Public-private personnel project wins reinvention award

A sweeping public-private human resources initiative underway at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has won a coveted Hammer Award from Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government-a rarity among projects involving non-government actors.

Early stages of the project have been completed. In the next phase, FERC employees will get direct access to many important services, which will be tailored to meet their individual needs and concerns. For example, a Web site will be created to allow employees to compare life insurance options available to them.

The project, called the Management, Administrative and Payroll System (MAPS), is the result of an alliance between FERC, Andersen Consulting, and the Department of Veteran Affairs, which has moved to capture a portion of the lucrative federal payroll processing market by establishing the VA Franchising Service.

Within five years, the team projects savings of $5.7 million and thousands of hours of labor for FERC, freeing personnel officers from the minutiae of their daily routines and allowing them to focus on long-range planning and system development.

"What made this program different was that both sides made a concerted effort to agree on the objective and the expectations at the start," said Todd Singleton, an associate partner at Anderson Consulting. "Under the usual system, there's a challenging relationship between government and the contractor, but that wasn't the case here."