Complete the below:
After reviewing each of the other team presentations, each student should develop a list of inquiry questions to teams other than their own. Each student should post a minimum of three (3) questions to the other team(s).
TO: Catherine Emerson, Chief Human Capital Officer
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
CC: Honorable Jeh Johnson, Secretary Homeland Security
FROM: TEAM CHCO
RE: A Dedicated Role for the Chief Human Capital Officer of DHS
The formation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is an example of a government-wide change initiative to address concerns stemming from a traumatic event. Leading the concerns was dissatisfaction with the way in which the multitude of departments responded, communicated and coordinated their efforts on a macro scale. A lack of an integrated command system was at the heart of this dissatisfaction. The Command systems were designed to work independently, not together. Although New York City mayor, Rudolph Giulianni, instituted a plan to minimize potential conflict among responding agencies, which may have areas of overlapping expertise and responsibility at a local level, the equivalent did not exist at the federal level. The DHS is the federal equivalent to establish channels of communication necessary for smooth operation.
The purpose of this memorandum addresses the following:
• Mission - What does the organization do?
• Vision - What does the organization expect to accomplish?
• Values - What cultural and behavioral norms are established at the senior leadership level and how are they manifested at the operational levels?
• Structure - How is it organized at the senior management level, i.e. what are the executive-level departments or lines of business?
• Implementation - How are organizational Mission, Vision and Values implemented within the departments or lines of business?
• Context - What are the contextual factors (internal and external) that influence the organization's culture and performance?
• Opportunity - What opportunities exist for an HR intervention that will help advance the organizational mission?
The DHS is the collective of more than twenty federal offices. The DHS was formed in response to the terror attacks on September 11th, 2001 when a need for coordination and improved communication among the various government offices became apparent. Since its inception in November 2002, DHS seeks to unify and integrate information and activities to ensure domestic safety and prevention of future terrorist attacks. The DHS officially opened its doors in March 2003 and subsequently went through reorganization in July 2005.
1. Mission - Five Missions to Unify, Strengthen and Secure Our Domestic Borders.
The DHS has five mission areas: 1) Prevent Terrorism and Enhance Security; 2) Secure and manage our borders; 3) Enforce and Administer Our Immigration Laws; 4) Safeguard and Secure Cyberspace; and, 5) Strengthen National Preparedness and Resilience.
• Prevent Terrorism and Enhance Security: DHS will increase U.S. Government counterterrorism efforts, which include engaging the public, and private sectors through campaigns, such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's "If You See Something, Say SomethingTM" campaign as well as the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. In addition, partnering across federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement will, over the next four years, become even more important to detect and counteract threats.
• Secure and Manage Our Borders: DHS will rely on enhanced technology to screen incoming cargo at ports of entry and work with foreign partners to monitor the international travel of individuals of suspicion who seek to enter the United States. DHS will continue to emphasize risk-based strategies that are smart, cost-effective, and conducted in a manner that is acceptable to the American people. DHS must remain agile in responding to new trends in illegal migration, from Central America or elsewhere. The importance of continuing efforts is recognized to promote and expedite lawful travel and trade that will continue to strengthen our economy.
• Enforce and Administer Our Immigration Laws: DHS will continually work to better enforce immigration laws and administer our immigration system. Additionally supporting common-sense immigration reform legislation that enhances border security, prevents and discourages employers from hiring undocumented workers, streamlines our immigration processing system, and provides an earned pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. DHS will take a smart, effective, and efficient risk-based approach to border security and interior enforcement and continually evaluate the best use of resources to prioritize the removal of those who represent threats to public safety and national security.
• Safeguard and Secure Cyberspace: As the Federal Government's coordinator of efforts to counter cyber threats and other hazards to critical infrastructure, DHS will work with both public and private sector partners to share information, help make sure new infrastructure is designed and built to be more secure and resilient, and continue advocating internationally for openness and security of the Internet and harmony across international laws to combat cybercrime. Further, DHS must secure the Federal Government's information technology systems by approaching federal systems and networks as an integrated whole and by researching, developing, and rapidly deploying cyber-security solutions and services at the pace that cyber threats evolve. DHS will continue to develop cyber law enforcement, incident response, and reporting capabilities by increasing the number and impact of cybercrime investigations, sharing information about tactics and methods of cyber criminals gleaned through investigations, and ensuring that incidents reported to any Federal department or agency are shared across the U.S. Government. In addition, the Federal Government must continue to develop good working relationships with the private sector, lower barriers to partnership, develop cyber-security best practices, promote advanced technology that can exchange information at machine speed, and build the cyber workforce of tomorrow for DHS and the Nation.
• Strengthen National Preparedness and Resilience: To support priority security requirements in a sustainable way, a corollary responsibility for DHS is to become more efficient and effective across a large and decentralized structure. As a department, DHS must eliminate duplicative processes, develop common platforms, and purchase single solutions, while pursuing important commitments, such as the recapitalization of the aging Coast Guard fleet. DHS will also address the low morale that exists within many of its components. Over the next four years, DHS will find opportunities to promote confidence in its ability to fulfill its mission. Therefore, they will take a Whole of Community approach, bringing together all elements of our society-individuals, local communities, the private and non-profit sectors, faith-based organizations, and all levels of government-to make sure America is resilient in the face of adversity.
To meet the missions, a robust workforce with specialized skills is required to compete with the private sector. Law enforcement, cyber security, and first responders are all competitive assets in the private sector.
2. Vision - DHS Expects to Improve Communication and Preparedness for Innovation.
The vision of DHS is to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards. On evaluating the culture at the DHS, the Homeland Security Advisory council recommended the department needed to build trust, empower the components, empower employees and be a good partner.
DHS went through a reorganization in 2005 following an intensive study and second stage review. This initiative included over 250 personnel and consists of the Department Six-Point Agenda. The six-point agenda is structured to guide the department in the near term and result in changes that will:
1. Increase overall preparedness, particularly for catastrophic events;
2. Create better transportation security systems to move people and cargo more securely and efficiently;
3. Strengthen border security and interior enforcement and reform immigration processes;
4. Enhance information sharing with our partners;
5. Improve DHS financial management, human resource development, procurement and information technology;
6. Realign the DHS organization to maximize mission performance.
The six-point agenda enhances and does not diminish the original mission of the Department.
3. Values - The DHS embodies a sense of duty, respect, and innovation to maintain vigilance in securing our country.
• Duty: Embodying Integrity, Responsibility, and Accountability. We will faithfully execute the duties and responsibilities entrusted to us and maintain the highest ethical and professional standards. We will never forget that, for many, we are the face of America - the first Americans that many visitors will meet. The DHS will manifest this duty in the interactions with the community through immigration services and border patrol efforts.
• Respect: Honoring Our Partners and One Another. We will highly value the relationships we build with our customers, partners, stakeholders, and each other. We will honor America's liberty, democracy, and diversity. Chief Human Capital Officer, Catherine Emerson, often reports to Congress so they may remain informed of any circumstances surrounding DHS. The DHS will manifest this through their involvement with the multitude of emergency organizations, the Council of Human Capital Officers and pursue a comprehensive national security agenda.
• Innovation: Creating Opportunities. We will identify and explore uncharted opportunities to enhance homeland security. We will encourage and recognize our employees' original thoughts and initiatives and will foster a creative environment in which they can grow, develop, and progress. The DHS manifested this through comprehensive efforts to build a better organization. For instance, more than 250 individuals participated in the development of the Six Point Agenda. The DHS efforts to protect our digital space are shown through the improvements to create a more modern and reliable infrastructure. By safeguarding our information grid, DHS ensures safety and enables growth. The DHS will seize strategic opportunities to shape the economic order and cultivate new relationships with emerging economic powers and countries newly committed to peaceful democratic change.
• Vigilance: Safeguarding America. We shall identify, defeat, and mitigate threats to the safety of the American people. We will constantly guard against threats, hazards, or other dangers that threaten our Nation and our way of life. The DHS will manifest this by collaborating with leaders from all over the world to take a global effort to lock down vulnerable nuclear materials and institutionalize nuclear security best practices. The DHS will work to prevent the spread and use of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Another recommendation from the Homeland Security Advisory Council was empowered leadership of a blended culture. While the Department appears to have delegated much responsibility to its components, the very nature of this can also lead to a weakened human capital structure that would make it very difficult to have an overall human capital strategy that supports the mission of the Department. Efforts to innovate and re-tool the organization to remain responsive to those norms are found in the six point agenda.
4. Structure - Organizing more than 20 independent organizations into an interdependent department consisting of law enforcement, security and first responders to counter domestic threats.
In February 2001, the General Accountability Office (GAO) designated Strategic Human Capital as a high risk for the federal government. Specifically, the urgency to respond to complex challenges in national security, homeland security and other disasters requires a high-quality federal workforce to work across governmental agencies. This urgency has been magnified by budget pressures, an aging workforce, and retirements, which will cause gaps in leadership and institutional knowledge. The GAO also mentioned in the report that "GAO initially designated strategic human capital management as a high risk area because of the long-standing lack of leadership of strategic human capital management."
The DHS currently has the Chief Human Capital Officer providing a number of functions. Among the responsibilities of the Chief Human Capital Officer, this role must:
• Create the agency's workforce development strategy;
• Decide the agency's human capital goals, estimate future needs and maintain workforce diversity with demographic assessment;
• Create programs to advance agency mission, ensures retention employees and create human resource guidelines;
• Assess workforce characteristics and future needs based on the agency's mission and strategic plan;
• Align the agency's human resources policies with organizational mission, goals and performance outcomes;
• Develop a culture of learning by providing a conductive workplace environment for professional growth;
• Identify best practices and benchmarking studies;
• Apply methods for measuring intellectual capital.
Dedicating the time of this office to the undivided purpose of developing and promoting the changes instituted by DHS can reinforce the organization and drive the directives to be a more flexible and responsive organization. This report incorporates the studies of individuals experienced with the Department of Commerce, The Department of Defense, and the private sector. The cross-functionality of this team can provide an example of strategies and tactics that could benefit DHS.
In the above organizational chart of the DHS, the Chief Human Capital Officer is not identified nor is the office listed in the DHS web site. While the Department has the Chief Human Capital Officer under the Management function, we believe that the Department of Homeland Security does not recognize the vital strategic role the Chief Human Capital Officer has in agency operations.
As organized today, the DHS appears to view Human Capital as a tactical function rather than on par with the Chief Financial Management Officer and the Chief Information Officer. If the Chief Human Capital Officer is truly to assist the head of the agency and other agency officials in carrying their responsibilities for selecting, developing, training, and managing a high-quality workforce, then the role of Chief Human Capital Officer and where it stands within the organizational structure needs to be an equal strategic partner, not simply an administrative management function as the office appears.
5. Implementation - Different approaches to the Mission, Vision and Values result in addressing a diverse set of core competencies.
On November 25, 2002, then President George W. Bush signed Public Law 107-296, §1301 , which not only created the Department of Homeland Security, but enacted the Chief, Human Capital Officers Act of 2002. This groundbreaking authority required each agency to appoint or designate a Chief Human Capital Officer who will:
1) Advise and assist the head of the agency and other agency officials in carrying out the agency's responsibilities for selecting, developing, training, and managing a high-quality workforce in accordance with merit system principles.
2) Implement the rules and regulations of the President and Office of Personnel Management and the laws governing the civil service within the agency.
3) Carry out functions as the primary duty of the Chief Human Capital Officer.
We commend the Department of Homeland security for designating a Chief Human Capital Officer; however, whether it can fulfill the desired functions as laid out in the law is in question.
Since the Chief Human Capital Officer role in the Department of Homeland Security is not a stand-alone position; we recommend the Chief Human Capital Officer serve as the lead for all the other Human Capital Officers in the DHS components. To do this, we believe the Chief Human Capital Officers of the various components at all levels should share should share common core competencies. The Society for Human Resource Management identifies nine competencies for human resources professionals:
• Human Resources Expertise • Relationship Management
• Consultation • Leadership and Navigation
• Communication • Global and Cultural Effectiveness
• Ethical Practice • Critical Evaluation
• Business Acumen
We suggest the Chief Human Capital Officer use these competencies to create synergy throughout the DHS components of Chief Human Capital Officers. In this manner, all Chief Human Capital Officers have a common set of competencies to ensure alignment of the organizational mission and goals. A common set of core competencies can form a consistent approach to the Mission, Vision, and Values for the DHS.
6. Context - A Blended Culture that Seeks to Unify a Diverse Background for a Common Purpose and Effective Strategic Focus.
Because the components of the DHS were previously under other federal agencies and have existed longer than the DHS itself, the preference for the headquarters has been to provide overall strategic focus while the components do their own strategic and tactical functions within the five mission areas. While this may work along the lines of the operational mission of the DHS, the Chief Human Capital Office function is challenged to provide direction. One of the recommendations from the Council was to eliminate the "buzzword" human capital and refer to them as employees. This is clearly a huge mistake as the strategic focus is lost and human capital is merely seen as a tactical necessity. Making the Human Capital management even more difficult is a mixture of contractors and federal employees numbering 240,000. Trying to find the right balance to achieve the mission clearly requires strategic thinking and leadership. As it stands now, the Department has the Chief Human Capital Officer under the Under Secretary for Management.
In terms of seniority, an Under Secretary position carries weight within the organization as being directly under the Secretary for Homeland Security. A career Senior Executive Service (SES) official may be viewed as not being in the inner circle and as such kept in the dark about certain issues vital for Human Capital Strategic Planning. Secondly, the SES may be viewed as part of the problem and not part of the solution when it comes to workforce planning. Finally, the Department changed the position for stability and career expertise. A Chief Human Capital Officer should be viewed as more than just career expertise.
7. Opportunity - Recommendation to Advance the Position of the Chief Human Capital Officer as an Equal Partner and Leader in Strategic Development.
Given the legal mandate and duties associated with the 2002 Chief Human Capital Officer Act, the best practice would be to have the individual report directly to the agency head. During a January 2014 Hearing on Capitol Hill on "Examining the Use and Abuse of Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime (AUO) at the Department of Homeland Security", the Chief Human Capital Officer stated:
"In many areas of human capital policy at DHS, we strive to create consistent policies. However, premium pay, or overtime, poses challenges to achieving uniformity. These differences can be attributed to several factors, including the disparate missions of our workforce; the number of unions that represent our employees and the range of concerns of those they represent..."
The disparate missions can lead to difficulty in achieving uniformity; however, top-level policy that is clear in purpose and promotes the needs of the organization and the leadership should be able to promulgate across all of the components of the DHS.
Section 1402 of Public Law 107-296 , set the function of the Chief Human Capital Officer to include workforce development strategy; assessing workforce characteristics and future needs; aligning agency human resources policies and programs with organizational mission, strategic goals, and performance outcomes; developing and advocating a culture of continuous learning to attract and retain; identify best practices; apply methods for measuring intellectual capital and identify links to organizational performance. These functions alone constitute a dynamic and robust Chief Human Capital Officer whose role is to bring strategic change to agencies not just to provide expertise or meet an immediate need. In this respect, the primary role of a Chief Human Capital Officer is a leader and visionary - not a manager.
If we examine other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard Chief of Personnel (CG-1) reports through the Chief of Staff to the Vice-Commandant and Commandant of the Coast Guard. In the Customs and Border Patrol, the Assistant
Commissioner Human Resources reports to the Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner.
Within other Federal agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Chief Human Capital Officer, reports to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. In the Department of State, the Chief Human Capital Officer falls under the Under Secretary for Management. At the Department of Commerce, the Chief Human Capital Officer reports to the Deputy Secretary and Secretary of Commerce. However, given the legal mandate and duties with the 2002 Chief Human Capital Officer Act, the best practice would be to have the individual report directly to the agency head.
In carrying out the functions of the Chief Human Capital Officer, the DHS converted the position from an appointed official to a career Senior Executive Service position. This was believed to address the need for stability after experiencing a turnover of five Chief Human Capital Officers within the DHS in a span of eight years. While a Senior Executive Officer position rather than an appointed position may have solved an immediate need to curb the high turn over, the lack of an appointed position may inhibit the Chief Human Capital Officer's ability to comply with Section 1402.
Because the components of the DHS were previously under other federal agencies and have existed longer than the DHS itself, the preference for the headquarters has been to provide overall strategic focus while the components do their own strategic and tactical functions within the five mission areas. While this may work along the lines of the operational mission of the DHS, the Chief Human Capital Officer function is challenged to provide direction.
If the DHS chooses to keep its current structure, we recommend that the Secretary for Homeland Security have the Chief Human Capital Officer report operationally to him. This would send a clear signal that the DHS values the Chief Human Capital Officer role and recognizes its status as a strategic partner. The Chief Human Capital Officer should attend all leadership team meetings within the DHS and have monthly or weekly meetings with the other DHS components to ensure the strategic direction for human capital is being met and moving forward. While the culture of the DHS tends to delegate as much as possible, we recommend the role of the Chief Human Capital Officer not be delegated. Through the enhancement of the Chief Human Capital Officer serving as a strategic partner, the DHS can magnify the impact of its strategies with direction and leadership for a 21st century workforce.