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Overview
"It's the right thing to do; it's how government ought to work." - Congressional Comment
Overview
What is Service First?
At the broadest level, Service First is a concept of organizing work with an external focus. It's about achieving the timeless goals of land stewardship and quality public service. Service First is a way of forming partnerships across agency boundaries to deal with the land in an integrated way and provide quality service to our publics.
The Goals of Service First:
- Improved customer service
- Increased operational efficiency, and
- Improved stewardship of the land
Benefits of Service First
The public does not differentiate between federally managed lands. They believe public lands should be managed with their needs in mind, irrespective of administrative boundaries.
Service First activities help you make better and smarter decisions. For example, working with specialists from other agencies creates additional perspectives. Service First often improves communications, especially when both agencies are collocated under the same roof.
Why do Service First?
- Leverages employee skills and expertise across the land management agencies
- Enables better focus on watershed and landscape management
- Reduces agency costs by pooling human resources and property
- Eliminates redundant efforts
- Increases responsive problem solving
- Provides one stop shopping to the public by reducing points of contacts
- Provides customer convenience and improved delivery of programs
- Enhances communication between agencies and the public
Lessons Learned
Whether it is collocation of two agency offices or shared resource management, successful Service First efforts share these lessons:
- Service First is only a tool, it will not provide an answer to every situation
- It offers an on the ground problem solving device but requires senior level management support
- It requires significant effort to overcome institutional and cultural barriers
- It allows employees to be more pro-active and become initiators of change
- Service First works best when clearly perceived by the field manager as an effective tool to increase job productivity and efficiency
Getting Started
Service First Locations
What do Others Say?