Briefing Note Lean

I have been working a lot on the briefing note Lean project lately and thought I would post our progress:

• "BN Requested" in email headers has been utilized as a means to clearly and quickly identify requests to writers
• Paper requests for briefing notes have been eliminated - all requests will be made electronically
• Paper approvals have been eliminated by 75% - now only one final package of the briefing note needs to be sent to the Deputy Minister's Office.
• Prior to this paper packages were also sent to the Minister's Office, Communications Branch, and the branch that initiated the note - now, they all get a notification electronically of final approval
• Under the old system if a note was rejected and sent back for rework new packages needed to be created, which wasted a lot of time, effort, and paper. 
• Tracking of briefing notes from the three branches with the most over-due briefing notes has been undertaken to give us better insight into hold-ups
• A survey was sent out to the Assistant Deputy Ministers and Executive Directors asking them to identify problems with the briefing note process in terms of timeliness and quality of notes.

We are also considering utilizing a fully electronic process from request to final approval for the briefing notes. Right now the system is paper based, which isn't very helpful if you want to track where a briefing note is in the process!