Nearly 1,100 employees from five agencies are part of the consolidation, which combines back-office functions for the state’s bureaucracy. Employees have a new website at www.des.wa.gov, new email addresses and a new mission – but not much else will be readily visible to the public or other government agencies. The consolidations are aimed at saving $18 million over two years.
Incoming DES director Joyce Turner says the transformation, which merges all or parts of the agencies into a $255 million office and data-center complex east of the Capitol, allows a more responsive, efficient way to deliver common services to other agencies.
Those services include a state payroll; training and recruiting workers and giving human-resources advice; preparing legal contracts; managing real estate; purchasing supplies and running a WEBS purchasing site; managing vehicle fleets; running the state accounting and budgeting tools; custodial and groundskeeping functions; printing; and even information-technology help from 300 IT workers who will be part of the 1,089-employee agency.
“We really need to hone in on what our mission and our vision is,” Turner said in an interview last week in her sixth-floor office, which has a commanding view of downtown Olympia and its harbor and the distant Olympic Mountains.
“What we really need to do is make it so our partner agencies don’t have to think about these services,” Turner said. “We don’t protect children. We don’t keep criminals locked up or remove drunk drivers from the road. But we enable our partners to do their jobs so they can focus on their mission(s).”
To make the transition easier, employees in July began moving over to the new complex in waves of about 100, and phone numbers have been switching in advance. Turner said the cultural merger will take longer – like a marathon, compared with the recent sprint since Senate Bill 5931 was passed in May to authorize the changes.
Bumps are expected. For example, a budget shortfall makes it difficult to deal with pay inequities in which employees from different agencies now may sit side-by-side doing the same work at different salaries.
FIVE BECOME THREE
Gov. Chris Gregoire has accurately called the revamping the biggest restructuring of Washington state government in two decades. Past mega-mergers created a Department of Fish and Wildlife nearly 20 years ago and a Department of Community Trade and Economic Development (which since was broken into a smaller Commerce Department). Gregoire also oversaw creation of a Department of Early Learning a few years ago.
But Enterprise Services is a merger of all or parts of five agencies, including General Administration, Information Services, Personnel, Printing and parts of the Office of Financial Management. The new agency has about 700 staffers at headquarters and 400 still in warehouses, custodial and building-grounds offices in Olympia, or at the state’s printer operation in Tumwater.
General Administration, Information Services, Personnel and Printing all disappear. Personnel’s policy functions move to OFM. And 286 workers from DIS move into a new Consolidated Technology Services agency that functions as a utility to manage data for other agencies; it is in the data center portion of the new complex.
“Much like a business does, the state will cut costs and boost productivity by consolidating the tech support and systems every agency’s employees use,” CTS director Mike Ricchio said Friday.
In another big shift that reflects major IT reforms of states such as Michigan, Indiana and Iowa, an Office of the Chief Information Officer is created inside OFM. The goal is to get the chief information executive on board by Dec. 1, said Gregoire’s deputy chief of staff, Fred Olson.
The chief information officer will guide state strategies and policies for state information technology, which costs taxpayers $1.9 billion every two years.
Questions about pieces of the project remain unanswered. A few lawmakers and labor groups are looking on warily.
TO EXEMPT OR NOT TO EXEMPT
A dispute broke out late last month over how many workers will end up outside collective-bargaining agreements after Consolidated Technology Services is up and running.
Tim Welch of the Washington Federation of State Employees said the union objects to making about 200 of the data center’s workers exempt from collective-bargaining protections (that’s about 100 more than expected and well beyond roughly 30 who were exempt).
About 50 members of the union packed a recent meeting led by state personnel director Eva Santos to protest. Welch said the union wanted Santos to wait before making decisions about pay ranges for the employees until lawmakers are back in regular session in January.
Despite the union’s calls, which were echoed by Thurston County Reps. Sam Hunt and Chris Reykdal, Santos posted the new pay scales Friday. She said her move did not increase or decrease anyone’s pay but broadens the ranges available to CTS director Mike Ricchio when he makes hires or sets pay.
Santos said the agency needed to have the data on hand as requirements of the new law took effect Saturday. She also said negotiations between the federation and Gregoire’s labor office could affect where Ricchio sets pay.
Brad Shannon: 360-753-1688
bshannon@theolympian.com
www.theolympian.com/politicsblog
