74 Days: Transitioning Homeland Security from Election Day to Inauguration
From election night to inauguration day, the President Elect’s transition team has only 74 days to deliver new strategies for action. Being prepared on Day One means having a strategy that translates campaign policies into a plan for governing. The next president will inherit many challenges; lingering border security issues and cybersecurity threats are just two that stand out. How the next president meets those challenges relies heavily on managing his or her transition into office.
Past presidents-elect have relied on a Presidential Transition Project to guide transition efforts. The Project uses agency-specific review teams and policy working groups that develop key strategies. The teams make recommendations to keep or eliminate past policies, resolve policy disagreements, and devise innovative ways to protect our nation.
At Arc Aspicio, we see the need to deliver mission success quickly and efficiently on mission-critical projects. We rely on Speed to Mission—an approach that combines our people, culture, mission knowledge, empathy, and innovative methods and accelerators – to rapidly achieve results.
A presidential transition is, at its core, like any project management challenge. It includes meeting tight deadlines, setting milestones, and living and hopefully thriving within a budget. For example, our teams use our Quick Risk Reduction Accelerator to pinpoint risk at the start of a project – making it easier to support urgent, time sensitive requests while making progress on longer-term initiatives.
Our teams also put the mission first. We share this focus with transition teams that must focus on the new Administration’s goals to effectively drive consensus to support the mission. Policy working groups translate the campaign’s policies into administration priorities. By focusing on mission-critical policy areas and having a clear goal, these groups can identify and achieve quick wins.
Agency review teams develop strategy for the new appointees to DHS agencies and audit the Department’s current health. While there is often temptation to “reinvent the wheel” during project transition handoffs, transition teams must seek to understand while they achieve quick wins to create organizational momentum towards larger initiatives. By building consensus and communicating change to all stakeholders, transformation of legacy programs is more achievable and yields lasting results for the President’s term.
The transition project’s strategy sets the tone for the the security of our nation in 2017 and beyond. There are 74 Days from idea to action. The challenge is not as daunting with a collaborative and innovative approach.
