In 2011, two agencies within the Louisiana Department of Public Safety (DPS) entered into a pair of contracts with a company called CTQ Consultants totaling $38,400 to eliminate waste and to increase efficiency in the Office of Motor Vehicles ($22,400) by employing a combination of a trendy management method and to decrease the average DNA purchasing process turn-around time ($16,000).
Taken at face value, $38,400 is not an exorbitant amount for two contracts given some of the contracts awarded by the state. The infamous $270 million CNSI contract comes to mind. So does that $7.4 million consulting contract the state awarded Alvarez & Marcel (A&M) Consultants to track down $500 million in savings.
But then DPS promptly placed CTQ’s only employee, Kathleen Sill, on the state payroll as a $140 per hour state employee and proceeded to pay her $437,000 in salary over the next 28 months.
That’s $437,000 for her personally, not for her company.
Additionally, DPS paid $12,900 in air travel for 21 flights for Sill between Baton Rouge and CTQ’s Columbia, S.C., home office between Jan. 6, 2012 and March 2014, according to records obtained by LouisianaVoice.
The first contract, for $16,000, was awarded to CTQ by the Office of State Police on Feb. 1, 2011. That contract expired three months later, on April 30, 2011.
On Aug. 1, 2011, the $22,400 contract was awarded by the Office of Management and Finance. That contract expired five months later, on Dec. 31. Among the objectives of that contract was one that called for CTQ to assist in “streamlining including the operations of the Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV).”
State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson heads DPS in his dual role as Deputy Secretary and oversees, besides State Police, the Office of Management and Finance, the Office of Motor Vehicles, the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission, the Office of State Fire Marshal, the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office and the Liquefied Petroleum Gas Commission. http://www.dps.louisiana.gov/deputy.html
On Jan. 1, 2012, one day after the second contract expired, Sill was placed on the state payroll as an employee/consultant and remained employed until May 1, 2014, records show.
So, what is CTQ and who is Kathleen Sill?
Well, if McKinsey & Co. is considered the world’s premier business consulting company, Alvarez & Marsal might best be considered Mac Lite and CTQ as something several rungs down in the consulting pecking order. It’s a typical touchy-feely out-of-state organization that makes suggestions on to how local administrators can best do their jobs—after waltzing in, analyzing, discussing and writing expensive reports—all in a matter of a few weeks or months, as in the case of CTQ. Or, in Sill’s case, 28 months.
Sill formed CTQ in 2009 after spending more than 30 years with Bank of America as a “quality and productivity executive.”
The CTQ web page has an about us feature but when we clicked on it, only Sill’s profile appeared on the screen. No other employees of the firm are identified anywhere on the web page. http://www.ctqconsultinggroup.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=5
CTQ and Sill specialize in something called Lean Six Sigma, which Sill says is an abbreviated form of Six Sigma that draws upon her Six Sigma training and hands-on experience “to identify and implement results-driven solutions for your business.”
Six Sigma is a set of techniques for process improvement that was developed by Motorola in 1986 and General Electric adopted the program for its business strategy in 1995.
The program attempts to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing causes of defects by employing a set of quality management methods and creates a special infrastructure of employees within an organization (“Champions,” Black Belts,” “Green Belts and “Yellow Belts”) who are experts in infrastructure methods.
![Lean_Six_Sigma_Structure_Pyramid.svg[1]](https://louisianavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/lean_six_sigma_structure_pyramid-svg1.png)
The name Six Sigma originated from terminology tied to manufacturing, especially terms associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes.
Sigma indicates its yield or percentage of defect-free products it creates while a six sigma process is one in which 99.00066 percent of the manufactured products are statistically expected to be defect-free (3.4 defective parts per million).
According to Wikipedia.org, Six Sigma doctrine asserts:
- Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable process results are of vital importance to business success.
- Manufacturing and business processes have characteristics that can be measured, analyzed, controlled and improved.
- Achieving sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization, particularly from top-level management.
Features that set Six Sigma apart from previous quality improvement initiatives include:
- A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial returns from any Six Sigma project.
- An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support.
- A clear commitment to making decisions on the basis of verifiable data and statistical methods, rather than assumptions and guesswork.
Just how all this applies to the Department of Public Safety and how it justified an expenditure of $450,000 remains unclear.
Asked why Sill was placed on the state payroll as an unclassified employee instead of being retained as a contractor, DPS explained that the department “utilized a Civil Service hiring option to employ Ms. Sill as a WAE (when actually employed) due to the length of proposed projects underway or planned. This allowed her to perform projects across various state agencies as a state employee.”
One explanation might be the $50,000 plateau for contracts. Any contract of $50,000 or more must be approved by the Office of Contractual Review.
A better reason could be that contracts are easier for prying eyes to spot and more susceptible to prompting questions from nosy reporters than an otherwise low key state hire.
But if the results of “streamlining operations of OMV” can be used as a barometer, the efforts of CTQ and Sill are less than auspicious. One need only make a trip to one of the local DMV offices gutted by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s employee layoffs to witness the interminable delays brought on by his privatization obsession. And while you’re waiting, don’t take it out on the overworked, stressed-out employees. Just remember to thank Jindal—and Lean Six Sigma.
And bring a good book to read while you wait.
Louisiana Voice 
What you’re saying is, we spent half a million dollars to disseminate buzzwords, right? Thank goodness we didn’t waste that on repairing roads or educating kids.
Buzzwords and, we would have to assume, recommendations to cut staff and create longer lines. Also, maybe it was her recommendation to contract with more private operators (tag agents) and charge up to $18 in higher fees for using them. If she also recommended options like self-service kiosks which work like ATMs in OMV offices and might actually save the public time, I guess they are still on the shelf. No matter what, couldn’t somebody already working there come up with whatever ideas she did and at NO extra cost?
This would seem to beg the question John Kennedy has been begging forever, I. e., why does no one want to really look at professional services contracts and, for that matter, WAEs in state service? Could the answer be they know what we would find out if they did?
Big question – who IS Kathleen Sill? What is her connection to Jindal, Edmonson, RNC, the Jeb Bush Florida organization, etc.? Who wanted to pay her huge amounts for little or nothing? Where did she come from? While on the payroll as an unclassified employee did she ever show up in an office? Malfeasance on many parts by all who were complicit in this theft of public funds.
Tom, an excellent investigative report as usual. As I read this, all I can think of is Wow! DPS is apparently out of control and Jindal doesn’t seem to care. It appears that they have taken a page from our President. Just do it and let someone try to stop us. I am very aware of this process used to avoid Office of Contractual Review, I’ve just never seen what it looks like on steroids. There seems to be no oversight and the patients are indeed running the asylum. This all comes from a lack of leadership when you get political appointees who have no concept of management principles or leadership qualities. They surround themselves with those who will go along with their schemes and not question anything. Until we stop letting groups like the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association pick our DPS/ State Police head, we will continue to get this quality of individual who seems more worried with his personal income and political future than the men and women he has been entrusted to lead and who depend on him. They deserve better but the only person who oversees this is the Governor who has never heard an idea from someone else that he liked better than his own. They are both individuals who are politicians, but useless as leaders. As we saw with the SB 294 fiasco and we are now hearing about HB 872, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone at the capitol would recognize a constitutional bill if they saw one. And now this. I guess Integrity left on the last train out of Baton Rouge, because all I am seeing is corruption and greed. For Colonel Edmonson, shame on you for betraying the trust of the people of Louisiana and the Troopers who place their life on the line daily depending on you to have their back. The only person you try to take care of is yourself. And Governor Jindal, while you have never figured this out, you aren’t always the smartest person in the room. Talking fast and providing statistics doesn’t mean you are intelligent. We know you don’t seem to know about what makes a bill constitutional. Maybe you should quit being a politician and do the job you were elected to do and oversee the people you appointed. DPS is out of control and we can only suspect it isn’t alone. So far your only response was to give Edmonson a retirement boost as a reward for all this. And the worst part, these are the “good, small government” Republicans. Of course they are. We’ll be left holding the bag for the bad management and you two will be out looking for another spot you can fill up your wallets and egos at the public’s expense. If what has been revealed lately is any indicator, we may as well sit back and wait for more. With the attitudes they have shown, I’m sure there are many more corrupt practices just waiting for someone to find. At what point does this stuff turn into malfeasance?
To the powers that be, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is like a shiny thing to a crow—irresistible—probably because of the abundant graphics in the presentation. Certain DCFS parish offices were test sites for LSS a few years back. What an absolute crock. This one-size-fits-all process (old fad) didn’t factor in our clients (food stamp, child care assistance and welfare applicants/recipients) not being on board with “streamlining.” LSS may work in some situations to improve speed but all it did for us was to make a difficult situation worse. The emphasis was on speed and half-azz interviewing of public assistance clients that only resulted in errors and undiscovered fraud. We were soooo glad to see these “experts” move on so we could get back to work. Of course, their resultant reports were “glowing” as is usually the case when self-reporting.
Incredible.
Since when has the Gaming Control Board been under the jurisdiction of the State Police? The chairman SHOULD report directly to the governor, not the Superintendent of State Police.
Prior to Jindal, the Ruston DMV office was efficient and staffed with dedicated employees – it was in a good location with modern spacious facilities. NOW, it is in a rat hole down town – a drooping tattered banner now advertises its location. One has to look hard to distinguish it from a Pay Day Loan or buy one Pizza and get the second one half price
Looks like the crooks in State government have figured a way around the bid mandate of $50K
Jindal, Edmonson, et al must log on to Louisiana Voice each day with a sense of dread, wondering what new dirty business you’ve exposed, and what new ways you have shown them to be fools. You are providing a more valuable service to the citizens than any of those clowns. Keep it up!
Keep on keeping on and I bet there is a lot more trash out there than even jindal doesn’t know about especially since he left the “fox” to guard the hen house. Thanks Tom.
Looks to me like the work of jill boudreaux the undersecretary for management and finance……a REAL find job!
This is sick…
Just found out about your web page and love it. The public needs to find out what the “highest paid” employees at DPS are doing or have done. It’s time for more to be exposed!
how much in “bonuses” did DPS give employees for Lean Sigma Certifications??? What a waste with no “governing” board for Lean Sigma Six Certifications. Anyone can teach it without any certifications. Way to go DPS spending all that money on the “cult” !
Not to mention that another amendment was approved to increase the contract with Alvarez $ Marcel by $2,388,120 for a total contract amount of $7,391,555!