Sacramento -- The California Department of General Services (DGS) today announced it was a winner in the 1998 National Association of Directors of Administration and General Services (NASDAGS) Outstanding Program Award competition honoring state agencies that are providing leadership, creativity, and efficient state government programs.

 

The DGS Office of Human Resources was honored with a "Creative Excellence Award" for its Career Management Assignment (CMA) and Career Supervisory Assignment (CSA) system, which reformed the department's employee recruitment process. The CMA/CSA system allows DGS to compete with the private sector for highly qualified managers and supervisors by streamlining recruitment, widening the candidate pool, and shortening selection time to a few weeks instead of several months.

 

"The NASDAGS awards are an acknowledgment of the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that allows DGS to make state government more effective," said DGS Director Peter Stamison. "This program is a shining example of how creative people are helping the department carry out its mission of being the state's business services provider."

 

The DGS Real Estate Services Division (RESD) was honored with the "Award of Distinction" in the category of Public Works for its management of state assets. DGS traditionally sold its surplus property in an "as is" condition without local zoning entitlements. Under RESD's current Marketing Real Property Program, the Asset Planning and Enhancement Branch assists prospective buyers of state-owned property with zoning, environmental and engineering work, and other value enhancements.

 

Through this program, the state's Agnews property in the Silicon Valley, valued at an estimated $35 million, secured a gross sales price of $91 million. After applying $30 million of the sales price to local infrastructure improvements, the state netted nearly $61 million on the property.

 

Several other DGS programs have been honored with NASDAGS awards in recent years, including GS $Mart, the Procurement Division's Internet marketplace for lease-purchase financing information; the Pilot Project for Alternative IT Acquisitions, a performance-based procurement process for information technology; and the Office of Fleet Administration's fuel card program that consolidates the charging and billing of state gasoline purchases, thus saving more than $1 million a year in bookkeeping costs and fraud losses.

 

This year's awards were presented at the annual NASDAGS convention, August 4, 1998, in St. Paul, Minnesota.