Speakers :
Debbie EricksonMetro
Debbie Erickson is the Vice President & Chief Information Officer for Metro, which provides public transportation in the St. Louis metropolitan area. She brings a private enterprise approach to the public agency having spent a career in the corporate world. Prior to coming to work for Metro, Ms. Erickson worked for Peabody Energy in the Information Technology Division. She has also worked for Ameren, Southwestern Bell, and Emerson Electric.
When she started at Metro two years ago, the CEO, Larry Salci, tasked her with a mission to get badly needed financial information into the hands of management. At the time, it took six weeks to get monthly financial data into the hands of management and reconciling reports from different systems was all but impossible.
But before she could tackle her new mission, she had to build an organization that could accomplish it. She flattened the Information Technology Division to improve efficiency of operations. Then introduced structured methodologies and management controls to ensure that projects were delivered on time and under budget. She focused on hiring people with superior technical expertise and the willingness to work as a team. That was the first three months.
Over the next eighteen months, her team replaced all of the financial computer systems of the organization, upgraded the bus maintenance management system, implemented an automated employee time entry system, and eliminated the mainframe computer. While there is still much work to be done, the core projects were brought in on time and under budget. And, the budget looked more like one from a private enterprise than a public agency. Metro accomplished with $11M what is costing Washington Metro (WMATA) $35M. By taking on project management internally and hiring independent consultants, rather than paying one firm a fixed price for the whole package, Metro was able to lower the overall cost of the project. “We had to take on more risk this way, but I knew we could do it!” says Ms. Erickson.
Ms. Erickson and her team aren’t planning to rest on their laurels. They’re off taking on new challenges. This year, they are implementing a system to automate the driver scheduling and dispatch functions, adding a Trip Finder function to the METROSTLOUIS.ORG website, and installing a fuel management system that sends data directly from the fuel pumps to the maintenance system. These new systems are all aimed at reducing Metro’s costs and improving the efficiency of operations.
Ms. Erickson received her B.A. in Fine Art from Lindenwood University in 1978, and her M.B.A. from the University of Missouri – St. Louis in 1981. She lives in Frontenac, Missouri, with her husband Tim and two children, Holly, 12, and Adam, 8.