Nebraska Panhandle News

U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts recently addressed the Senate, sharing Nebraska's achievements in improving government efficiency and reducing waste. As a founding member of the Senate DOGE Caucus, led by Senator Joni Ernst, Ricketts emphasized the importance of adopting private sector strategies to enhance federal services. The newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, aims to implement these strategies.

Ricketts stated, "The private sector figures out how to do a better job of providing services while reducing their expenses. We can do the same thing in government." He highlighted Nebraska's success with Lean Six Sigma, a process improvement methodology that trained 30,000 state employees. This initiative resulted in significant time savings for Nebraskans and reduced operational costs.

Ricketts detailed several improvements achieved during his tenure as Governor of Nebraska. For instance, air construction permit processing was streamlined from 110 steps to 22, reducing the time taken from 190 days to 65 days. Similarly, economic assistance call response times were reduced from 23 minutes to under five minutes before the pandemic.

The former governor also noted financial benefits from these efficiencies: "We saved $115 million in hard savings... we were able to reduce the square footage that we were occupying in the state of Nebraska by 60,000."

In closing, Ricketts stressed the urgency of controlling federal spending: "We've got to be able to get our spending under control. It is a risk to our country." He advocated for leveraging tools like Lean Six Sigma across government agencies.