Budget Cuts

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Situation
Budget Cuts

Context

Revenues are declining, and the State DOT is challenged to keep up with program delivery in the face of stagnant and reduced budgets. Federal transportation fund sources are no longer sufficient to sustain the Highway Trust Fund and state funds are competing with other Legislative priorities. The organization needs to adapt in the face of uncertain future funds.

Change Forces

Legislation, Regulation, and Funding. Federal and state legislation and regulations impact funding levels, eligibility, flexibility and available financing options. They affect planning and delivery practices and may impact staffing levels.
Shift in Role and Focus. The shift in roles among multiple agencies and modes creates a need for additional funding coordination to meet evolving regional needs.
Public Expectations. The public has high expectations for delivery of transportation services. It is critical for the agency to communicate what it is accomplishing and how it is adjusting to constrained budgets; failure to do so can result in declining public confidence which can lead to additional funding cuts.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Agility and Resilience. The agency must build the capability to adjust to changing revenue sources. This requires use of flexible funding strategies, strong prioritization processes, clear and frequent communication, and strategic use of contract resources.
Transparency. The agency needs to communicate with funding agencies and the traveling public to make sure they understand the implications of budget cuts and have confidence that the agency is making the best use of available funds.
Technology Adoption. The agency needs to strengthen its technology adoption capabilities to take advantage of opportunities to achieve operational efficiencies through process automation, e-construction, and system modernization.
Operations Focus. The agency needs to focus on efficiently maintaining current infrastructure and incorporating cost saving strategies to direct limited funding resources toward established business and stakeholder priorities.

What can you do about it?

Organizational Management
  • Strategic Planning – to ensure clear direction for fiscally responsible delivery of multi-modal and operations-focused transportation services
  • Performance Management – to ensure the agency is able to measure and achieve outcomes that improve the lifecycle performance of existing infrastructure at the lowest possible cost to the agency and transportation stakeholders
  • Process Improvements – to create process efficiency, reduce duplication, and do more work with the same (or fewer) resources
Partnerships
  • Innovative Contracting Methods – to deliver projects more efficiently within funding constraints
  • Public/Private Partnerships – to build consensus for actions and to enhance collaboration and coordination on establishing and expanding funding participation
Workforce Management
  • Outsourcing – to maintain flexibility and do the work when staffing is limited or restricted
Information and Data Management
  • IT Technologies – to achieve operational efficiencies

What resources will help?

Response to Increased Flooding

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Situation
Response to Increased Flooding

Context

The state DOT is faced with more frequent flooding events. Environmental emergencies like flooding pose a threat to the public, DOT staff and transportation infrastructure and may result in detours, congestion and closures. They have economic impacts and are difficult to address programmatically because they occur without much warning, although some locations are starting to experience recurring flooding events. In addition, they require coordination among multiple organizations and agencies.

Change Forces

Shift in Role and Focus. The changing DOT role creates a shared responsibility for emergency response with multiple other entities playing a first responder role, and the DOT involved as a part of the emergency response team before, during and after emergencies occur. This requires integrated flood warning and response systems among response partners.
Public Expectations. The public generally has little understanding of steps needed to prepare for an emergency, but an expectation for a seamless public infrastructure. They need to get event warnings for transportation and non-transportation issues via a coordinated and multi-faceted approach that includes sensors, media alerts, websites, and closure of at-risk or compromised facilities.
Technology Advancement. Technology for flood monitoring has been implemented to provide advanced warning capabilities, extending the amount of time for mounting a response effort.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Transparency. The agency needs to communicate with the public and other stakeholders to provide warnings, directives and to coordinate on response efforts.
Agility and Resilience. An organizational capability for agility and resilience is needed to adjust for emerging issues before, during and after the event and for adjusting construction approaches to improve future resilience.
Technology Adoption. The agency can use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for flood assessment, and implement information systems and tools for predictive modeling, risk assessment, integration with inventories of critical assets, facilitation of active flood response, and support for post-disaster recovery and reimbursement activities.
Partnerships. In times of emergency, the public relies on multi-agency teams to restore their access to infrastructure networks for communications and transportation. Emergency response depends on coordination among federal agencies (for flooding, this includes the National Weather Service, US Geological Survey, the Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA and FEMA), climate and research organizations and other public sector stakeholders (such as the State Emergency Management Offices, local units of government, law enforcement agencies and the State DOT).

What can you do about it?

Organizational Management
  • Strategic Planning – to establish clear and comprehensive direction among multiple response agencies for oversight, operational support and funding mechanisms
  • Change Management – to coordinate, resource and sequence the implementation of the emergency response
  • Process Improvement – to improve processes and methods and create improved infrastructure resilience in anticipation of future events
Knowledge Management
  • Knowledge Capture and Transfer – to improve communication among response agencies and with the public
Information and Data Management
  • IT and Data Governance – to establish roles and responsibilities, structures and processes for IT integration and support for emergency response among multiple agencies
  • IT Systems – to support incident operations and management activities
Partnerships
  • Interagency agreements – to coordinate and collaborate across jurisdictions and organizations and to document responsibilities and acceptable levels of effort

What resources will help?

New Multi-Modal Focus and Partnerships

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Situation
New Multi-Modal Focus and Partnerships

Context

Stakeholder needs for seamless transportation solutions, and expanding DOT objectives that incorporate societal goals for regional goals and transportation- and non-transportation goals require new partnerships. The organization needs to adapt to develop a common understanding of priorities, to strengthen collaboration, improve data and information and enhance communication and reporting mechanisms. We have additional needs to collaborate with our local partners in ways we have not done in the past.

Change Forces

Shift in Role and Focus. The shift in emphasis from highway construction to maximizing the capacity of the existing multi-modal transportation system increases the importance of public/private and multi-jurisdictional partnerships.
Legislation, Regulation, and Funding. Legislation creates the need for the agency to strengthen integration of community priorities and collaborative processes into its project planning and programming, and to develop performance measures that consider the entire transportation system.
Technology Advancement. New technologies are impacting the tools, methods and strategies available to share data with stakeholders that can be used for customer-facing, traveler information systems incorporating information about multiple modes.
Public Expectations. Travelers are seeking improved intermodal connections.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Agility and Resilience. An organizational capability for agility is needed for adjusting planning, programming and project development processes to incorporate working with other organizations that have different missions, objectives and decision-making timeframes.
Operations Focus. Agencies must strengthen their capability to focus on the operation of the multi-modal system. Coordination with other agencies, modes, jurisdictions and organizations is an integral part of this.
Transparency. The agency needs to keep modal and other jurisdictional agency partners engaged, to ensure buy-in for policy initiatives and so external funding agencies are informed about status and schedules.
Technology Adoption. The agency needs to strengthen its ability to share data with partners and collaborate in provision of traveler information.

What can you do about it?

Organizational Management
  • Strategic Planning – to ensure that development of strong partnerships is clearly spelled out as integral to the agency’s mission, goals and objectives
  • Performance Management – to incorporate a multi-modal perspective into planning and decision-making processes
Knowledge Management
  • Knowledge Capture and Transfer – to share information about partner agencies and key contacts within those agencies; and to share information about approaches to integrating multiple modes and intermodal connectivity into plans and projects
Information and Data Management
  • IT and Data Governance – to identify and adopt open data standards that enable sharing data with partners
Partnerships
  • Public/private Partnerships – to leverage available commercial products and services that provide a platform for information sharing and collaboration
  • Interagency Agreements – to develop common understanding, coordination and collaboration among multiple agencies

What resources will help?

Managing a Workforce Transition

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Situation
Managing a Workforce Transition

Context

The agency is faced with several emerging opportunities and challenges related to our evolving workforce. Baby boomers are retiring. Current staff have a gap between their current skills and those that will be needed for the future. We are competing with the private sector for workers with specialized and emerging skillsets. Workers that are filling positions vacated by tenured employees may have the technical skills required, but lack the institutional knowledge and documentation to seamlessly transition into the agency and perform their job responsibilities.

Change Forces

Technology Advancement. Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and other emerging technologies are creating a gap between our current skills and future needs. Our current staff don’t have the skills required to engineer, manage, analyze and operate an autonomous system or perform the data analysis required to make data-formed planning and programming decisions.
Workforce Evolution. With the increase in workforce transitions and retirements, we are challenged to provide an attractive work environment for a new generation of workers with increased expectations for alternative work arrangements and other benefits that the public sector can provide, at the same time that public sector benefits are declining. We are also challenged by the loss of institutional knowledge when tenured employees transition to new jobs or retire. Our documentation of processes and succession planning is inadequate.
Shift in Role and Focus. As the organization shifts away from highway construction to focus on system maintenance and operations goals, we need to develop a management system and workforce that can be resilient through change and quickly adjust to new strategies, goals and objectives. This includes finding new ways to work together regardless of organizational boundaries and changes.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Aligning Skills to Needs. agencies must put processes in place to identify and address current and likely future gaps in workforce skills. Enhanced tracking of skillsets and use of creative strategies for providing access to specialized skills (e.g. centers of excellence) may be part of establishing this capability.
Attracting and Retaining. agencies must strengthen their capability to attract and retain the next generation of employees. This may require an overhaul to recruiting strategies as well as staff management, recognition and reward systems.
Technology Adoption. to meet expectations of newer, “born digital” employees, agencies will need to improve their capability to adopt and integrate new technologies supporting process automation, information sharing and collaboration.

What can you do about it?

Organizational Management
  • Organizational Culture – to create a more collaborative work environment.
Workforce Management
  • Strategic Workforce Planning – to ensure that the agency is building the right skillsets as workforce transitions occur.
  • Recruitment and Retention – to create effective strategies for attracting new talent, and for keeping new employees motivated.
  • Succession planning – to smooth transitions as employees leave the agency or change jobs, and use these transitions as an opportunity to build both hard and soft skills in new areas.
  • Employee engagement – to ensure there is two-way communication between employees and agency managers and that employees’ concerns are heard and addressed (where feasible).
  • Professional development – to build skills in needed areas and provide a growth path for employees.
Knowledge Management
  • Knowledge Audits – to sources of specialized expertise within the agency as well as gaps in critical areas.
  • Social and Learning Communities – to establish opportunities for learning and collaborative problem solving.
  • Knowledge Capture and Transfer – to facilitate onboarding of new staff and avoid loss of important knowledge when current staff change jobs or leave the agency.
  • Learning Organization – to promote a culture in which employees are challenged to improve the agency’s internal processes and services.
  • Mentoring – to provide opportunities for newer employees to learn from more experienced employees.
Information and Data Management
  • IT Strategic Planning – to ensure that expectations of newer employees are considered within decisions about IT investments to facilitate internal communication and collaboration.

What resources will help?

Improving Data for Decision Making

Context

The agency has a longstanding practice of collecting and using data to report on our results. We have been using some of the data we collect to analyze our performance, especially for pavements and bridges. We need additional data to meet legislative requirements and ensure we are making wise investment decisions. Our current system limitations do not always provide adequate data validity and reliability, which makes it difficult to perform meaningful analysis and reporting. We want to determine what new data sources might be available to meet our needs in a cost-effective and efficient way. We also want to make sure that we minimize risk to the agency of using any external data sources. We want to leverage additional data science techniques enhance our ability to make investment decisions. Our long-term goal is to use leading performance measures and predictive analytics to become more adaptive in our programming and funding strategies to maximize our return on investment. We also want to put data in the hands of our staff, so they can have access across our IT systems to data they need to perform analyses and make operational decisions.

Change Forces

Technology Advancement. Today, our volume of data is much greater than our ability to use it. Our current systems need to be upgraded. Eventually, we want to move beyond having dedicated staff synthesizing data from separate, disconnected systems to creating an agency with integrated data that trained practitioners can use as a single source of truth to perform the analysis they need to do their jobs. In addition, we want to take advantage of machine learning and other technologies that are making it easier to collect data that can be used for predictive decision-making.
Legislation, Regulation, and Funding. Federal transportation performance management, performance-based planning and programming, and other requirements are drivers moving the agency toward linking data to investment decision-making, but our knowledge of how to align them is inadequate, and our current measurement system and local priorities are separate and not connected to the requirements. Legislation also creates opportunities to leverage data and analytics available from third parties and federal partners, especially in areas of national performance measurement.
Workforce Evolution. Advances in systems and reporting platforms should eventually make data more accessible to practitioners than they were in the past, but we still don’t have the specialized analysis and reporting skills we need to use data effectively for decision-making in all performance measurement areas. We want to create a set of standardized data elements that can easily be used across the agency for reporting. We want to train existing staff in data science skills and recruit new staff with business intelligence (BI), business analysis (BA), including forecasting and investment decision-making across performance areas.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Aligning Skills to Needs. agencies need to identify specific skills needed to support data management, governance, analysis, and communication and put recruiting, training and mentoring processes in place to build these skillsets.
Attracting and Retaining. agencies must strengthen their capability to attract and retain employees who can support data management and analysis.
Transparency. agencies need to build an internal culture that values information sharing and data-informed decision making
Agility and Resilience. agencies need to improve their ability to change decision making processes to consider available data and incorporate scenario analysis.
Technology Adoption. agencies need to enhance their ability to identify and use evolving toolsets supporting data integration, reporting, visualization and analysis.

What can you do about it?

Organizational Management
  • Organizational Culture – to create a culture in which data sharing and data-informed decision making is expected and rewarded.
  • Change Management – to help the agency move towards more data-informed decision making processes.
Workforce Management
  • Strategic Workforce Planning – to proactively plan for needed skills for data management and analysis.
  • Recruitment and Retention – to develop targeted strategies for attracting talent and providing a rewarding work environment.
  • Employee engagement – to ensure two-way communication between employees and managers and ensure that employee concerns are addressed (as feasible).
  • Professional development –to build skills in needed areas and provide a growth path for employees.
Knowledge Management
  • Social and Learning Communities – to establish opportunities for learning and collaborative problem solving.
  • Knowledge Capture and Transfer – to facilitate onboarding of new staff and avoid loss of important knowledge about agency data sources when current staff change jobs or leave the agency.
  • Learning Organization – to promote a culture in which employees are challenged to improve use of data for decision making.
  • Mentoring – to provide opportunities for newer employees to learn from more experienced employees.
Information and Data Management
  • IT Strategic Planning – to ensure that planning for future investments considers needs to support data integration, analysis, reporting and commercially available data products.
  • Project and Services Portfolio Management – to provide a process for prioritizing new investments and services that is aligned with changing business priorities and with available agency resources.
  • IT and Data Governance – to establish clear decision making processes for new data-related products and services.
  • Enterprise Data Integration – to establish an agency-wide approach to curating, cleaning, integrating and delivering data from various information systems.
  • Business Intelligence and Analytics – to establish tools, processes and services for transforming data into information that can be used for decision making.

What resources will help?

Planning for CAVs & Other Transformational Technologies

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Situation
Planning for CAVs & Other Transformational Technologies

Context

The agency has taken a “wait and see” attitude with respect to connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), but has been actively monitoring activities at peer agencies to pilot connected vehicle technologies and formulate proactive strategies for accommodating autonomous vehicles. We need to create a plan for what our agency should be doing to implement and support these transformational technologies. We need to better understand the implications for planning, design, maintenance and operations. We also need to understand risks to be mitigated – related to cybersecurity, revenue streams, and data privacy.

Change Forces

Technology Advancement. CAVs and other transformational technologies show great promise to improve safety outcomes, reduce congestion and provide positive societal impacts. There are also risks associated with deploying transformational technologies that need additional research and vetting.
Legislation, Regulation, and Funding. Public and private agencies and research organizations are starting to understand the critical issues surrounding deployment of CAV and other transformational technologies. However, additional research is needed to inform policymaking and legislation. At the same time, current public sector funding levels are not adequate to deploy large scale CAV infrastructure and do not address improvements to existing assets.
Shift in Role and Focus. The growing emphasis on system operations contributes to interest in use of CAV technologies to achieve more efficient use of existing capacity with improved safety.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Agility and Resilience. agencies must recognize uncertainties with respect to the timing of technology maturation and adoption and the specific communications technologies and standards that will be used. They must design procurement and operations strategies that provide flexibility to adjust to different scenarios.
Technology Adoption. agencies must build the capability to evaluate, pilot and integrate new information and communications technologies.
Operations Focus. agencies need to strengthen their capability to plan for and actively manage system operations.
Aligning Skills to Needs. agencies need to identify the knowledge, skills and abilities required to plan for CAVs and other transformational technologies and determine what skills to develop in-house and what can be best met through use of external consultants or partnering with universities.

What can you do about it?

Organizational Management
  • Organizational Structure – to ensure that system operations and technology deployment functions have the appropriate level of focus and resourcing.
  • Change Management – to help the agency understand the implications of CAVs and adjust to use of new technologies.
Workforce Management
  • Strategic Workforce Planning – to proactively plan for needed skills for technology deployment.
  • Recruitment and Retention – to ensure that the agency has the right mix of skills and experience needed to plan for and integrate CAV technology.
  • Professional Development – to strengthen employee skills and support career advancement.
Knowledge Management
  • Social and Learning Communities – to provide an opportunity for internal agency knowledge sharing and collaborative problem solving.
  • Knowledge Capture and Transfer – to capture and share knowledge from inside the agency as well as from peer organizations and industry.
  • Learning Organization – to create a work environment that encourages experimentation and enables teams to “fail fast” and learn from their experiences.
Information and Data Management
  • IT Strategic Planning – to integrate consideration of IT infrastructure, cybersecurity and data privacy concerns into future investment strategies.
  • IT and Data Governance – to establish clear roles, responsibilities, standards and processes for decision making related to technology acquisition and integration.
  • Cloud Solutions – to equip the agency to manage and access large volumes of data associated with CAVs.
Partnerships
  • Innovative Contracting Methods – to provide the flexibility to use different models such as design-build-operate-transfer.
  • Public/Private Partnerships – to take advantage of new opportunities for collaborating with industry.

What resources will help?

Undertaking a Major System Upgrade

Situation
Undertaking a Major System Upgrade

Context

The state DOT is faced with an impending overhaul of its primary computer systems. There are several critical reasons for this change, including: requirements from customers for better security and improved customer service; the need to retire legacy systems that are an increasing level of risk to the state DOT every year; and the need for an integrated system for reporting, planning and programming.

Change Forces

Technology Advancement. new systems are available that provide desired functionality; older technology may no longer be supported
Legislation, Regulation, and Funding. new legislation may major modifications to information systems to support analysis and reporting
Workforce Evolution. skills to maintain older mainframe systems are in increasingly short supply; it is difficult to recruit a new generation of employees to work with outdated technology
Shift in Role and Focus. new technology is required for managing system operations
Public Expectations. it is time consuming to meet evolving public expectations for transparency using older systems with inflexible reporting capabilities.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Aligning Skills to Needs. agencies expecting to undertake a series of major system upgrades will need to build a core group of technology project managers, business analysts, technical architects, database administrators and security specialists. Some agencies may choose to build software development teams in-house; others may choose to outsource all or most of this function.
Attracting and Retaining. agencies must be able to attract and retain employees with the management and technical skills needed to upgrade or replace major systems. While DOTs may not be able to offer a competitive compensation package relative to the private sector, they can emphasize work-life balance, opportunities for advancement and skill building, and satisfaction associated with improving transportation for the public. DOTs can implement practices such as agile development and pair programming that foster collaboration and frequent constructive feedback.
Agility and Resilience. implementing new systems often requires changes to existing business processes, particularly when an old, custom-built application is being replaced by a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product. An organizational capability for agility is needed to enable employees to shift to new processes and workflows using the new system.
Technology Adoption. agencies need the ability to implement new technology solutions so that they provide anticipated functionality and benefits, meet agency security needs, and fit with existing solutions. This a capability requires adopting and supporting a technology acquisition process with well-defined steps, roles and responsibilities. This process needs to balance predictability and discipline against cost and adaptability to emergent business needs.

What can you do about it?

Organizational Management
  • Change Management – to ensure that new systems are successfully integrated within agency business processes and deliver anticipated benefits.
  • Process Improvements – to ensure that business processes are optimized prior to automation.
Workforce Management
  • Recruitment and Retention – to ensure that the agency has the right mix of skills and experience to successfully implement new information systems.
  • Professional Development – to strengthen skills needed for information system development or acquisition, and support career advancement for employees.
Knowledge Management
  • Knowledge Audits – to assess current strengths and weaknesses for critical areas of knowledge.
  • Social and Learning Communities – to provide opportunities for employees to share lessons learned from working on diverse projects, and collaborate on strategies for improvement.
Information and Data Management
  • IT Strategic Planning – to ensure that IT investments are aligned with changing agency priorities.
  • IT and Data Governance – to establish clear roles, responsibilities, standards and processes for new system development.
  • Agile Development – to increase delivery timeframes, engage end-users, and reduce risks associated with large software project development.
Partnerships
  • Innovative Contracting Methods – to provide flexibility in use of contractors for development, integration, operation and support of new systems.

What resources will help?

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