Adam RollinsMaryland is ongoing several government modernization efforts, buoyed by the governor’s executive order in January to streamline operations across every department and agency.
While the state faces a major budgeting crisis, the order was originally issued to direct the Governor’s Office of Performance Improvement (GOPI) to improve state agency performance by prioritizing accountability, coordination and capacity building. Unlike many state Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiatives that have been established since the current administration took over, GOPI was established in 2015 and reconstituted this year.
The GOPI team has been tasked since the start of the year to examine core government functions and evaluate methods to elevate government processes to better serve constituents and elected leaders. Directed to examine processes centered around procurement, IT, fleet management and real estate, the GOPI team has so far focused identifying optimal ways to:
- Streamline operations.
- Reduce fragmentation.
- Promote best practices.
- Increase accountability.
Much of the agency’s work involves analyzing the budgets and expenditures of each agency and determining routes to consolidate operations, reduce costs and improve efficiency. To that end, the duties outlined for GOPI in the executive order include:
- Creating a State Comprehensive Plan to include directives for improving or making more cost-effective resource and service decisions.
- Directing stage agencies to develop objectives, strategies, milestones and performance measures to track progress in alignment with the plan.
- Developing and implementing modernization initiatives to improve operations and service delivery to guarantee effective strategic resource management, maintain fiscal sustainability, promote cost optimization strategies for expenditures and remove duplication and fragmentation.
- Creating a council composed of agency representatives to enable continuous improvement and achieve GOPI’s objectives.
- Holding agencies accountable and to drive continual performance improvement by tracking progress on initiatives, holding regular reviews with state and agency leaders, identifying areas of improvement, taking key actions, building agency capacity to support action-oriented cultures and leveraging social science and best practices to ensure results.
Since being directed to modernize government processes, GOPI has succeeded in several areas, including the consolidation, relocation and reconfiguration of state facilities to make better use of the state’s real estate footprint.
The Maryland Department of Information Technology (MDIT) has seen a renewed enforcement of effective IT operations, resulting in the mass elimination of underutilized technology, streamlined purchasing processes and extension of the useful life of IT assets. In addition, the department has centralized solutions for identity and access management and consolidated cybersecurity tools.
The state’s data-driven approach has also resulted in the consolidation of its fleet, making fewer vehicle purchases per year and reduced maintenance and fuel costs. Ongoing work to modernize the state vehicle fleet will involve further review of the fleet inventory, update fleet policies and integrate best practices.
While reconstitution of GOPI is not directly related to state directives to mirror and replicate the federal DOGE agency and curate greater efficiency, it serves a similar role in the state’s modernization efforts. Around 26 states have either proposed or approved the establishment of their own DOGE or functionally adjacent committees.
Photo by Styves Exantus from Pexels
