Diversity In Action

DHS seeks minorities, women and vets

The agency makes diversity recruiting a prime goal. It’s looking for IT folks with project management, problem-solving and communication skills

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a young and very large organization. It recently marked its fifth anniversary as a government agency, and today it employs about 170,000 civilians and 40,000 military personnel. DHS component agencies include the U.S. Coast Guard, along with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol and others.

From the beginning the agency has had a strong commitment to workforce diversity. In fact, it has made recruiting and developing a diverse workforce a primary goal for fiscal years 2009 to 2013. The agency is also bringing in experienced people to help establish a common diversity recruiting system across all its departments, many of which have their own legacy systems. Eugenio Ochoa Sexton, DHS director of recruiting and diversity, expects that will give the agency a better overview of its human capital across all its components.

To start, the DHS created a high-level diversity council with representatives from all components. One of the council’s first tasks was approving a diversity strategy and action plan for fiscal years 2008, 2009 and 2010.

“They have, for example, joined the Black Executive Exchange Program of the National Urban League,” Sexton says. The council is also talking with the National Association of Hispanic Federal Executives, the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund Institute and the African American Federal Executive Association, as well as the Asian American Executive Network. “We expect that forming some of these partnerships will help get things going,” Sexton says.

The agency has also created a veterans’ outreach strategy with a vets’ webpage and outreach advisory forum.

“Folks in the military now have very sophisticated skills, so outreach and recruitment of veterans is a major effort by this department,” Sexton notes. “We feel that a military background will add extra dedication to our mission and it also helps in diversity efforts since the military is so diverse.

“Our slogan for all our recruitment activity is ‘Proud to protect,’ and for veterans’ programs we add ‘Continue your service to America.’”

Working with the military model, Sexton intends to create a similar strategy for reaching out to women and minorities.

At DHS every executive has a diversity factor in his or her performance plan. Management performance, Sexton notes, is measured against eight leadership competencies, and support of diversity is one of them.

Sexton says he always wants to see more women and minorities in management, and he points to a number of early successes. For example, the DHS undersecretary for management, one of the highest-ranking positions in the organization, is a woman. She has executive oversight for the CIO organization and the IT program.

The DHS is looking for IT employees with skills in application technology, information security, system admin, data management and ops. Under-girding these specifics it’s seeking communication, problem-solving and especially project management skills.

“In the early days of the department we leaned heavily toward contractor support for IT,” Sexton says. “More recently it has become a blend of federal workers we are bringing in and the contract support people who know the projects well.”

The hard work of bringing everyone together on common platforms is being handled by the CIO’s staff. Creating common apps and systems is as much about organization as it is about systems work, says Sexton.

“IT changes every other day,” Sexton declares. “We want folks who are current with their professional and technical know-how, including specialized certifications. It also helps to have people who know the inside of the government, which is by no means the same as private industry.”

Besides the sought-after project management skills, problem solving and communication are important. In fact, “Someone who is continually learning is the ideal person for us,” Sexton says. U.S. citizenship is required for IT jobs and the DHS conducts its own security clearance tests.

Bringing the components of the agency together in successful diversity efforts will continue to be central to Sexton’s work, he declares.

D/C