Challenges
When the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in March 2003, there were no records management standards in place. Five new DHS professionals with prior history from NASA, the Transportation Department, the White House, and private industry entrusted their personal and professional papers to our staff. At that time, there was no records management policy nor was there a federal resource with responsibility related to records management.
Solutions
Under the direction of the Executive Secretary and later the Administrative Officer, our staff began the arduous task of reviewing records inventories to first determine whether the records were covered by the General Records Schedules. Once a determination was made, the material was organized and filed. In the first 6 months, our Executive Assistant staff established information architecture for both hard copy and soft-copy records, then developed and implemented policies and procedures which were promulgated throughout the Office of the CIO.
As a follow-on task, our Executive Assistant staff were asked to develop an internal document review and distribution process for Executive Secretary material. The DHS Office of the Executive Secretary (ExecSec) is responsible for distributing for comment and concurrence all policy material originating from the Executive and Legislative branches of government. ExecSec communications may contain citizen letters to congressmen; funding approval packages for IT spend plans; insertions into pending legislation; or advance material for press releases. Much of the material—which is sent on an hourly basis—is distributed via e-mail and requires responses within a 4-hour to 4-day window. Our Executive Assistant staff—a group of high-level administrators—used their experience and the feedback from the SES staff they support to create a near flawless system for capturing, distributing, annotating, tracking, and archiving every ExecSec item that comes into the OCIO.
Results
Today, the DHS Office of the CIO operates under standard process for Records Management and Correspondence Control which enable informed decision-making for its IT executives. The new records management system makes it easier to locate archival material while the new ExecSec process allows management in the OCIO to know which policy items received concurrence, which matters are under discussion, and which matters have been quashed.