Louisiana Voice

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.

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.

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