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Renting county park shelters to become easier: That is goal of Collins' first Six Sigma fix as he tries to streamline bureaucracy
(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jun. 12--Erie County government makes it clumsy to rent a picnic shelter in a park.
It will be Lean Six Sigma's first fix.
By the government's own estimate, it can take two and a half weeks to secure a rental permit. Telephone messages are left, calls exchanged, questions answered, a check mailed and, finally, a permit will either be mailed or the renter can come downtown to pick it up.
The basic physical labor to generate a permit should take a county employee 25 minutes.
"This is messed up," said Alfred Hammonds Jr., Erie County's Six Sigma guru and one of the officials whose performance will determine whether Chris Collins succeeds as county executive.
Six Sigma is Collins' tonic for what ails county government. As he describes it, the business doctrine will streamline the bureaucracy, dispense with arcane methods and save money. CNBC, a cable network focusing on business, is to interview Collins about his approach later this month.
Hammonds has nine Six Sigmadriven improvements afoot. The solution to a 10th project, to issue a park rental permit in two days rather than 12.5, will be tested starting Monday by letting users reserve a picnic shelter on erie.gov, the county's Web site.
Weeks in the making, it's the county's first remedy devised through Six Sigma -- or "Lean Six Sigma" in this case because the staff has revamped a process rather than eliminated errors in an existing process.
Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma projects are supposed to bubble up from the ranks. This suggestion came from Collins' parks and recreation commissioner, James E. Hornung Sr. Before Collins appointed Hornung this year, he was a mid-level parks supervisor who knew the problems with picnic-shelter permits.
"If you were to rent one today, it would probably take you two or three phone calls. And you'd have to send a check, and we'd have to send a permit back," he said. "It's just very cumbersome."
Mary Horbachewski figures she went through six phone calls before, a week and a half later, she had a permit in hand for the company picnic she arranged for mid-July.
"I wanted to rent a shelter at Chestnut Ridge," she said. "I went online, and you have no idea where you are going. After a few phone calls I got an actual live person . . . She was very nice."
Horbachewski said that because that county employee was willing to give out her direct extension, they were able to trade telephone calls more easily as Horbachewski selected the best picnic area for her event.
"If I hadn't gotten a person who was willing to give me a direct- dial number, it would have been more difficult," she said.
Hornung said potential renters often start out cold with little information about a shelter's availability, amenities and cost.
They're $50 to $200 depending on the size of the shelter.
The answers often lead to more questions, which leads to more examination for the most economical site. That can mean more telephone calls, lengthening the time required to close the deal.
With its antiquated process, Erie County rents few picnic areas. Even in the "peak season," it rents just 30 percent of the reserved picnic sites. People often arrive at the park to claim one for the day, permit or not. That can lead to clashes when people who have paid to rent the site show up.
Hammonds drew together parks employees, budget department officials and computer techies to define and then measure the problem. That's how they came up with the average time it takes to issue a permit, and the 25 minutes that the basic physical labor could take, or should take.
Then they devised a better approach that does not reinvent the wheel. In fact, it just borrows on other customer-service systems.
They'll start testing it Monday with the shelters that can be rented for the July 4 weekend and afterward at the Chestnut Ridge and Akron Falls parks.
The erie.gov Web site, in the pages reserved for the Parks and Recreation Department, will offer pictures, or at least detailed descriptions, of each shelter at Akron Falls and Chestnut Ridge, and state their costs.
Then renters can pick a site and reserve it online. Eventually, the site should be able to accept a credit card number, but that detail has yet to be worked out. In the meantime, people can call a telephone number that will be listed on the site to arrange payment. The permit itself will arrive by e-mail or by fax.
In the Parks and Recreation Department's main office in the Rath County Office Building, a staff member will monitor the Web activity, Hammonds said, and there will be an employee to talk customers through the process by telephone if they get stuck.
On the morning of the picnic, the parks staff will know that they have to make sure a shelter is cleaned up for that day, Hornung said.
When the bugs are worked out, the officials will expand the Web site so residents can book picnic areas at LaSalle, Ellicott Creek and Como parks. This year they are shooting for a 50 percent gain in revenue, or about $95,000 more than last year.
mspina@buffnews.com
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