NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A consultant’s report delivered this week to Mayor Mitch Landrieu notes many, long-standing problems with the city’s government, including needless red tape, staffing shortages and the lingering effects of past mismanagement and corruption.
“I just haven’t run into this level of dysfunction before, and I’ve been doing this work for almost 25 years,” David Osborne, who served as a senior adviser to then-Vice President Al Gore’s National Performance Review initiative, said in The Times-Picayune.
Osborne, of the Massachusetts-based Public Strategies Group, notes several problems already identified by Landrieu, who took office last spring.
Those problems include decades-old computer systems and various civil service rules.
Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin said the administration concurs with the findings and has assigned managers to working groups charged with developing proposals to change everyday operations at City Hall.
The actions proposed by PSG are designed to overhaul the way City Hall manages its employees, provides public services and spends money, Kopplin said. Osborne predicted it will take three to five years to implement changes, including improving customer service, developing performance measures, reforming the contracting process, implementing a sophisticated data-tracking system and boosting revenue collection.
Osborne and his colleagues conducted dozens of interviews last year with veteran city employees, new hires, residents and others to understand City Hall’s performance at the onset of Landrieu’s tenure. The work was financed by several nonprofit groups.
PSG recommended that the city install a system to electronically track fiscal and performance management. The city also must update systems that still rely on paper records. Kopplin said the city already is working toward that goal.
Osborne also suggests giving employees more flexibility, from loosening civil service rules so it is easier to fire poorly performing workers to raising the value of purchases employees can make without soliciting bids. In addition, the city should step up tax collections, he said.
