For a lot of us the New Year means a renewed focus on priorities and in many cases New Years resolutions. If your organization’s new year’s resolutions included running a smarter, leaner organization there are going to be some great learning opportunities coming next month.

The first is a webinar hosted by Bill Cason, Troux’s CTO and Ted Reynolds, VP Federal Sector on February 12th at 11:30 EST. I’ve listened to both of these guys talks in the past and I think that even if you aren’t currently using the software there is a lot you can learn from the approach they advocate to developing a well thought out shared service strategy. I believe getting that strategy together is the first step to achieving success with shared services which I believe is vital to ensuring mission success under the current budgetary constraints. Of course this is something a lot of people have been talking about, but have struggled to achieve. The talk will focus on the following:

• Understanding how well agency investments are performing and aligned with the mission
• Prioritizing and optimizing agency investments amidst ever-changing requirements
• Better understanding general shared service readiness
• Quickly identify and prioritize agency capabilities (e.g. Payroll) as ideal shared service candidates
• Accurately estimate future savings by benchmarking current costs

If you think this is something you might be interested in you can learn more on the Troux website by clicking here.

The second webinar and event is being put on by ACT-IAC. The mission of ACT-IAC is as follows: “The American Council for Technology (ACT) – Industry Advisory Council (IAC) is a non-profit, public-private partnership dedicated to improving government through the application of information technology. ACT-IAC provides an objective, ethical and trusted forum where government and industry communicate, collaborate and learn.”

I’ve been involved in the one of their initiatives Smart Lean Government (SLG) for a while now and this introductory workshop will offer techniques to sustain mission critical services in a climate of increasingly scarce resources and higher expectations for service delivery through transformational use of collaboratively shared services (notice a theme here?). The workshop, to be kicked off by Tom Davis retired member of the House of Representatives, is intended for government and industry thought leaders and professionals, as well as program managers and will help participants to better understand and use collaborative techniques to stretch and leverage these increasingly scarce resources to more effectively resolve pressing challenges. Takeaways from this 1/2 day session will be:

• A heightened awareness regarding how to address the present stove-piped nature of government services, and
• Introduction to SLG methods that can be used to sustain current services, deploy new services, improve service quality, and reduce costs.

Want to attend in person? The event will be held at 1919 N Lynn St, Arlington, VA 22209. Attendance is limited so e-mail me at [email protected] for more information.

Want more background on Smart Lean Government? I gave an interview with Rick Smith one of the SLG team leads available on GovLoop.com:

How to get a smart, lean gov – Part One

How to get a smart, lean gov – Part Two