Director Of Operations and Cabinet Affairs ($150,000)

Department Information

Colorado Governor Jared Polis is committed to building a Colorado For All, a place where everyone has an opportunity to succeed and live the Colorado way of life. Governor Polis is focused on lowering health care costs for hardworking Coloradans, transitioning the state to renewable energy sources, ensuring every Colorado child gets a quality education, and building an economy that works for everyone. As well as empower state agencies to build a culture of operational excellence and bold innovation driven by continuous performance improvement.

The Governor's staff includes offices for budgeting, communications and outreach, legal counsel, legislative liaison, operations, policy and research, and scheduling.

Description of Job

Mission of Governor’s Office of Operations: To implement the Governor’s agenda throughout State Government, both through accountability measures as well as by empowering agencies to build a culture of operational excellence and bold innovation driven by continuous performance improvement.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: The Director of Operations and Cabinet Affairs is the main daily point of contact from the Governor's Office to the cabinet members and State agencies. This position is charged with building strong relationships with cabinet members, communicating the Governor's long and short term agenda, priorities, schedule, and foreseeable challenges & opportunities. This position is also charged with fostering a team mindset across the whole executive branch, forging a tight bond between the cabinet and the Governor's office to ensure collaboration towards shared goals.

This position is the Governor office's lead on the implementation of bills, programs, initiatives, executive orders, and the Governor's operational agenda. This position will work in conjunction with the Governor and Chief of Staff to develop the Governor's operational agenda, remaining in constant contact with the State's central service agencies: the Department of Personnel and Administration (DPA) and the Office of Information Technology (OIT). In addition, this position will work collaboratively with cabinet members and the Office of State Planning and Budget (OSPB) to identify new and innovative ways to align resources across the executive branch to accomplish the Governor's agenda. This work also requires the position to spend a significant amount of time coordinating with the more than 40 “24/7” facilities that hold people in the State’s custody.

The Director of Operations and Cabinet Affairs will act as the Governor's day to day liaison to the cabinet, and holds agencies accountable. This position also works closely with the Chief of Staff, sitting in on all monthly check ins with cabinet members, coordinating cabinet meetings, facilitating annual and mid-year performance reviews for members of the cabinet, and managing cross-departmental cabinet working groups. This position leads the State’s efforts to develop and publish performance plans, ensuring compliance with the SMART Act and keeping the Governor’s Dashboard updated with more than 400 monthly key performance indicators. As the leader of the Governor’s Operations team, they also oversee the Governor’s Professional Development Academy, the Governor’s Executive Fellowship, and the annual Tom Clements Award Ceremony.

General

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• Serves as the lead Governor's office liaison to the cabinet. Will be in near daily contact to communicate the Governor's whereabouts, his agenda, priorities and communications plans. This includes fostering and developing formal internal communication channels from the Governor's office to the agencies through meetings, memos, newsletters, events, and more.
• First line of response and troubleshooter from the Governor's office as minor to medium challenges or crises arise. Decides when to elevate to Chief of Staff and Governor, shares these challenges with the entire executive team during bi-weekly meetings.
• Develops Governor's operational agenda In conjunction with the Governor and Chief of Staff, including implementation of the Reimagine State Government initiative
• Works directly with agency heads to implement the Governor's operational agenda, including:
• Performance Management: management of Governor's Dashboard featuring statewide, measurable outcome metrics and regular metric reviews; development of Department Performance Plans
• Process and Operational Improvement: Management of statewide Lean program; deployment of Agile training, coordination on operational initiatives across Departments and targeted initiatives to achieve breakthrough performance
• Talent Development: management of the Governor’s Professional Development Academy; oversight of employee engagement action plan implementation; development and oversight of the Governor’s Executive Fellowship
• Technology: Together with the Chief Information Officer, oversee the Colorado Digital Services; ensure that major IT products are successful, including the myColorado app; ensure agencies are committed to ReimagineIT and continue to put more government services online
• Inter-Agency Cabinet Working Groups: Chair and oversee inter-agency working groups, including agenda development, facilitate activities to improve collaboration, review key outcome metrics, as well as make assignments and ensure appropriate follow up
• Focus on improving customer satisfaction and program effectiveness across all statewide services, including partnerships with key external stakeholders, including the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab
• Ensure the Governor is adequately briefed on all key issues regarding departments
• Works with the Chief of Staff on ED performance reviews, goals and review of monthly reports

Organizational Relationships:

This position reports to the Governor’s Chief of Staff with ample access to the Governor and is part of the senior executive team. This position is expected to work extremely close and collaboratively with the Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of State Planning and Budget, General Counsel, Communications Director, and Chief Policy Advisor and Legislative Counsel.

This position is the direct supervisor to the Governor’s Operations Team, including the Deputy Director of Operations & Cabinet Affairs, several Operations Advisors, an Executive Assistant, a Project Manager, a Data Analyst, and a team dedicated to reporting performance related to federal stimulus funds.

Expected Annual Travel

Minimal

Minimum Qualifications, Substitutions, Conditions of Employment & Appeal Rights

Resume/application must demonstrate the following Abilities, Competencies, Experience and Education: Proven and progressive experience in advanced public administration as demonstrated by executing transformative program initiatives from development to implementation including data and reporting. Advanced public service business acumen as defined by championing a culture that anticipates and capitalizes on embracing change to accomplish objectives. Progressive experience in managing and building successful relationships and networks throughout the organization by collaborating to improve teams and the organization at large. Consistently identifies new ways to help fulfill enterprise mission and objectives. The accepted educational substitution for experience may include a Bachelor's degree in public administration, political science or a related field, and could also include a graduate degree in public policy, public administration, business administration, or similar speciality, and could also include previous experience in state government.

FLSA Status: Exempt

Supplemental Information

A cover letter and resume must be submitted with the application for consideration. Your cover letter and resume must provide sufficient detail about your background and experience to allow the screening panel to properly assess your experience in the required elements, including your experience and achievements.

The State of Colorado/Office of the Governor offers a generous benefits package including:

• Generous annual leave and sick leave accruals
• 10 or more paid holidays per year
• Medical plans - choice of Cigna or Kaiser; several plan options (including High Deductible Health Plan and HSA with state-provided financial contribution); most plans offered with generous state contribution towards premium
• Wellness program enrollment opportunity; includes $20/month reimbursement
• Prescription drug coverage; many preventive medications covered at no cost
• Dental plans (choice of 2)
• Vision plan (premium for basic plan paid by state; buy-up option available)
• Flexible spending accounts (general purpose, limited purpose and dependent care)
• State-paid life insurance policy of $50,000
• Choice of 2 retirement plans (defined contribution or defined benefit) with COPERA (Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association) with required employee salary deferral with generous state contribution*.
• Optional COPERA 401(k) and 457 retirement plans, with Roth option, for additional retirement savings
• State-paid short term disability coverage
• Additional optional life and long term disability plan options
• Access to the Colorado State Employee Assistance Program: offers confidential mental health counseling, professional coaching, employee mediation, 24/7 crisis support
• BenefitHub Discount Program (thousands of discounts and cashback offers)
• Credit Union of Colorado membership opportunity
• RTD (transit) Ecopass
• Training and professional development

To learn more about State of Colorado benefits, please visit the state’s benefits portal: https://www.colorado.gov/dhr/benefits.

• For information on mandatory employee salary deferral (in lieu of contribution to Social Security), see COPERA for details: https://www.copera.org/member-contribution-rates

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

The State of Colorado believes that equity, diversity, and inclusion drive our success, and we encourage candidates from all identities, backgrounds, and abilities to apply. The State of Colorado is an equal opportunity employer committed to building inclusive, innovative work environments with employees who reflect our communities and enthusiastically serve them. Therefore, in all aspects of the employment process, we provide employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, medical condition related to pregnancy, creed, ancestry, national origin, marital status, genetic information, or military status (with preference given to military veterans), or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

ADAAA Accommodations

The Office of the Governor is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, our agency will assist individuals who have a disability with any reasonable accommodation requests related to employment, including completing the application process, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, participating in the employee selection process, and/or to perform essential job functions where the requested accommodation does not impose an undue hardship. If you have a disability and require reasonable accommodation to ensure you have a positive experience applying or interviewing for this position, please direct your inquiries to our ADAAA Staffing Coordinator (the Director of Human Resources) at gov_hr@state.co.us.

Conditions of Employment

Applicants must pass a thorough background check prior to employment.

Effective September 20, 2021, employees will be required to attest to and verify that they are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and may be required to submit to regular serial testing. Upon hire, new employees will have three (3) business days to provide attestation to their Covid-19 vaccination status with proof of vaccination. Testing, if required, will take place in-person and will be considered paid work time.

Note: Fully Vaccinated means two (2) weeks after a second dose in a two-dose series of the COVID-19 vaccine, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or two (2) weeks after the single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine, all as defined by the State of Colorado’s Public Health Order and guidance issued by the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment.