Q&A with DANELLE MACEWEN.

• Author: Olsaker, Eva

Danelle MacEwen is performance management specialist for the City of Olympia's Office of Performance and Innovation. GFOA's Eva Olsaker talked to Danelle about her work with the city, the importance of performance management, and how to make an ERP implementation work for the organization.

You have a diverse background! Can you tell us about your path to your current position?

Early in my career at Olympia, I had a variety of assignments in the Public Works Department. I was assigned to work on a team run by Debbie Sullivan--who was the Deputy Public Works Director at the time--in General Services, focusing on energy management. Here is where I got to pursue a passion, process improvement. I earned my Lean Six Sigma green belt. 1 took the training with Debbie, who also spearheaded a continuous improvement mindset in Public Works. Debbie was later promoted, and she asked me to join her team, and that's when we started the Office of Performance and Innovation (DPI), I was brought into the OPI team because of my Lean training and my curiosity--I always ask "why" about business processes. Debbie's leadership is key. She's always been one to strive for excellence and to promote continuous learning and improvement--it's something we share.

How did you start using Lean Six Sigma?

The city had dabbled in Lean process improvement for years but never really fully embraced it. Public Works led the way with Lean training for staff and Lean projects. Our green belt project was around project archiving in Public Works contracts. The Public Works Contract team had an archiving backlog of more than 100 projects. We were able to clear out that backlog, but we also redesigned their process so they wouldn't get behind again. The contracts team was integral in examining their process and designing the improved solution.

A focus on continuous improvement isn't new to government, but there is a shift from private-sector to government thinking--who our customers are and if they're internal to our organization or citizens and residents of our city, and how we can best serve them. We're also very mindful of maximizing resources and trying to do more with less. And that's where process improvement and Lean methodology comes in.

Not a lot of governments have embraced process improvement the way you all have, although other governments are definitely working on it.

And we've learned a lot from other governments. We were members of the Alliance for Innovation, but we...