In 2013, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) launched an innovative new program to enhance DEC’s ability to serve the public by developing more effective, efficient, timely, and transparent processes. To achieve this, the DEC adopted a Lean approach. In a two-year period, DEC’s use of Lean resulted in improvements to more than 19 activities, including grant and contract processing, petroleum cleanup fund reimbursement, public noticing, groundwater reclassification, source water permitting, and state revolving loan fund auditing.
Improvements at DEC include but are not limited to:
- A 76% reduction in the State Revolving Fund audit backlog;
- A 40% decrease in the average days from date of invoice to payment for grants and contracts;
- An evaluation and correction of public notice data errors for seven environmental programs; and
- A 62% increase in the number of claims paid within 30 days for the Petroleum Cleanup Fund.
The DEC is one of many government entities across the country to implement Lean to refine its operations, and DEC’s Justin Kenney reports that Lean has been an extremely successful endeavor. For more information, please contact Justin Kenney.
