Report - Government Executive

Implementation responsibility for DCIPS, including outreach, has been left primarily to the
intelligence components’ HR managers, causing concern within their community about an overreliance
on them as change agents, especially when leadership support has been inconsistent or
lacking. Absent visible agency leadership to provide consistent, frequent messages about
DCIPS’ importance, the perception has grown that the system is an HR program, not a broader
strategic management program.
The DCIPS Communications and Learning Plan outlines a few communication “products,”
specifically the DCIPS website as the primary communication channel to the workforce and the
Readiness Tool as the main repository of outreach guidance and examples for implementers.
Most of the content of communications from OUSD(I) and the components focused on HR
issues, such as the system’s design and mechanics. No one, however, provided a strong case for
the need, urgency, or desired outcome.
The lack of outreach success indicates that the approach and actions taken to date have been
ineffective. Few focus group and open forum participants—employees and supervisors alike—
could clearly explain the strategic outcome that DCIPS was designed to achieve. Their answers
reflected an emphasis on process improvements but fell short of actual impacts and outcomes
affecting their component’s ability to achieve its mission. This is not surprising given the limited
attention that senior leadership devoted to defining the desired outcome and communicating it.
Although the link between DCIPS and mission enhancement is necessarily indirect, the
discussion of any relationship between the two was largely ignored in strategic communications.
At a more tactical level, there appears to be a high degree of frustration and confusion among the
workforce about many of DCIPS’ technical features and its status. Communications were
reactive and ever changing as ad hoc updates were issued for policy, guidance, tools, and other
program aspects. The system implementation itself was rushed, and the outreach efforts
reflected a lack of overall strategy and sufficient guidance.
As noted earlier, OUSD(I) did not provide strong oversight or guidance to the components for
outreach. It pushed information out through the Readiness Tool, but did not engage in follow up
to review component communications for accuracy and timing. The lack of strong, centralized
guidance and oversight for outreach resulted in uneven activities and inconsistent messages
among the components.
Additionally, OUSD(I) might consider issuing a style guide for outreach. A guide offers
templates, key phrasing, terms, logos, and other features that would brand DCIPS as a unified
program and allow all components to use a common voice when communicating about it. The
lack of such guidance resulted in OUSD(I) and components reverting to templates from NSPS.
Those templates failed to distinguish DCIPS from NSPS, and further perpetuated a negative
association between the two programs.
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