Most politicians come from a lobbying or a legal background. We need to identify some of the organizations in the private sector and look at their best practices. In the last three or four years, government has started to take notice because of privatization, competition, outsourcing, agency mergers, and getting rid of useless functions. All of a sudden, government had to compete like the private sector. The council is not a state-centric organization.
Government makes up about half of our applicants.
But I'd put up our department of revenue and the city of Coral Springs against any Baldrige winner. When I started to do this, you didn't have a lot of interest at the top levels of government. They didn't want to bother. Government controls people through budgets. But the people in the districts, cities, and counties were quite enthusiastic.