Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994                   TAG: 9404190180
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GOVERNMENT THAT SERVES ...

No, this is about bureaucrats working to make things work - and succeeding. Let's start with Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles.

Its employees, says the DMV's mission statement, are partners with the public - and they are trained to act that way. The agency has focused on customer service in the same way that successful private enterprises must: doing business as efficiently and as conveniently as possible for the public.

Thus, the DMV offers extended hours; vehicle registration by mail or, in some locations, at drive-through windows; express offices for simple transactions like license renewals at malls in Northern Virginia and in the Tidewater.

And it is unafraid of innovation. Drivers' photos on its digitized licenses, for example, are taken with video cameras that scan the images into a computer base, retrievable later if a DMV agent needs to check whether the person before him or her is, indeed, the right person.

Providing good service has been an evolutionary process that accelerated, not coincidentally, in 1980, when Don Williams became commissioner. He hasn't dictated these changes nor inspired all the energy behind the ideas, a department spokeswoman said. He simply brought dedication to customer service to the job and, under his leadership, employees have had the opportunity to make incremental improvements.

These have added up, and now the DMV is one of 74 government agencies nationwide - three in the commonwealth - to become a semifinalist for an Innovations in State and Local Government Award from the Ford Foundation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Another is the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, for an automated system that allows its 15 state hospitals to share patient information.

They always have shared such information, but through the mail. Now the department's computer experts have written a software program called PRAIS - Patient/Resident Automated Information System - that puts all of the facilities on the same network, and allows them to track patients as they move through the system. There are no delays in getting a patient's medical records, information on drugs or lab work, or insurance and other financial information.

The department is working on branching out to Community Service Boards, so the local boards can have quick access to information about patients when they leave a state hospital and return to the community.

What the two state agencies have in common are employee innovations that better serve their customers, the public. Whether either goes on to become one of 10 national winners in September, both can take pride in their taming of that dreaded beast, The Bureaucracy, for a lot of customers.