The Auditor's Office provides critical services to Thurston County residents, including elections, financial services, licensing and recording.

As the stewards of your tax dollars, we feel a sense of responsibility to evaluate and improve the work we do. Over the past few years we've found ways, both here in the Auditor's Office and across Thurston County government, to create efficiencies and save costs through Lean Management training and tools. Lean Management focuses on managing processes to increase efficiency and quality.

A few examples of how we've used Lean Management to improve both the efficiency of our processes and outcomes for customers and stakeholders include:

• Moving to paperless processing of county invoices. The move from paper to paperless invoices has improved the process and time spent on invoices for staff while saving the county the cost of checks and hard copies of invoices required for public records.

• Creating a video explaining the marriage license process and related laws. Prior to receiving a marriage license, couples must confirm they understand the laws and processes governing the marriage license process. In the past, licensing and recording staff provided the overview, which resulted in longer average transaction times for marriage licenses. The video has cut down on average marriage license transaction times by 15 minutes while providing each customer with the time they need to watch, review and understand the process of applying for a marriage license.

• Implementing electronic billing of jurisdictions for election costs. Changing the way we bill jurisdictions for election costs has made notification and tracking of invoices more efficient for both Auditor's Office staff and the jurisdictions we serve.

Learn more about our efforts in the Auditor’s Office and across Thurston County by watching the video we produced below: