Facing mounting criticism, the North Carolina Department of Transportation announced Thursday it's making changes within the agency to better control oversight and planning.

"We try to provide service to each taxpayer at the best level we can, and certainly there are identified areas that we could improve," Lyndo Tippett, the State Transportation Secretary, said in a statement.

The DOT will change its organizational structure and reorganize units within the agency.

Units within the department are being aligned with six strategic functions.

You can find more details on those functions, here.

The changes come after a $3.6 million internal audit, in which the DOT found its own employees thought the agency was inefficient and unfocused.

A state audit in February found the DOT has wasted around $150 million in taxpayer dollars by delaying road projects.

In 2005, the DOT had to spend around $22 million to fix crumbling concrete that was poured only a year earlier along I-40.

A frequent critic of the DOT, Republican State Senator Phil Berger, said Thursday that "a lot of changes need to be made at the Department of Transportation. Some of these may be good, but I don't see where it's going to make a significant difference."

Berger said the DOT needs to better prioritize scheduling and funding of projects.

A spokeswoman for Governor Mike Easley, who appointed Tippett, said the governor expects the secretary to "do what's necessary to make the DOT run efficiently."

The DOT said the organizational changes should be in place by early September.

Related Story: DOT Wasting Millions In Construction Delays

Read Entire State Audit