DOTD is working to implement its strategic improvement plan. Secretary Joe Donahue says the department identified a few deficiencies in its operation – among them is the inability to deliver projects on schedule.
“The legislature has created the Highway Priority Program, which kind of sets out the criteria for how projects should be selected and prioritized for delivery. Historically, those projects would basically fall off track,” Donahue said.
Donahue says of the projects completed in recent years, a small percentage were actually in the Highway Priority Program’s pipeline, and that’s something that will change in the strategic improvement plan.
“We could actually go out there, advertise to the folks which projects are going to be delivered, take their input, and deliver them as we said we were as opposed to delivering some other project that had not gone through the normal course of development,” Donahue explained.
Donahue says another deficiency identified was the lack of consistency in the department’s messaging.
“In many instances, DOTD was answering questions depending on who was asking the question, you would get different answers,” Donahue said.
Donahue says as a result, what the department was telling people was not the same as what it was reporting to the federal government each year.
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