Continuous Improvement

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To protect and restore an ecosystem we must use the resources we have as creatively, effectively, and efficiently as possible. Continuous improvement is a cross-agency and staff-led effort to improve natural resource management by increasing dialog and collaboration between local teams and state/federal programs. This page is an archive of a discontinued effort led by NOAA Restoration Center that began in 2014 with the Coordinated Investment initiative, which led to identification of inter-agency system improvement as an area of weakness and opportunity for improvement in natural resource management. A number of activities led to much learning, many relationships, and a few partial-successes at which point, concepts developed by this effort were left in the hands of the Align Grant Coordination Workgroup process (developed in parallel and also emerging out of coordinated investment), and in the ongoing coordination efforts of the Puget Sound Partnership. These efforts have informed a variety of successive interagency efforts, such as Science Sprints to Support Regulation. What Is an Interagency Natural Resource Management System We have identified three collaborative systems that shape our ecosystem. The Planning and Funding System distribute state and federal resources among local teams to do work on the ground. The Regulation and Mitigation System restrains private behaviors to prevent damage to common resources. The Monitoring and Learning System makes observations to track the condition of shared resources and predict the effects of our actions. If you are standing in a watershed, these systems work in combination to deliver public value. If they are coherent and well organized they provide this service well. To an outsiders, the diversity of agencies, programs, processes and staffing is stunningly complicated, and sometimes incoherent. Continuous Improvement is a vision for how we can accelerate the evolution of these systems so they provide more benefits, more quickly, so we can protect and restore our ecosystems. The Planning and Funding System - Our initial effort is focused on the planning an funding system, where state and federal resources are allocated to local teams to do the on-the-ground work of ecosystem recovery. We believe that this system can guide evolution, because on-the-ground is where ecosystem recovery actually happens. Our systems must perform on the ground. The planning and funding system has the flexibility to lead improvement innovation in all other systems. Project Initiation Our effort is being developed in close coordination with the Align - Washington Ecosystem Grant Coordination Workgroup and Floodplains by Design program. It continues with sanction from the Puget Sound Partnership's Ecosystem Coordination Board. Our Prototype Improvement System - We are refining our prototype of how Continuous Improvement works. Our List of Claims - We are building a catalog of improvement opportunities by reviewing 10 years of documents that point to weakness in our ecosystem management, and ongoing interviews. Improvement Network To enable continuous improvement, we suspect there are five different elements that we need so we can listen and collaborate and evolve: The Coordination Community of Salmon Recovery Lead Entities, Local Integrating Organizations and Ecosystem Recovery Coordinators work with local practitioners and agency programs to identify improvement opportunities. These are the networks of local practitioners who know how our system is working or failing on a daily basis. Agency Programs can collaborate with local practitioners to evaluate and facilitate improvement strategies. Agency programs provides services that may or may not effectively support local teams and control most of the annual cash flow with supports state and federal employees. Agency Leadership acknowledges that we have shared systems, and that improvement in those systems has value. If agencies are not committed to collaboration, their staff have no incentive to do this work. Funders cooperatively create the capacity for improvement. A flexible portion of our annual resource base for ecosystem work is distributed through grants and awards. A Community Forum such as the Ecosystem Coordination Board (ECB) or Salmon Recovery Council sustains the attention and accountability for improvement. The ECB is specifically charged with improvement of Puget Sound recovery systems and advising the Puget Sound Partnership Leadership Council. Ongoing Improvement Projects Large Project Budget Standards - to reduce the cost of managing a shifting project budget over multiple grant applications and contracts. Culvert Replacement Regulatory Coordination - to reduce the cost and time necessary for a local practitioner to get permission to modify a culvert for habitat improvement. Standard Conservation Project Description - a early problem definition looking at redundant project description for funding over a project life cycle. File:MC2 2018 lead entity lean study.pdf - the report of an ongoing lean process supported by RCO focused on reducing waste in salmon recovery implementation. Catalog of Supporting Materials The following materials summarize the resources and ideas used to develop the project to date: File:Rivas & Cereghino 2020 DRAFT aggregated planning and funding system claims.xlsx - workbook used to aggregate and evaluate 10 years of claims about the ecosystem funding system. File:Cereghino 2020 DRAFT planning and funding system.pdf - diagram describing the planning and funding system File:Cereghino & Rivas 2020 continuous improvement at align workgroup.pdf - a presentation to the Align Grant Coordination Workgroup to provide support in developing a strategy for planning and funding improvements. Video pre-workshop briefing to put project description standard work in context. Video proposal to "Coordination Community" following ECB agreement to ask coordination community to assist in development of continuous improvement system. File:Continuous improvement meeting 3 notes.pdf - notes from third ECB sub-committee meeting. File:Problem backlog detail.pdf - a list of improvement opportunities with some description text for each problem. File:Problem backlog.pdf - a copy of a draft google sheet with potential improvement projects identified over the course of this project. File:ECB process flowchart.pdf - a draft process flow for completing a new A3, discussed at the 7/31 sub-committee. File:A3 culvert regulation.docx - a draft document describing an evolving proposal for how to improve culvert permitting processes based on Snohomish Culvert Replacement Regulatory Coordination File:King County 2018 lean a3 training.pptx - the powerpoint used in the A3 training below. YouTube Video of A3 Training Presentation (1hr) - provided by Fred Jarrett, King County File:King County 2018 A3 training.pdf - Training in lean management for ECB sub-committee Presentation to Ecosystem Coordination Board - File:Cereghino 2018 continuous improvement concept for ECB.pdf File:Cereghino 2017 continuous improvement NTA.pdf describes a conceptual strategy for integrating ongoing work by EPA, TNC, NOAA, RCO, and Ecology on conservation system improvements, to build on each others unique capacity, and develop closer communication with local integrated teams. This effort emerged from Coordinated Investment meetings, as a vital missing ingredient in how state and federal agencies do conservation work with local partners.