Lean Six Sigma in City, County and State Government

In government and the public sector, most improvement initiatives since the 1980’s were framed as Total Quality Management (TQM), Continuous Improvement or Reengineering. You can learn about the State of Iowa’s TQM journey in the early 1990’s.

In 1993, the Government Performance and Results Act increased interest in the United States federal government on improving service delivery and delivering results. Early adopters were federal agencies and the United States military (Department of Defense), often focused on logistics, depots, and maintenance where industrial-style processes are visible and easier to measure.

Some state and local governments begin experimenting with process mapping and cycle-time reduction for permitting, licensing, and benefits processing, but adoption was patchy and usually project-by-project. The concepts of Lean and Six Sigma (or Lean Six Sigma) as formal improvement programs did not appear until the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

Mayor Graham Richard of Fort Wayne (Indiana, USA) led a Lean Six Sigma effort that saved $11 million with no tax increases and increases in citizen satisfaction.

In the early to mid-2000s, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) became one of the largest and most visible public-sector adopters of Lean Six Sigma, launching enterprise-wide initiatives across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defense Logistics Agency. The branches frequently cited multi-billion-dollar annual savings and cost avoidances, with some years surpassing $6-10 billion when including efficiency gains, reduced inventory, and improved asset availability.

In the mid-2000’s, Jim Womack and the Lean Enterprise Institute explicitly promote Lean Government as applying Lean thinking to public value, policy implementation, and citizen-facing services. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publishes their Lean Toolkits in 2006 for using Lean and Six Sigma methods to reduce water, energy and chemical usage.

In 2007, John Maleyeff with the IBM Center for The Business of Government published “Improving Service Delivery in Government with Lean Six Sigma” to encourage LSS practitioners and government agencies to work together on adopting these techniques into the public sector service industry. The Lean in Public Sector (LIPS) was also launched in 2007 as an international forum where practitioners share lessons learned during lean transformation in public sector and non-profit organizations.

By the mid-2010’s, we start seeing more adoption of Lean Six Sigma programs in city, state and federal agencies, while also adopting Agile/Scrum for digital transformation.

In 2011, the State of Washington launched a coordinated effort to apply Lean thinking across state agencies without hiring extra staff or creating a new budget line. the transformation deepened. The program has continued to thrive for over a decade by cultivating and growing a “lean culture” from licensing and inspections to environmental regulation and public safety.

The following government agencies have shown current or past efforts to implement Lean and Six Sigma continuous improvement programs over the years. If you know of a program we’re not aware of, please contact us and let us know! Please provide a public website link, as some programs have disappeared after some success, and others are happening but not publicly available.

United States

Federal Government

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Lean Manufacturing and Environment | articles | Lean Toolkits)
Department of Health and Human Services
- FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) (Continuous Quality Improvement)
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (videos)
Armed Forces
- Department of Defense
- Army
- Navy
- Air Force
Department of Agriculture
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Nuclear Regulatory Commission