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December 18, 2000
PSG Press Release
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The Public Strategies Group's work with the
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has led to that
state agency winning this year's prestigious Ford Foundation Award for
Innovations in American Government, a PSG executive said today.
Babak Armajani, CEO of The Public Strategies Group, said DCFS was
chosen for adopting Performance Based Contracting, a management tool that
changed the state's focus and resources from maintaining children in foster
care to finding them permanent homes. As a result, more children were moved to
adoption in FY1999, than in the entire period from 1987-94.
Minnesota-based PSG, one of the nation's top consulting firms in
public sector change and redesign, has long advocated performance based
contracting as a powerful tool for delivering results that matter to the
customers of public sector organizations.
Armajani said that PSG's work helped set the basis for that
agency's shift to performance based contracting.
"PSG's redesign of the agency's POS (purchase of services)
was a major revision in how DCFS provided oversight and managed its contracts
with other agencies. In addition, PSG helped legitimize the agency's changes
with key stakeholders including independent social service agencies (such as
Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, Chicago Child Care, and the YMCA)
and the ACLU," he said. The ACLU was working with DCFS as the result of
consent decree stemming from a lawsuit settled in the early 1990s, and PSG
played an instrumental part in facilitating the dialogue between these parties.
DCFS was one of 10 winners chosen for this year's Innovations
Award. The award program brings public attention to the quality and
responsiveness of American government at all levels and helps foster the
replication of that work. More than 85 percent of the programs receiving
Innovations Awards over the past 14 years have been replicated.
For more information on the Innovations Awards, visit the
Innovations home page at Harvard's Institute for Government Innovation
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