(This paper was made as a response to a case called 'The busted DMV')
Dear Mr. Chief Minister,
I would like to thank you for your trust by reappointing me as the Director of Division of Motor Vehicle (DMV) of the ACT. I understand that my greatest challenge is to please all stakeholders and citizens of the DMV. The immediate concern that I have to deal is the various complain from different stakeholders; for example: the length of queue line and the unpleasant officers on handling the angers of our customers and citizens. These have been attracting media attentions and led to some political issues.
My assessment concludes that one important weakness at the moment is the quality of our communication to our stakeholders. We have been good so far with technological innovations such as information technology and credit card payment which have been running well. Although they were useful for customers, they did not entirely resolve the problems. Our core work, however, is human-to-human interactions which require different kind of innovation.
The key issue here is how we identify our stakeholders and define their values. The weakness in communication will never resolved unless we understand to whom and for what we should interact. Similarly, we will never make everybody happy except we know who they are and what would make them fulfilled.
Stakeholders are those outside of but are affecting or can affect the organization (Freeman 1991, p. 5). A public organization, such as the DMV, must deal with different kinds of stakeholders with 'very different statuses in terms of their moral right to make claims' (Moore 1994, pp. 300-301). A failure on understanding the DMV stakeholders would lead to a mishandling. For example, those who supposed to be the highest status to make claims—i.e. either because they sacrifice their liberty and privacy for government/public or because they have authority to make the claims—become the least to be listened. This may induce some ethical issues.
In the quest of maximising values, any organizations must satisfy the interests of its stakeholders (Jensen 2000). But for public organizations 'safeguarding interests' is not enough, they must 'adding values' actively (Alford & O'Flynn 2009, p. 176).
In short, understanding stakeholders is a key to be able to deliver values for stakeholders and citizens. But there are many kinds of them with different kind of preferences. The ability to distinguish them in creating values is crucial for improving the DMV's performance.
In response to the key issue, there are two alternative solutions:
Option-1: The DMV must focus to customer. I should perceive 'customer' as citizens the DMV encounters as its business end (Moore 1995, p. 37). Therefore, the motorists are the customer. In more precisely, they are our ‘client’ because they are ‘paying customers’ (Alford 2002, p. 340).
I will start by doing a client survey to understand the motorists’ preference of what things they would value. The survey should cover information on client’s current perception to the DMV’s performance, and what things should be achieved or done for improvement. I will also ask our clients to compare the DMV’s performance with other similar organization in other states or country. This is called ‘two-dimensional survey’ to benchmark our performance with respect to our “competitor” (Jablonski 1992, p. 113).
The understanding on the DMV’s clients that gained from the survey will be used to redefine our strategy. The strategy should cover vision statement and goal, policy, and operational plan which includes communication plan (Allison 1982, p. 17; Jablonski 1992, pp. 75-83). The strategy must guarantee the achievement of client satisfaction. The change in strategy should lead to the adjustment of the internal organizational components. This should include, when necessarily, the changes in organization structure (units and positions), procedure, and staffing (Allison 1982, p. 17). I will reassess our business processes to find out how we can make it shorter and simpler but still able to achieve our clients’ desires. That would change our working procedures which may lead to a modification of units and positions. I will review the staffing to ensure that all job descriptions and the staff capability support our clients’ expectation and to make it in line with the new organization structure. These changes should shorten the processing time to cut the lengths of the queue line. The improved staffing and provision of needed trainings will create capable staffs to handle the angers' clients. Parallelly, I will review our financial plan to secure the implementation of the new strategy and the changes in the internal organizational components. Finally, I will figure out if I need more authority and budget from the ACT government.
Although this option looks likely will lead us to have better client satisfaction, I will rely on you to resolve any bottleneck I may find such as need for more authority and fund.
Option-2: The DMV must focus to the citizenry. The fundamental difference with the first option, in terms of actions, is on redefining the strategy and managing the external constituency. Instead of doing client survey, I will do an integrated stakeholder communication. This should include citizens who do not need any DMV’s products and services. That is because government, particularly public manager, must help stakeholders and citizens at large to define and produce values (Moore 2000, p. 190). But the values must be in the form of 'shared values', rather than an aggregation of individual self-interests (Denhardt & Denhardt 2000, p. 555).
In the communication with all motorists in the ACT, I should understand how they can be more motivated to register their motor vehicles and making—or renew—their license in timely manner beside the fact that they are obliged to do so by law. It is also important to understand how they can cooperate better by being well-prepared for the required paperwork and payments before coming to the DMV office. Customers in public sectors are often clients and obligatees at the same time where we need their support not only for their compliance but also for their cooperation (Alford 2002, p. 341). In addition, the complaint-handling system must be improved to be more proactive and transparent.
I will talk to the Police Department to make them aware that their enforcement function is very important for the DMV. The motorists would have more motivation to comply their obligation on registering their vehicles and updating their license if the Police Department enforce the rules properly. I must advocate that to be the value of the Police Department. In social exchange theory, the coercion transaction—such as what happened in the DMV—will be more effective when the punishment administered contingently and consistently (Molm 1997, p. 269).
Tax payers, politicians and media are also important stakeholders to be engaged with. For example, if the only solution to improve the satisfaction required more resources and authority, instead of relying on you, I will take a role to convince them to provide support. For example, citizens may need to sacrifice their liberty more by bestowing their private money for taxes. Alternatively, I would ask for legitimacy from politicians, citizens and media to increase the payment rate of our service to be charged to our clients. This is my role, as a public manager, to mediate the collaborative efforts to achieve the shared values (Denhardt & Denhardt 2000, p. 555).
All of these efforts—on improving the management of external constituency to gain more supports and legitimacies from more stakeholders other than clients—will help to redesign the DMV's strategy and reshaping the internal component of the organization. The actions to do should be similar to the option-1, the difference is that the basis of the redesigning strategy and reshaping the internal organizational components should not based only on the clients' aspiration, rather according to different stakeholders and citizens at large as elaborated earlier.
Although this approach would be more successful due to the better civically engagement (Putnam 1995, p. 66), this will increase the potential of organizational instability due to the wider exposes to the outsiders.
Assessing the two solution options by applying the following criteria: (a) political equality, and (b) time-wise, option-2 is the most plausible solution.
The DMV, as a government organization, must not only provide private value to its customer but also public value to the citizens (Alford 2002, p. 340). The client-focus approach will create private value only. Moreover, public organizations must create both instrumental and intrinsic values (Moore and Braga 2004, p. 4). The instrumental value is more meaningful for citizens. For example, Although citizens without motor vehicles do not served directly by the DMV, they still expect the DMV acts justly to its customers. Citizens do not only concern to their self-interest but also to the ‘concern for the whole’ (Denhardt & Denhardt 2000, p. 552). Customer-oriented approach applied by government may lead to increased political inequality (Fountain 2001, p. 54); that is because the clients are the only to be served (as external constituency) while other stakeholders are mistreated. Option-2 could create a better political equality because the DMV will engage more stakeholders in defining and creating the shared-values.
Option-2 is more possible to resolve the DMV's problem within one year period. The citizenry-focus would attract more cooperation from the clients. They will be well-prepared as they come to the DMV office, for example. That could happened not only because they aware that they are obligatees but also because the DMV communicate better to clients and citizens (which includes motorists who have not become the DMV's client yet). Other stakeholders, such as the general citizens, media, and politicians, would be more fulfilled—at least for some instrumental values—because they engaged on defining values to be created by the DMV.
In conclusion, by applying option-2, we will make the stakeholders and citizens fulfilled through the improvement of our communications and other operational capabilities and a better management on external constituencies.
Sincerely yours, Ade Cahyat
References
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Alford, J & O'Flynn, J 2009, 'Making sense of public value: concepts, critiques and emergent
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——1995, Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
——1994, “Public value as the focus of strategy.” Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 296-303.
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Putnam, R 1995, “Bowling alone: America's declining social capital.” Journal of Democracy, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 65-78.
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