ITD Recognized by Idaho Technology Council

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KLIX) – The Idaho Technology Council has named the Idaho Transportation Department as finalist in the 2016 Innovative Company of the Year.

The recognition is a first for a public service agency. The recognition typically honors private-sector firms.

“This award shows that a government agency can be just as innovative as the private sector and move at the speed of business,” ITD Director Brian Ness said in a prepared statement. “By finding better ways to do our jobs, we put the focus on the customer and serve the citizens, not ourselves.”

The department was recognized for its Innovative ITD program.

“This program honors all the dedicated employees who come to work each day and think about how they can do their job a little bit better than the day before,” said ITD’s Chief Administrative Officer Charlene McArthur.

Since the program began in 2014, ITD has:

• Received more than 620 ideas from employees
• Implemented more than 424 innovations
• Generated savings and efficiency improvements of more than $2.1 million
• Realized more than 70,000 contractor and employee hours saved
• Created nearly 165 customer-service improvements.

The Idaho Technology Council named ITD as a finalist on Oct. 25 in Boise. The recognition comes on the heels of the department’s internal 2016 “Best of the Best” competition, which spotlights innovations in each of seven categories central to the department’s overarching goals: safety, mobility, economic opportunity, customer service, employee development, time savings and cost savings.

“Empowering our employees to make decisions where the work is being done has made us a more efficient and effective organization,” Ness said. “No one knows how to do a job better than the one who is actually doing it.”