Ken Mullins

November 14, 2006

Ken Mullins is a Senior Principal in the Center for Veterans Enterprise Transformation within MITRE’s Center for Connected Government; he also serves as a MITRE Portfolio Manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs. During his career, which spans more than 30 years, Ken has enjoyed the privilege of serving as trusted advisor to executives and senior leaders in the Defense, State, Justice, Interior, Veterans-Affairs, Health-and-Human-Services, Commerce, Homeland-Security, and other departments of the federal government. Prior to joining MITRE more than ten years ago, Ken was a Technical Director with Oracle, a consultant to Booz Allen Hamilton, and a Program Manager with ITT. He holds a Master of Science degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Administration and Government from the University of Maryland. From 1978-to-1980, he also studied International Law under Dean Rusk, the former Secretary of State, at the University of Georgia’s School of Law.

Ken has written extensively on technology, management, and government. As the Editorial Director for the Government Bulletin, published by the BPMInstitute.org, he not only edits articles, but also remains a frequent contributor to that organization’s multiple online fora. Samples of his published articles include these: Enterprise Architecture Works Best as a Roadmap – not a Blueprint; Relating Enterprise Strategy to Business Outcomes; Three Fundamental Prerequisites for Transforming Your Government Enterprise; Without Metrics, Process Improvement Can Be Hazardous to Your Business Health; BPM – A Cure for Institutional Memory Loss; Government Missions Should Drive the Lifecycle Management of Agency SOA-Services; Improving Government Service, by ‘Building Sidewalks Where People Like To Walk;’ The Importance of Being Earnest – about Enterprise Governance; For Most Government Agencies, An IT Strategy Can Be One Too Many; Government Transformation Depends On Dynamic Portfolio Management; Enhancing the Value of Your Government Transformation Roadmap; To Deliver Business Value, Avoid Paving over Cow Paths, and NIEM – A Model for Sharing Government Information.
MITRE Corporation
Senior Principal
Government
Strategy / Planning
Business Process Management (BPM)
Analytics/Big Data
Business Architecture (BA)
Business Decision Management (BDM) / Business Rules (BR)
Cloud Computing
Mobile/Social
Operational Excellence (OPEX)
Organizational Change Management (OCM)
Strategy
Web Services / SOA

Articles by: Ken Mullins

Designing Federal Programs with the American People in Mind

Designing Federal Programs with the American People in Mind

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“To more fully realize the benefits of behavioral insights and deliver better results at a lower cost for the American people, the Federal Government should design its policies and programs to reflect our best understanding of how people engage with, participate in, use, and respond to those policies and programs.” – President Obama

FITARA: Empowering CIOs to Improve the Business of Government

FITARA: Empowering CIOs to Improve the Business of Government

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“Our guidance takes major steps in ensuring CIOs have a seat at the table for technology-related budget, procurement, and workforce matters. [It] is centered on a ‘common baseline’ that outlines the roles and responsibilities for agency chief information officers and other senior agency officials. More importantly, it establishes a groundwork for productive partnerships among these leaders to make IT decisions that better support [their business] mission.” – U.S. Chief Information Officer (CIO) Tony Scott (upon releasing the final Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Passed by Congress in December 2014, the Federal Information Technology Reform Act (FITARA) grants more influence and control over investments in information technology (IT) to agency’s CIOs.

Managing Enterprise Transformation in Government

Managing Enterprise Transformation in Government

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“Culture does not change because we desire to change it. Culture changes when the organization is transformed; the culture reflects the realities of people working together every day.” Frances Hesselbein – President of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute 

Effective use of a transformation framework, such as the one illustrated in Figure 1, is a hallmark of successful organizations and an essential means to achieving operational and technology environments that maximize institutional mission performance and outcomes. Among other things, this includes realizing cost savings through consolidation and reuse of shared services and elimination of antiquated and redundant mission operations, enhancing information sharing through data standardization and system integration, and optimizing service delivery through streamlining and normalization of business processes and mission operations.

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction with Government Services

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction with Government Services

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“Government managers must learn from what is working in the private sector and apply these best practices to deliver services better, faster, and at lower cost.”   Barack Obama (upon releasing Executive Order 13571–Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service)

Balanced Scorecard: A Model for Improving Government Performance

Balanced Scorecard: A Model for Improving Government Performance

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

Untitled Document

“People and their managers are working so hard to be sure things are done right, that they hardly have time to decide if they are doing the right things.” Stephen Covey

If you’ve ever tried to keep scorecards for a high school baseball team, which I did for a couple of years a long time ago, you learn after a while to keep track of what’s really important, ignoring the occasional slip while making sure the captured data points can be used to improve the team’s overall performance. Since then, I’ve learned that well-managed enterprises, including some in government, use a similar approach.

Shared Services: A Model for Achieving Government Efficiencies

Shared Services: A Model for Achieving Government Efficiencies

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“I think many [agencies] would greatly benefit from a top-to-bottom efficiency analysis . . . done by people who understand government. The results of such an analysis . . . can provide a menu of choices for . . . officials as they work through the real nitty-gritty issues of efficiency in government.” John R. Bartle, dean of the College of Public Affairs & Community Service at the University of Nebraska at Omaha

Before Launching Government Transformation, Establish a Culture of Innovation

Before Launching Government Transformation, Establish a Culture of Innovation

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“All employees must be directly involved, learning about innovation. And they must have direct experience with it. New governance gets managers more involved in the decision making…. Only when innovators operate with the credibility of leaders will innovation become a productive part of the everyday business.” Craig Wynett, a key driver of P&G’s pre-eminence in innovation

Enhancing the Value of Your Government Transformation Road Map

Enhancing the Value of Your Government Transformation Road Map

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.” – Earl Nightingale

If you are a government program or project manager, let’s say in the IT solutions (or services) delivery business, you’re probably devoting a lot of thought to the long term view of how you plan to deliver on the promise of your product(s), solution(s), or services(s) – even as you grapple with the day-to-day challenges, risks, and issues that inevitably arise to frustrate your best laid plans. I suspect that you’re also maintaining some form of a road map for each of your projects, to highlight the many intermediate goals that need to be accomplished along the way – perhaps feeling frustrated at times by the need to maintain all that information on a single, fairly intuitive page.

To Deliver Business Value, Avoid Paving over Cow Paths

To Deliver Business Value, Avoid Paving over Cow Paths

Author(s):

Senior Principal, MITRE Corporation

“Yesterday’s adaptations are today’s routines”–Ronald A. Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

I opened an earlier article[1] published in this forum some time ago by setting up the following scenario, which concludes with a simple question:

Imagine yourself as the owner of a business domain within a government agency. Let’s say you’re the Deputy Administrator of entitlement programs in an organization that processes claims for benefits. No matter the type of benefit(s) or entitlement(s) your agency administers, whether loan guarantees, educational benefits, [or] disaster-recovery relief . . ., your business model – at some level of abstraction – is as simple as receiving applications (or claims) for benefits, qualifying them, and dispensing an appropriate response to each . . . of your applicants (or claimants).

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