Introduction
The DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer FY 18 Strategic Communications Plan is intended to clearly and succinctly set forth the direction, priorities, and capabilities of the OCIO Strategic Communications Division (“Strat Comm”) for fiscal year 2018.
About the Office of the Chief Information Officer
OCIO provides the technological support that enables DHS employees to carry out their work on a daily basis. OCIO is responsible for maintaining a single, DHS-wide IT infrastructure environment that is reliable, scalable, flexible, maintainable, accessible, and secure, ensuring operational excellence – from the workstation to the data center to the mission application.
OCIO Strat Comm Role and Goals
Strat Comm strives to create effective, relevant, engaging, top-quality communications products that reinforce the OCIO and DHS missions, communicate senior leadership priorities and organizational changes, share successes both internally and externally, encourage staff engagement, and support consistent messaging and branding among all OCIO Program Offices.
Audience Feedback
To ensure information is conveyed clearly and effectively, and that Strat Comm adjusts to meet the evolving communications needs of our audience, we conduct an annual OCIO Communications Survey. The survey gives OCIO federal and contractor staff an opportunity to provide anonymous feedback on OCIO communications products and campaigns, and to share ways we can better meet their communications preferences in the future. While the 2017 survey results were extremely positive overall, StratComm has identified several areas of focus for 2018:
- As the OCIO Realignment is finalized, one of our top priorities will be communicating organizational change, and familiarizing staff with new OCIO leadership through leadership profiles and other products.
- We will encourage new leadership to communicate more directly with their program offices, as staff have shown a desire to hear more from their immediate office leadership.
- StratComm will continue to distribute the Weekly Wrap newsletter each Friday, based on employee preferences for a weekly product, but will scale back the OCIO FYI newsletter to a bi-weekly schedule to prevent duplication and over-messaging.
- Based on readers’ interest in OCIO-relevant topics in the news, StratComm will explore options for aggregating pertinent news content and providing to employees on a regular basis.
