Reengineering Business Processes for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The Challenge
The consolidation of 22 government entities into 9 components to form the Department of Homeland Security required the reengineering of critical business processes. Formerly, each component had its own set of IT operations such as funding, procurement, and policy. DHS’s Chief Information Officer (OCIO) needed internal operational processes that would sustain the continued development of initiatives to support enterprise services and applications that would result in fulfillment of the One DHS vision. Another challenge occurred because a new Enterprise Applications Delivery Office (EADO) director came on board just as the project began. As a result, the project was delayed until the new director could be brought up to speed on the work being done in the OCIO.
The Solution
The 1 Source 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. The steps were: (1) strategic planning, (2) map and benchmark, (3) develop solutions, (4) implement improvements, and (5) review and assess.
We recommended rapid deployment of task management, communication, and work-intake processes to improve governance in the office. First, we defined the scope of the project and selected team members with the appropriate skills and credentials. Next, we met with the client to begin change management activities. Team members audited the basic office processes that were in existence and determined the state of the “as-is” environment. We then interviewed current EADO staff and OCIO members to gain an understanding of the Office function, and formed a benchmark framework of the existing processes.
With the framework defined, we created detailed business and technical 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. Concurrently, our Team developed reporting processes to assign and track tasks and weekly staff meetings for improved communication. Our BPR team analyzed the gap between the “as is” and “to be” environments and took the following steps:
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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.
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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.
The Results
1 Source’s reengineering efforts on behalf of DHS’s business processes have supported:
- EADO’s capacity to operate under best practices that are aligned with the organization’s structure and goals
- Improved efficiency from increased productivity and budget savings thanks to a staff clearly focused on mission
- Increased operational tempo within DHS
