Aeronautical and Technical Services

A Role Model for Public Sector Excellence

Thursday 26 October 2000 was a red letter day for the Federal Government, as Aeronautical and Technical Services (ATS), a division of Natural Resources Canada, became the first Federal Agency to receive a Canada Awards for Excellence trophy. This award, administered by the National Quality Institute (NQI), is the highest recognition available in Canada for management excellence. The trophy is presented only to organizations that have implemented a comprehensive customer-focused management system - and have demonstrated the effectiveness of this system by achieving outstanding results. The following is a brief outline of the ATS story.

What ATS Does

Aeronautical and Technical Services is a small organization (111 people) that publishes Canada's official aeronautical charts and provides cartographic services (including 'digital maps') to other mapping agencies. ATS also maintains a capability to produce specialized maps very quickly as required during emergencies - for example the Quebec and Ontario Ice Storm, the Red River floods, and the Swissair crash. ATS people know that others' lives depend upon their work, on a daily basis as well as during emergencies: quality really does matter! 

ATS's people - mainly skilled cartographers, geomatics engineers and digital imaging and printing specialists - work to a demanding production cycle imposed by international agreements. Every 56 days, hundreds of revisions result in thousands of changes and in turn tens of thousands of charts are printed and distributed to ensure pilots and Air Traffic Controllers have current and accurate aeronautical information.

An Environment of Change

ATS has benefited from being housed within one of the most quality-oriented areas of the Federal Government: the Earth Sciences Sector of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). NRCan has established various department-wide improvement initiatives, such as its Excellence program, started in 1995, which created alignment around a widely understood mission and set of values. In 1998 it produced a Guide to Good Management, which introduced the concepts of a management system, performance measurement, and organizational assessment.

In addition, the Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) encouraged all of its operating units to implement an ISO 9000 management system, established a formal mid-year and year end review process, began client satisfaction measurement, started an employee survey, and began conducting assessments using the NQI framework. All parts of ESS had the opportunity or the requirement to participate in these efforts. ATS distinguished itself by the way it committed itself to improvement and took advantage of these tools.

However, ATS has not had the advantage of a stable environment and plentiful resources to pursue its improvement journey. Rather, its improvement efforts have been the centrepiece of a bid for survival in the face of severe cutbacks, and have been carried through with dogged determination in spite of major changes and countless other demands on the organization. During the Program Review process in the mid 1990's ATS experienced a 51% cut in funding, a 35% cut in staff, and was directed to operate largely on a cost recovery basis. Around the same time, ATS lost its relationship with its largest client, Transport Canada, through privatization of the air navigation system. In addition, the entire technology of cartography is in the throes of a seismic change, from traditional printing and distribution of paper charts towards electronic production and distribution of digital maps.

As if that were not enough change to cope with, major organizational changes occurred during that period. Aeronautical Charts, Cartographic Imaging and the Canada Map Office were joined in 1995 to form ATS and in 1997 the Cartographic Printing Service joined ATS. Throughout all these events ATS remained focused on improving the quality of its operations, with the aim of providing flawless service to its customers, improving efficiency and thus reducing costs, and creating a team approach that would engage and inspire its people.

Early Steps

The cutbacks of the 1990s provided a strong stimulus for ATS management to search for better ways of doing business, and the main plank of these initial efforts was implementation of an ISO 9000-style management system. One of the motivations for doing this was to enable the organization to deal with turnover of technical staff. ATS makes heavy use of interns, who bring valuable skills and technical knowledge, but are short-term employees. Good process documentation was essential to help new people become productive quickly and to maintain consistent work practices during changes of staffing - but this documentation was lacking.

The ISO process started with a gap analysis to determine how much work would be required to obtain registration, and a structure was set up to support this work - a Quality Council, and Teams, with strong management support and involvement. The whole approach was designed to get people involved in understanding, documenting and controlling the design and production processes; and to bring about tangible improvements in operations rather than just obtaining a certificate for the wall.

ATS's approach to improvement has consistently been incremental rather than 'big bang' , and this was also true of the ISO 9000 work. The different parts of ATS tackled ISO 9000 one at a time, starting with about 65% of the organization in 1997 and expanding in scope until the entire organization was covered in 1998. This incremental approach allowed the organization to benefit from the experience of the early adopters, and allowed the work to be spread out in a way that made it more manageable.

The main benefits expected from the ISO 9000 system were achieved: the production processes were much better defined, controlled and managed. However, the reaction of staff was much more positive than expected. In ATS, the ISO 9000 system is seen, not as a burdensome bureaucracy, but as a system for helping people to do their work - and as a way for front line people to participate in managing the work. It has been empowering for people, and in their minds it is associated with the team approach that now pervades the organization. For example:

• production teams and project teams are the norm
• ATS has developed a team sponsorship approach for all its top level quality procedures
• ATS has developed a Quality Team process to solve problems. In one case a major client was included in the team, to resolve issues of mutual concern.

Another benefit of the ISO 9000 system was the creation of a robust corrective and preventive action system, which is accessible to all employees, and has been used very effectively. This is one of the strong mechanisms that ATS has to reveal how well its production processes are working, and to identify, resolve and prevent problems.

Building on Success

Having achieved ISO 9000 registration - and reaped the benefits of this - the obvious question for ATS management was "what next?". At around this time the parent branch, Mapping Services Branch (MSB) elected to conduct an assessment using the National Quality Institute framework. This type of framework enables a comprehensive examination of the organization, including leadership and planning processes, how people are managed, how the organization works to satisfy its customers, and the tangible results of all these efforts. In comparison with ISO 9000, the NQI framework is also focused more on continuous improvement rather than compliance.

The first assessment was conducted in 1996, with the aim of identifying and prioritizing a few key areas for improvement over the coming year. There was no intention of applying for an award.

This assessment followed a 'facilitated' format: i.e. it was conducted by an internal team and supported by an external consultant who provided training and guidance at key points in the process. To keep the process simple and streamlined, no application report was created - simply a feedback report identifying strengths and opportunities for improvement. This assessment provided a clear 'big picture' view of what was working and what wasn't, and helped management identify the 'vital few' areas for improvement. Resources and responsibilities were assigned to making significant improvements in these areas.

This process was considered a success, and the assess-plan-implement-monitor cycle was continued with a second assessment in 1998. These assessments led - directly and indirectly - to some important changes such as regular employee surveys and the implementation of a project management system covering all of ATS's work.

Results

There is plenty of evidence that ATS's approach is paying off. ATS's production processes are finely tuned and generally run like clockwork, resulting in shorter cycle times and greatly reduced costs. When there is a problem, the DMR system and the measurement systems quickly highlight this so that corrective action can be taken. ATS has a perfect record of meeting its delivery commitments for products - and for responding to inquiries and complaints within the committed timeframes. Since 1997 its ISO 9000 system has been audited twice a year, and has a perfect track record: during these audits no major (or even minor) discrepancies have been found. ATS's customers are highly satisfied, and are giving more work to ATS. One customer has even dropped some of its own mapping products to switch to an ATS product. ATS has reduced costs to taxpayers and increased cost-recovery to users - as demand for its products grows, particularly the new digital products.

External Recognition

By the time the third assessment cycle came due, ATS seemed ready for a more thorough approach, and decided to write a detailed application report, describing ATS's management system. This more searching approach uncovered more gaps - but it also showed clearly that ATS had made a lot of progress over the past three years. This was a revelation: until then the ATS management team had been much more conscious of the problems that they still needed to work on.

Encouraged by this discovery (and by their Sector Quality Advisor), the team decided to submit an application to NQI: in order to get external feedback, as well as some indication of how ATS compared with other organizations. They were surprised to get a site visit - since only the best applicants receive this level of scrutiny - and even more surprised when they learned that they had won a trophy.

The award has been a great boost for morale, and confirmation that ATS has been going in the right direction. However, it doesn't mean that ATS has reached the end of its improvement journey. Paul LaRose, the director of ATS, and Neil G. Grant, the manager of the quality management system, both say it the same way: "The amount of work we still need to do is more than all the work we have already done". They recognize self-satisfaction and complacency as deadly enemies, and are committed to the ongoing journey.

Conclusions

Although ATS's award was not considered front page news by the media, it was certainly noticed by senior government bureaucrats. And it may be a sign of things to come, as all levels of government strive to improve service and efficiency. Canadians need and want this to happen. Government is a huge part of the Canadian economy, many of the services provided by government are critical to our lives, and as citizens and taxpayers we have the right to expect excellence in government.

It takes time for large organizations to change. But small as it is, ATS has set a benchmark and demonstrated that some of Canada's best run organizations are within government. ATS is living proof that a Federal service delivery group can be managed with the same professionalism, efficiency and customer-focused responsiveness as the best in any other sector - and that this approach makes better use of scarce resources. As citizens and taxpayers we look forward to the time when all government departments are dedicated to the philosophy of continuous improvement - and as competent in the implementation.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Neil Grant and Dr. Larry Taylor for their contributions to this case study.

Obtain other articles by David Hutton at www.dhutton.com