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Facilitation Services

GSA Labor Rates Consultation Facilitation Project Management

Facilitation services (SIN 874-2) provide support to agencies in developing measures and employing a means for tracking progress toward agency performance targets. KENTCO will provide facilitation and related decision support services to agencies engaging in collaboration efforts, working groups, or integrated product, process, or self-directed teams. Agencies bringing together diverse teams and/or groups with common and divergent interests require a neutral, objective party to assist them in: the use of problem solving techniques; defining and refining the agenda; convening and leading large and small group briefings and discussions; resolving disputes, disagreements, and divergent views; recording discussion content and focusing decision-making; providing a draft for the permanent record; debriefing and in overall planning.

Facilitation Services support agencies in:

KENTCO will assist government agencies in structuring interagency working groups to engage in collaborative efforts. The organization of program initiatives is often presented in Work Breakdown Structure format to enable each participating agency or department to identify those aspects of the program for which they are responsible. In addition to minimizing costly unnecessary duplicative and redundant efforts, the Work Breakdown Structure provides a means to plan and track financial aspects of the program initiative or the restructuring of the organization. The development and use of modeling or simulation techniques provide valuable information in projecting the impact of planned actions, especially if reorganizing the existing management structure is involved. Prediction and performance models can be simple spreadsheets which allow management to forecast future cost savings or a series of complex algorithms can be developed to predict detailed performance measures affected by factors external to the present organization.

In the implementation phases, program meetings employing interagency/departmental working groups require extensive planning and problem-solving efforts to formulate an agenda which promotes interactive discussions of issues independent of specific agency or departmental lines of responsibility. The use of effective graphic aids and video teleconferencing technologies can link together the correct mix of personnel and talent, independent of their physical location or time zone. Use of e-mail increases effective communications and reduces the response time and effort of members of the interagency working group. The organization of planning and scheduling diverse activities can benefit from employing GANT or PERT type interdependency network diagrams of the planned activities. Finally, the drafting and coordination of progress reports and a final report to document the lessons learned and the outcome of the group’s work is often a thankless and cumbersome task. However, if the program initiative has been planned properly and organized with a Work Breakdown Structure, the final report is often just a matter of filling in the blanks.

Oftentimes, the final facilitation product presents an assessment of the agency Annual Performance Plan where overall progress toward measurable outcomes is evaluated. These outcomes are expressed as Impact and Performance Targets as outlined in the Consultation Services SIN description. The agency Strategic Plan (which now generally spans five years in the Federal Government) provides the architecture upon which the annual performance plan is organized.

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