Gladfelter awards honor government efficiency ideas

The innovative ideas of public workers who help make their agencies run more smoothly and efficiently can win $500 awards in a competition administered by the UW–Madison department of political science.

Gov. Jim Doyle urged public employees to participate in the competition for the Lloyd D. Gladfelter Awards.

“Public employees have long played an important part in making our state what it is today,” Doyle says. “They care deeply about our future and they know that to secure our future, solid ideas on how to do a better job must accomplish high ideals of service.”

The Gladfelter Awards, named for the former Milwaukee Journal local government reporter and established through a gift from the Milwaukee Foundation Corporation to the UW Foundation, are designed to honor public employees whose suggestions for improvement or inventive programs at the federal, state, county or local level have the most merit.

Graham Wilson, professor and chairman of the department of political science, says that increasing pressure on government budgets makes innovation critical.

“We need to harness the creativity of all public workers to help accomplish the core mission of government,” Wilson says. “This competition is one way to encourage the kind of ingenuity that keeps government both responsive and affordable.”

Employees can apply for the award electronically. The deadline for application is Nov. 15 and elected officials are not eligible for the awards.

The application calls for a description of the idea, including its rationale, ways in which it is expected to improve government, its possible costs and potential savings.

Five public employee projects won the awards in 2004.

Joseph Sommers, one of the 2004 winners, came up with a way to make the city of Muskego’s documents more accessible. He scanned all documents dating back to 1964, when the city was incorporated, and posted them on the city’s Web site along with a searchable index.

“The competition was a wonderful experience and a great honor,” says Sommers, the city’s director of information systems. “This was a feather in the cap for the whole city. Not only did we do the project, but we received recognition at a statewide level.”

Gregg Rasske, the vocational horticultural instructor at the Oshkosh Correctional Institution, devised a system to pump water from a prison pond to water flowerbeds and a five -acre vegetable garden tended and harvested by inmates. The garden each year produces more than 25,000 pounds of produce, with half used by the prison and half going to local food pantries.

Rasske calculated the cost of using city water and related costs over 20 years to be $114,000, compared to $7,000 for the pond-pumping system.

“It was great to get the Gladfelter recognition, which assisted in making my pumping proposal a reality,” Rasske says. “My idea was implemented and we are already realizing the cost and labor savings.”