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With help from Abbott Laboratories, the County is on target to save nearly $30 million in cost reductions in its contract and purchasing functions.

Facing a more than $480 million budget shortfall when she walked in the door, President Preckwinkle knew that getting control of what the County was buying and spending would be a critical piece to the success of her new administration. At the start of the new administration, a team from Abbott began working pro bono with the County’s new purchasing agent to quickly implement a moratorium on discretionary spending, conduct a high level spend analysis of county purchases, and develop a resource and project plan for supporting the several key projects optimizing county purchasing.

Abbott Laboratories is a global pharmaceutical and healthcare company operating in 130 countries worldwide with revenues of more than $36 billion. Having highly developed supply chain and purchasing functions, they agreed to donate two procurement specialists to the County full time for 3 months to help the County assess its purchasing operations.

The Abbott team also helped with office reorganization recommendations—for example, eliminating the "typing pool" and assembly line process.  They helped instead create buyer positions and roles that handled the entire process for a procurement contract.  They also mapped the present state of the County purchasing process and developed a model future state process which that help move the organization from one that focuses on transaction management to one that is centered around value creation.  Purchasing Agent Lourdes Coss said, “The County would never have been able to move so quickly to realizing savings without the help from Abbott.”

Most significantly, the Abbott team helped the County launch an RFP to acquire a sourcing partner for the next 18 months by reviewing language and serving in an advisory role on the selection committee.  This contract will enable to help the County obtain additional savings in the 2012 and 2013 budgets.

Fulfilling the 100-day goal of one of the initiatives contained in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "Chicago 2011 Transition Plan" - Initiative #52: "Refocus the Chicago Climate Action Plan (CCAP) on economic impact and jobs," The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Civic Consulting Alliance conducted a study on behalf of the City of Chicago, to quantify CCAP's economic development, job creation, and cost reduction potentials. The study also devised strategies to achieve such potentials.

The study found that Chicago has the potential to double its "green jobs" sector, adding another 25,000 jobs to the city by the end of the decade. In addition, Chicago residents and businesses could save up to $1.2 billion of the almost $7 billion that they spend annually on energy, water, waste, and fuel.  This level of growth and investment would further establish Chicago as a leader in addressing global climate change and advancing the low-carbon economy.

This study presents a call to action that identifies three strategic priorities on how the economic development benefits can be maximized: (1) Accelerating proven green practices, (2) Promoting innovation and "Centers of Excellence", and (3) Driving broader engagement and leadership to build sustained cultural change.

This study's report can be found here. 

Civic Consulting Alliance helped launch the most comprehensive performance management system of any municipal government. 

The purpose of Chicago Performance Management is to increase accountability and productivity across all departments, and to uncover and fix issues before they become real problems.  Departments meet on a regular basis with the Mayor’s Office and Office of Budget and Management to discuss progress on a common set of metrics. 

For the launch, Civic Consulting's partners helped the Mayor’s Office and Office of Budget and Managment prioritize objectives and helped departments implement their own performance management systems.  As a result, performance management has been institutionalized throughout the City and led to further Civic Consulting projects with Department of Revenue, Streets and Sanitation, Police, and others.

On July 7th, 2011, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle released the initial report of the County's new performance management program, STAR (Set Targets, Achieve Results).

STAR is a cornerstone of President Preckwinkle's plan to establish a new culture of performance in Cook County. The program aims to lower the cost of government, improve services, and allow the public to judge the County's effectiveness.

The Chicago Tribune praised the report: "Citizens deserve answers to questions about performance." President Preckwinkle is "off to a fast start, particularly with her plan to measure how well or poorly her government performs."

"In these difficult times, government has to manage the resources that it has better," President Preckwinkle said on WTTW Chicago Tonight. "We've got a lot of work that we need to do, and performance management will help us do that work better."

The Boston Consulting Group worked pro bono for five months with Civic Consulting to develop measures for the report and accountability sessions to review the data. Downtown Partners Chicago, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and Architecture 4 worked pro bono to design the public face for the report and website.

"BCG welcomed the opportunity to bring proven tactics from the business world to help improve how the County delivers its essential services to over 5 million residents," said Hal Sirkin, Partner at The Boston Consulting Group.

In August 2011, as part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s transition plan, Civic Consulting Alliance completed a program audit of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). The audit inventoried the programs and facilities overseen by DCASE, including those supported by DCASE and managed by the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture.

The Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor’s Office of Special Events were merged to create DCASE in January 2011. In light of the departmental merger, Mayor Rahm Emanuel requested a comprehensive audit of DCASE facilities and programming.

The final audit identified departmental funding flows, program attendance figures and facility rental income and usage information, among other vital facts. The results of the project will support the development of a Chicago cultural plan—the first created by the City since 1986.

Pro bono support was provided by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.