Operational efficiency metrics: The secret to doing more with less in government

Time reporting data provides clarity into where, how, and when people are working. While this is all valuable information already, its true potential is being left untouched. Taken a step further, time reporting data analysis can provide insight into time spent on tasks relative to their value, areas that burn budget faster than they should, and which employees perform the lion’s share of necessary work. 

Performing contextual analysis could move time reporting beyond a simple agency requirement to answer questions that really matter, such as:

• Did the task further the mission? 
• Does the task’s importance justify the time spent on it? 
• Could the time have been spent more beneficially? 
• Did the task further a personal or career goal? 
• What concrete benefits did the task yield for the agency?

This is crucial information for both the team and the organization as a whole. With these insights, agencies can identify low-value activities that drain resources and uncover opportunities to optimize how time is spent. By shifting efforts to higher-impact tasks and addressing inefficiencies, agencies can improve operational efficiency and create the capacity needed to meet growing demands.

SLAs are another readily available operational efficiency metric that agencies are likely collecting data around. By assessing their SLA performance data, agencies can identify areas where they might be overcommitting resources or misallocating effort. Consider these questions: 

• Are we overservicing our customers—doing things for them they should be doing themselves?
• Do we have the right people with the right skills in the right areas?
• Do we need to spend more time training our employees?

Another important factor to consider: invoice processing data. If it takes days to process an invoice, analyzing all the touch points along the way could highlight a range of issues needing improvement.

One example of a common issue includes time employees spend correcting errors that were made before the invoice was submitted. In this case, analyzing one metric with new context could cut cycle time, improving not just the volume of invoices flowing through the process, but also the experience of each employee, who benefits from exposing and removing the frustrating bottlenecks in their job.