Phyllis Morris

Technology is the way of the future. It allows you to expand your vision for your department. For example, we are often faced with challenges of doing more with less. So the question is, how do you improve efficiencies? You can sit back and talk about what it is that you can't do because you don't have the money, or you can just tackle the issue, find the solutions and move forward. And in t You can do t What do you t . . Well, how did you come about t I mean, everybody talks about it. Everybody t But how did you get from the idea to actually saying, you, whoever, in t Well, I went to a doctor at Kaiser Hospital and there were no longer client vows, patient vows. Everyt And I just happened to ask the doctor. I said, oh, And he said, yes, everyt No more paper vows. I left the office that day and I said, Kaiser can do it. We can do it too. And how did you approach the challenge? Did you specifically appoint somebody to do t I knew that there were certain people in the department that had special knowledge involving computers and programming. And so I decided to approach a person I knew who was interested in gadgets. And I asked them, I said, look, T Can we do t And after you initiated the interest and started the ball rolling, what did you find to be the most challenging aspect of t Probably passing the vision on to others to, in terms of resistance that you sometimes encounter. And once you get over that hurdle, people realize that you have made their way to your job easier. What can you recommend to other people in your situation who have thought about t And what problem do you see that they might be encountering and how would you say to address and to actually do somet I t I am not a computer geek, but I did take a management information systems class and it really opened my mind up to using technology to re-engineer work processes and being able to map out how you can embrace technology. And so I t So what I gather from your comments is that your approach seems to be a lot more proactive than would you say other organizations would you say that they have been more passive in their approach towards digitizing their office? I don't And for public defender offices the budget defines our box. And so we get so involved in the n In other words you can make your jobs easier. And through t And if you could pick at the most three points? I believe that one is the project began with a group of employees who were dedicated to the public defender's mission. And it just so happened that these employees had special skills. Because these employees were also viewed as leaders by others, formal and informal leaders. And because it was a grass root project it became easier to build owners Okay, great. And what is the biggest challenge that you had to deal with in t And trying to get everybody to be on the same page and working for the same goal? The biggest challenge? Creating a vision that we can do it? And once people realize that were doing it, it was easier to bring others on board. So the pilot project, when we started an office a pilot project was very important because that pilot project actually generated interest.