Update: ASQ in Washington
June 2009 — With the new administration filling key agency appointments and a flurry of legislation of interest to the quality field, it’s a busy time for ASQ in Washington.
ASQ’s Washington activity, guided by the work of the ASQ Public Policy Advisory Council, is moving ahead on several fronts identified in ASQ’s Washington priorities plan:
Healthcare
ASQ submitted commentary on healthcare IT proposals to the National Coordinator for Health IT. The comments offered ASQ’s advice on ways to carefully and appropriately direct spending of parts of the $20 billion allocated to healthcare IT by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the stimulus bill). Yet to come is commentary on the term “meaningful use” as it applies to healthcare IT spending in the stimulus bill.
ASQ suggested three ways to improve the quality of healthcare, when responding to a request from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee staff. We also shared that information with staff of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. ASQ is also preparing a statement on healthcare process principles as guidance for the House and Senate drafters of the healthcare reform legislation that is being hotly debated.
Coordinating these activities is a healthcare working group comprised of subject-matter experts from the ASQ Healthcare Division, the Public Policy Advisory Council, and Sellery Associates—ASQ’s Washington consultants.
Planning is also underway for ASQ to produce a healthcare quality forum for Congress on behalf of the 21st Century Healthcare Caucus.
Education
Representatives from ASQ met briefly with Arne Duncan, Secretary of the Department of Education, while he was in Milwaukee. Follow-up to that meeting includes the following items:
- An invitation to the Secretary to speak at the National Quality Education Conference
- An invitation to Department of Education officials to attend ASQ’s upcoming Leadership Summit for Education
- An offer to assemble a panel of leading primary/secondary educators and Baldrige Award winners for the Department of Education so the department can learn about the effects of systematic quality management on student achievement and operating costs.
Government Transformation
President Obama nominated Jeffrey Zients for the dual role as the government’s first Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Zients’ confirmation would clear the way for ASQ to proceed with initiatives that it has been discussing with OMB. Those initiatives include the hosting of one or more consulting sessions on quality fundamentals for OMB’s Performance Improvement Council and discussions of ways to apply ASQ’s knowledge and experience to the OMB’s efforts to target improvement opportunities within the federal government.
In the meantime, ASQ arranged for officials at OMB’s Office of Performance and Personnel Management to meet with representatives of the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC)—the first Baldrige non-profit award recipient—and the Veterans Administration. The purpose of the meeting was to give OMB first-person accounts of ways in which systematic performance excellence regimens such as the Baldrige process and the VA’s Carey Award process can be used to drive successful improvement efforts in federal government settings.
Food Safety
ASQ and the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) are providing input to food safety bills, ensuring that the legislation acknowledges the benefits of third-party conformity assessment for food safety systems.
