Ottawa County Administrator John Gibbs and the board of commissioners are working on future strategic planning and are considering making significant changes to county processes and operations. They spent much of 2023 becoming familiar with the current operations and practices and are now ready to make improvements. Updating the strategic planning process should lead to cost savings and help the county to run more efficiently.
The current strategic plan was released in the fall of 2022 and serves as a nice foundation to build upon. It contains noble objectives, but is wordy and lacks due dates and measurable objectives. During the January 23, 2024, Strategic Planning Committee meeting, Administrator Gibbs gave a presentation on a proposed 2024-2025 Strategic Plan (13:50).
Gibbs proposed contracting with an outside vendor that will transform the current plan from a pdf document to an interactive dashboard, “which is a type of graphical user interface which often provides at-a-glance views of key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to a particular objective or business process.” The dashboard interface will make the data more visual through the use of graphs and figures, and should be a more natural way of looking at how dollars are being spent and how staff resources are being used.
Administrator Gibbs stated, “It gets to what people really want to know, which is how far is a dollar going in the county.” He explained that knowing that one county served 120 people and an adjacent county served 200 people is not very useful without also knowing the size of the departments, budgets, and staffing structure. Currently reports from departments often contain statements like department X served Y people. New reports will say it cost the department $X,XXX per person served, or it takes .XX full time employee (FTE) hours per person served.
Gibbs added, “When we look at things this way, it makes it easier to know how much staff resources are being used to serve people in a particular program.” He also explained that in the future, department performance data will be integrated into the budgeting software. A new system will enable the county to make comparisons to other counties doing similar work, will help the county to budget, and to set future goals.
This effort is expected to cost approximately $100,000 for an external vendor to develop a metric-driven strategic plan, and Administrator Gibbs will seek approval of an action request during the February 6, 2024 meeting. If approved, Gibbs plans to select a vendor by the end of March, and then hold an offsite strategic planning session in the spring. That will be followed by developing and releasing an updated strategic plan that is intended to be useful well into the future.
The commissioners were clearly excited by this initiative and several expressed support. (25:30) Commissioner Gretchen Cosby noted the importance of incorporating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) into the plan and stated, “I like the fact that you are using comparables.” Commissioner Roger Belknap was enthusiastic about how a new strategic plan will help fiscal services add measurement into the budget.
Board Chair Joe Moss said, “I like to hear that this will be heavy on measurables.” Moss noted that a dashboard strategic plan should increase transparency and have an online component that will benefit the public. It should help commissioners and staff to be innovative, solve problems, and set trends. Moss also stated, “We have need to look at the next 1-5 years, but additionally, we really need to looking at a 10-20-year plan as well. [] That way we can focus long-term, on the prosperity of Ottawa County, building strong communities, prioritizing farmland, and other areas that are going to be critical to preserve the heritage of Ottawa County so that we can leave a strong legacy for children and grandchildren.”
This is an initiative that should bring unity and prosperity to Ottawa County as cost savings should benefit all residents.