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December 19, 2013
IPS Colleagues:
Over the past few years Dr. Jinks has encouraged and we have
discussed the need to visit and compare our operations with some of the other
university-based public service organizations. On November 21 of this year we
took a first step with a visit to the UNC School of Government at Chapel Hill.
In this note I’ll summarize the highlights of this trip, and while I realize
that this is summary is somewhat lengthy I believe that those making the trip
found the results interesting and potentially useful for IPS. We will also be
looking for additional ways to discuss this and future such comparisons.
I was joined in this visit by Macel Ely, Mike Garland, Terri
Kinloch, Libby McCroskey, Robin Roberts, Jim Thomas, Jon Walden and Rick
Whitehead. I hope that you will take the time to ask them about the trip and
the information that we gained. The School of Government has a great
operation, and is similar to and different from IPS in a number of ways.
General Structure
The school is part of the UNC campus, and in addition to
consulting and training it includes the MPA program. Our focus with this
trip and in this summary is with the consulting and training programs.
About half (49 percent) of the funding for the school is
provided through a state appropriation for the campus, and the balance is
raised through membership fees from cities and counties, fees from training
programs, and fees from the sale of publications (a whopping $1.3 million). The
school has its own foundation, and has three full-time and one part-time staff
primarily dedicated to fundraising and development. The part-time staff
person raises funds for the MPA program, two staff members focus on raising
funds for general support as well as for special programs and initiatives, and
one staff member serves as support. The school raises funds through
individuals, local governments, city and county associations and private
vendors for scholarships, technology and improvements to meeting and training
rooms, and for specific programs.
Programs and Services
Programs are generally delivered by tenure-track faculty
members, and the school offers the faculty model of training and assistance –
there are annual programs offered, but otherwise new courses, classes and
schedules are driven and developed by the faculty. The school has a staff
of 150 full-time employees, about 30 part-time employees and another 30 adjunct
instructors at any given time. Of the 53 faculty members 33 are attorneys.
Faculty teaching in UNC-Chapel Hill’s academic programs are usually required to
maintain a teaching load of four classes, but School of Government faculty
teaching in the MPA program (the school’s only academic program) teach two
courses, with the balance of their time spent on training, advising, and
writing for public officials.
The blogs are extensive and provide a great supplement to
the limited off-site training and consulting. I particularly recommend
subscribing to Coates’ Canons, the blog of the local government legal staff.
The blogs are tremendous resources for local governments in North Carolina, and
are usually relevant to our work with local government in Tennessee. In
addition, the school maintains a library of 136 publications, primarily books,
on local government issues and topics.
The UNC staff is focused on training offered through the
school. You see by the website (http://www.sog.unc.edu)
that the school offers annual programs, including orientation for newly-elected
local officials and for professional local government staff. It also
assists local governments with facilitation and technical
consulting. Consulting is focused on strategic and economic development
planning and legal opinions, with legal opinions and advice provided primarily
through e-mails and telephone calls. The school also offers training for
court officials, who are considered state employees, but generally it views
local government training as its primary focus.
The school is working to develop online training programs
with cameras in each class and meeting room.
Marketing
Training is generally marketed both by a print postcard and
one or more e-mail notifications, all with a similar template and
format. They track and try not to contact the same customer more than once
per week so that each note has some significance. They do require
participants to register online using credit cards or purchase orders, but also
offer an ability to register by telephone. They are finding that the
demand for telephone registration is rapidly declining.
Performance Measures and Continuous Improvement
The school offers credits for continuing legal education,
coordinated through the N.C. Bar Association, but does not require CEU review
for training classes. Training participants are surveyed with an
instrument similar to the surveys that we use, and Terri and Macel obtained a
copy of the survey. We also talked at length about performance measures
and continuous improvement efforts, and the staff at the school was very interested
in both, particularly performance measures in an environment of reductions in
state funding.
The UNC staff spent a great deal of time with us, and gave
everyone ample opportunity to ask about the specifics of how the school
addresses the same issues that we face. Based on the initial comments that
I have heard, I believe that the consensus was that this was both interesting
and provided great information for our work with IPS.
I appreciate your work as we serve and improve services in
Tennessee.
Steve Thompson
Assistant
Vice President
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