Washington State Efficiency Commission

Consolidate Government Operations Across Multiple Agencies

Streamline Government Operations

Washington State's fishing license system made perfect bureaucratic sense and zero practical sense—until a 12-person task force redesigned it from the ground up.

Two agencies. One angler. Two fishing licenses. Washington's Department of Fisheries issued licenses for salmon and trout, while the Department of Wildlife handled steelhead. This overlap produced duplicate systems, redundant staff, and an angling public that had learned to live with the inconvenience.

Management Pro Role

A special legislative task force was formed to fix it, and we were selected to lead the work. The 12-person task force brought together private sector loaned executives alongside senior government officials. Operational redesign in government requires people who understand how agencies work and outsiders willing to say what insiders won't.

Before designing anything, we mapped who needed to be heard. Indian tribes, charter boat operators, conservation groups, and legislative offices each carried legitimate stakes. A solution ignoring any of them wouldn't survive the political process, because stakeholder alignment is a design requirement, not a courtesy.

The technical integration was solvable, but the harder challenge was organizational: one department would gain the consolidated licensing function, and the other would lose it. We structured and facilitated those negotiations carefully, creating conditions where both sides could reach agreement without feeling ambushed.

Outcomes

Stakeholder alignment was treated as a design variable, not a post-decision communication task. When the recommendation went to the Legislature, it passed unanimously. Implementation was smooth because resistance had been addressed upstream through structured dialogue and explicit sequencing.

Lessons Learned

Design the stakeholder architecture correctly, and policy execution follows.