The Office of the President is pressing hard to get the new 10 Year Strategic Plan initiated by the start of the next administration in July. Currently they have contracted an outside vendor, The Whitener Group, to finish up the project by middle of June. The project has had 2 onsite meetings; one at the Black River Falls Gaming Conference Room; and the second in the legislative conference room and D1CC Multipurpose room.

Executive Directors were first interviewed individually to provide an overall perspective on the strategic plans for each Department. Next each Executive Director was asked to do a survey of top concerns they want to get done in the next ten years. These answers were compiled and put into groups, so that others could see the plans in their entirety and assess whether the direction was good for each one.

The second meeting began with different groups; from all the different departments. This included Department and Division managers to have a say in the direction or could potentially drive the strategic plan in the new administration. This would verify the nuts and bolts approach to getting this document done.

President Wilfrid Cleveland cited a story about how Ho-chunks were a long time ago. His idea was to explain how Ho-chungra should interact today using that same system. “So a long time ago when someone maybe hunting and they came across this huge blueberry patch, they didn’t just go and try to align those blueberries for themselves. They would go back to the village and make an announcement, ‘hey found a huge blueberry patch, let’s all go over there and harvest these together.’ The village would then follow to the location and pick for the village.”

Each group was given a topic to disseminate. They had to look at how easy the idea was to get done and what type of impact it would have. These were then placed on a big chart to indicate where they aligned in time and impact. Most of the items were ideas that could be done in a short amount of time and had impact. There some ideas that seemed like they would take longer due to the idea of not having support or the enough money to follow it into implementation.

The Whitener Group will take the information back and assemble for a final draft to be presented in June. This document will be a transition document that will assist the next administration with solid foundation to follow up. It will provide each department a fiscal year plan to implement and use for the next years and can be modified depending on funding in that year.