Challenges
The Department of Homeland Security was formed in March 2003 through the consolidation of twenty-two separate government entities into nine "components". Each component had its own set of IT operations such as funding, procurement, and policy.
The Enterprise Applications Delivery Office (EADO) of the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) is responsible for managing the deployment of software applications for the Undersecretary of Management as well as component applications that have or will have an enterprise capability. The EADO also supports the DHS OCIO Enterprise Architecture Office efforts towards integrating applications.
We were faced with the following challenges:
- Develop internal operational processes that would support the continued development of the OCIO's efforts to support enterprise services and applications in pursuit of the one DHS vision
- The EADO Director was changed at the inception of the project and it took time for the new Director to become aware of the work being done in the office
Solutions
Our Business Process Reengineering (BPR) methodology followed an industry best practice five step approach designed to facilitate a process improvement project's success from start to finish.
- Strategic planning
- Map and benchmark
- Develop solutions
- Implement improvements
- Review and assess
We determined a lack of processes critical to the client's success and recommended rapid deployment of task management, communication, and work-intake processes to improve governance in the office through the following procedures:
- Defined the scope of the project and selected team members with the proper skills and attributes
- Met with the federal client to begin change management activities
- Audited the basic office processes that were in existence and determined the state of the current 'As-Is' environment
- Interviewed current EADO staff and members of the OCIO staff that had a direct relationship with that office to get a complete understanding of current office function. In this way, a benchmarking framework of high- and mid-level processes was understood and shown to the client
- Created detailed Microsoft Visio diagrams for the revised processes and wrote new standard operating procedures based upon industry best practices that aligned with the client's organizational structure and goals
- Created and implemented processes for an Excel dashboard report to assign and track tasks and weekly staff meetings scheduled on Outlook to improve staff communication
Our BPR team analyzed the gap between the As-Is and To-Be environments and took the following steps:
- Created a Web-based work intake process following the analysis. In addition to improving governance of the work accepted into the office, the Access database behind the web form provided reporting and tracking capabilities that had not existed before. We assessed the progress of the rapidly-deployed processes and determined that while operational efficiency had improved by 59%, the communications processes required further improvement.
- Created a plan to make the transition from the current environment to the process-driven environment outlined in the To-Be report. In addition to the processes necessary for ongoing monitoring and improvement, this included the precise job descriptions of the staffing effort necessary to anchor the processes and continue the necessary change management of the office.
Results
- The DHS Enterprise Applications Delivery Office is able to operate under best practices that are aligned with the client's organizational structure and goals
- The Delivery staff can focus on their mission resulting in improved efficiency from increased productivity and budget savings
- We helped DHS operationalize in its transition out of start-up phase