HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS

The STEP steering committee, which is co-chaired by the governor and a corporate chief executive officer who represents the prestigious Minnesota Business Partnership, includes senior officials of business, unions, state government, citizen groups, educational and research institutions, and nonprofit organizations. The program, which has undergone considerable fine-tuning since it was instituted in 1985, works this way:

Employees submit brief project proposals, which are reviewed quarterly by a subcommittee, or screening panel, of the steering committee. If the screening panel recommends the proposal for further development, a staff person is temporarily assigned to work on the project pending final steering committee review. The applicant refines the proposal in consultation with a team of staff counselors and, usually, a partner from business or government who knows the field in which the employee works. Although applicants are encouraged to select partners, they are not required to do so.

Finally, if the refined proposal substantially meets the program criteria—it may be judged, for example, to exhibit "closeness to the customer," or to hold managers accountable for the "bottom line" in their program area and for achievement of measurable results—it goes to the full steering committee for official approval.

Three hundred proposals were submitted in the first year; 20 were selected as STEP projects. The following examples illustrate some of their achievements. The Department of Finance found that it could earn more than $1 million per year in interest through fast-track processing of transactions. In a project called Paper Chase, rehabilitation staff at St. Peter Regional Treatment Center cut the number of forms used from eight to one; as a result, employees were able to free two hours per week for work on other professional assignments. And a regional treatment center determined that by taking in laundry from several non-state service agencies it could partly recover the $500,000 it had paid for new, labor-saving laundry equipment.