Meeting the Challenge
The Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, entitled “Policy for a Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors,” mandates a federal standard for secure and reliable forms of identification. This mandate affects thousands of NIH employees, involves multiple stakeholders, and requires systems that are internal and external to NIH. A 'Big Picture' view is essential to support strategic changes required for NIH’s business processes, organizational structure, and technology.
While the main goal of the HSPD-12 initiative at NIH is to comply with the federal mandate of HSPD-12, a truly successful implementation of HSPD-12 standards requires more than changing business policies. It requires NIH to create a business process that can scale to meet the new demands related to HSPD-12. NIH must minimize the administrative burden by improving operations and infrastructure along with meeting the HSPD-12 compliancy standards.
The NIH Enterprise Architecture HSPD-12 business process modeling team partnered with numerous stakeholders to design an end-to-end business process that satisfies the short-term HSPD-12 standards and long-term strategic vision for identity at NIH. The participants included members from the Office of the Chief IT Architect, Division of Personnel Security & Access Control, Division of International Services, Administrative Officers from various ICs, and Human Resources. The EA team developed business process models using a rigorous methodology, xBML™ (extended Business Modeling Language™), and a disciplined approach that increased awareness and information sharing between the groups.
Using Business Process Modeling to Bridge the Organizational Divide
A secondary goal of the HSPD-12 business process modeling is to facilitate NIH’s transition from a manual, labor intensive identity management process to a more streamlined, secure process. A critical ingredient to success was bridging the “divide” between information technology (IT) and NIH business needs. The business process modeling effort enabled the NIH business need to drive process changes and as a result, dictate system requirements to IT stakeholders. It also provided the necessary information for IT stakeholders to understand the business and recommend beneficial improvements. For example, the HSPD-12 future state process model eliminates at least four different points of duplicate data entry into disparate systems. This enhancement reduces the potential for human error and increases the safety of personal information. A common obstacle when implementing a new business process is the need for process owners to understand their role in the process. The HSPD-12 business process models addressed this by formalizing consensus on business decisions and handoffs between departments.
Next Steps
The HSPD-12 business process modeling effort led to the identification of system interdependencies within NIH and to HHS. The next step for NIH is to integrate the HHS HSPD-12 solution with the NIH models. This will allow NIH to assess the impact of interfacing with HHS and determine how to integrate the NIH business processes with the HHS processes. The HSPD-12 business process models illustrate the cross-departmental teamwork that took place to create a new vision for secure identity at the NIH. The implementation of this vision will satisfy HSPD-12 compliance regulations, as well as improve the efficiency of those future processes. For more information on the NIH Enterprise Architecture HSPD-12 project or business process models please Contact Us.
