Virginia’s Interagency ADR Gaining Momentum With
Top-Down Recognition and ‘Pot Luck’ Programming
“The top-down encouragement and recognition has helped our efforts to raise awareness and provide resources for agencies to use ADR when it’s appropriate,” Farr said. “The Governor has been very interested in what the council is doing, and in the kinds of efficiencies that DR processes can offer.”
Farr said it was the work of the council, and projects already underway, that likely first caught the Governor’s attention and support. Importantly, executive-level DR and consensus building also has key support from Virginia’s Secretary of Administration, Sandra Bowen, who—also under the act—chairs the ADR Council. Bowen oversees general government operations to ensure efficient management of resources.
With no budget to implement the act or finance pilots or practitioners, the council has relied on pro bono assistance from within and outside government for training, project design, and mediation and facilitation services. “It’s a shared burden in terms of work,” says Farr, whose Employment DR agency provides limited staffing and administration services for the council. With 15 years of experience in the use of pooled neutrals and helping agencies across state government resolve workplace issues, Farr’s department was a logical “grounding” for the new interagency initiative, she said.
Following an orientation and training period in 2002 and 2003 for state agency DR Coordinators who were assigned in accordance with the statute, the council undertook a baseline survey to assess familiarity with and use of ADR approaches across agencies. In conjunction with the survey, the council also asked the DR coordinators and their agency heads to develop a policy on the use of DR within their respective agencies. Virtually all of them replied with an ADR plan, paving the way for the council to begin its pilots.
Word went out to agencies that two coaches—one from state government and one from the private sector—would be available for 12 to 15 hours, pro bono, to help agencies think through and develop a pilot.
From those coaching sessions, the council received a diversity of pilot proposals, Farr said. Among them, a workplace project in the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services aimed at avoiding late-in-the-day mediations or grievances; a Department of Forestry project dealing with water quality issues; projects from the state’s two major procurement agencies—the Department of General Services and the Virginia Information Technology Agency; and another to help resolve consumer complaints to the Board of Accountancy.
In addition to those pilots, the council has begun assessing several more to fulfill the Governor’s 2004-05 Management Objectives, which call for completion of six projects by December 2005. Also on the council’s agenda is development of a shared pool of neutrals within state government. “We want to give agencies a choice between qualified ADR practitioners within or outside state government, whichever meets their needs best,” Farr said.
In some ways, Farr says, building the program without a budget has been liberating. Though a time may come when funding priorities and requirements change, the council has spent no time writing grant proposals or preparing state funding requests. “We’ve just gone out and asked: ‘Who can do this?’” she said. “We’re not waiting for perfection, or for buckets of money, but really just making things happen in small steps.”
Deputy Secretary of Administration Sheryl Bailey aptly refers to Virginia’s approach as a ‘potluck’, says Farr. With the state’s IT department offering web site development, staffing services from Farr’s agency, in-kind support from practitioners and professional associations like the Virginia Mediation Network and the Virginia Joint Bar Committee on ADR—all pro bono—DR is gaining a solid foothold in state agencies, which should extend to local governments and communities around the state as well.
“There are a lot of good, talented people in this state who are willing to pitch in and work together to improve the way we solve problems here,” she says. “It really is just a good management tool; something many of us, including the Governor, feel should be an intrinsic part of every agency’s tool box.”