As Deputy Director for Public Affairs, I manage a $4.5 million budget and lead a staff of 57 military, civilian, and contract professionals. Upon assuming this position I inherited a system where the budget was neither well-planned nor well executed. My predecessor maintained a “hands off” approach to the process and staff members requested expenditures for narrow purposes without regard to justifications, cost-benefits, or strategic priorities. A few members of the staff had been challenged on contractual procedures and efficacies. There was little attention being paid to technological advances that could save the organization time and money if procured. An already over-burdened executive officer lacked the training, experience, and time to sufficiently manage and track office personnel and financial issues.
My first initiative was to meet with each staff member, one-on-one, and determine their individual experiences, goals, and objectives. In so doing, I determined that one of our officers had extensive background and interest in business processes. I assigned him as the office resource manager. I then worked extensively at the beginning to develop spreadsheets to track authorized, obligated, and expended funds across the different accounts we managed. We used these products as a foundation to brief the six division chiefs and solicit decision-making feedback on procurements and contracts. I requested the Director of Acquisition for the National Guard to provide a course in contracting to all of our division chiefs and other interested and relevant staff members, each of whom earned a certification for their training. I required each division chief to draft an un-financed requirement document for any capability, product, or service they needed to accomplish their assigned missions within the strategic objectives I outlined. We began meeting on a weekly basis to ensure that we had an effective system to monitor and provide oversight for all major investments. This new system provided them with ownership, responsibility, and accountability in the process managed day-to-day by our new resource manager. The same system afforded my executive officer with more latitude to focus on other personnel initiatives I had previously assigned to him with similar oversight.
These business changes provided for substantive cost-benefit and effective technology applications within our organization. For the first time in seven years we upgraded and modernized our automation that enhanced our operations both within the office and when deployed. In fact, our vehicle and satellite communication contracts enabled us to support field operations, part of our assigned mission and strategic objectives, where we were never able to do so prior. I also led the way to adapt our contract to increase our web site from one to three portals, including, beyond our public web site, an internal site for our staff and a download web site that supported the technological transfer and sharing of photographs, videos and files essential to effectively accomplish the mission to tell the National Guard story in a timely manner. I directed the purchase of media analysis software that saved us time and money over staff members doing the same tedious labor. I spearheaded the creation of five new advertisements through our advertising contract to achieve precise objectives in educating Congress and other centers of influence on the roles and capabilities of our institution that were placed in national media, to include the New York Times. With savings earned through sound decision-making, I hired contractors to support administrative and exercise functions that could not be adequately resolved by full-time staff. Finally, for the first time in nine years, we managed our budget effectively enough to not only fund our direct office, but to field branding products to all 54 state and territory public affairs offices.
Our advertisements have won awards and sparked great interest from Congress and the public at large. Our web site earned the “Keith L. Ware” award for being recognized as the third best Army web site in the nation. We receive daily positive feedback from our field offices and significantly increased exposure for the National Guard from our branding initiative.
Stoneking Strategic Communications (SSC) 