEP and DCNR are sharing specialized GIS equipment, such as printers and plotters, to reduce replacement costs, as well as sharing GIS software applications developed by the individual agencies.
- The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) is working to share data from 911 centers with PennDOT to improve handling of traffic incidents.
- Employees of PennDOT, PEMA and the Department of Community and Economic Development are now supported by a single IT help desk instead of three.
- HR staff from State Police and Department of Corrections were able to assist the Board of Probation and Parole in hiring a new class of parole agents, a task that would have previously overwhelmed PBPP’s HR staff and created a backlog.
NASCA published a case study about Pennsylvania’s shared services consolidation effort, which was also featured at the organization’s Institute on Management Leadership in October 2017.
To learn more about the awards, visit http://www.nasca.org
Media contact: Dan Egan (OA), 717-772-4237
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